OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #690479
BURN,SODIUM HYDROXIDE,WORK RULES,SLIP,DESCENDING,CHEMICAL BURN,DIP TANK,FALL,HOT WATER,LEG
Event description
Employee's leg and foot burned in dip tank
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a shift foreman, was assisting a coworker for the first time in an ch delay in medical treatment. If Employee #1 had removed his clothing immediate ly, his injury might not have been so extensive. operation involving a dip tank. The employees dropped a part and a hook into the tank. After they had retrieved the items, Employee #1 proceeded to descend from the tank's ledge. His foot slipped from the edge of the lip of the dip tank int o 160 degree Fahrenheit water that contained sodium hydroxide with a pH of 12.7. He suffered first- and second-degree burns on two small spots on his knee and t hird-degree burns on his ankle. The employer does not allow this kind of work pr actice and questioned whether Employee #1 was using drugs. There was no reason f or him to be on the edge of the tank's lip to perform his job. There was also mu
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 30 M
- Nature of injury
- 4
- Part of body
- 16
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 41
- Occupation code
- 889
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Hazardous substance
- 2260
- Task assigned
- 2
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.