OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #660514
LEAK,GASKET,EMERGENCY RESPONSE,FIRE EXTINGUISHER,FIRE,PHOSPHOROUS,CHEMICAL REACTION,PHOSPHINE GAS,SPILL
Event description
No employees injured during chemical spill and fire
Investigation abstract
At 6:50 a.m. on September 9, 1988, a chemical reactor containing phosphorous tri damage outside the company's property. chloride, acetic anhydride, and glucial acetic acid began leaking around a fault y gasket. The airborne material spontaneously ignited, apparently due to the pro duction of lower oxides of phosphorous (LOOP), such as phosphine and diphosphane , and the normal acetyl chloride. Employees in a nearby control room regulated t he process, which was completely automated. An attempt was made to extinguish th e fire with a hand-held extinguisher, but it continued to burn. The operator act ivated an emergency deluge system. The local fire department responded, but the fire had been controlled by the company's hazmat team. There were no injuries or
Victim
-
#981 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
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.