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 #691774

CHEST,FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,RIB,STRUCK BY,UNSTABLE POSITION

Event
CHEST,FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,RIB,STRUCK BY,UNSTABLE POSITION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
691774
Report ID
854910

Event description

Employee's ribs fractured when struck by beater bars

Investigation abstract

At approximately 4:00 a.m. on April 15, 1987, Employee #1 was standing on an ele vated platform inspecting a saute kettle with a steam jacket. He spotted dried c hemical on the inside of the kettle. To reach the dried spot, Employee #1 took a scrub brush, attached it to the end of a 3 ft long piece of wood, then leaned o ver the kettle's lip. His left hip struck the ON switch, causing the elevated be ater bars to rotate and tip down on the inside of the kettle. The beater bars ca me down on his back and struck Employee #1 three times before the machine was sh ut off. He suffered three broken ribs and was hospitalized.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 29 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    1
    Source
    26
    Occupation code
    433
    Human factor
    13
    Environmental factor
    6
    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.