105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #605741

MAINTENANCE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,CAUGHT BY,FALL,UNSTABLE POSITION

Event
MAINTENANCE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,CAUGHT BY,FALL,UNSTABLE POSITION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
605741
Report ID
418100

Event description

Employee killed in fall into cyclone

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, while doing routine maintenance, was using a high pressure water sp ray to knock off waste material that had built up on the inside wall of a cyclon e on a metal shredding machine. The cyclone fan was locked out but the rotary ai r lock at the bottom of the cyclone was turned on so that the waste material cou ld exit the cyclone. Employee #1 fell about 18 ft into the cyclone through a 18 in. by 40 in. opening on top of it. About an hour later a coworker found him lod ged in the rotary air lock. He was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 24 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    5
    Source
    42
    Occupation code
    889
    Human factor
    10
    Environmental factor
    13
    Task assigned
    1

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.