OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #705236
BURN,TANK TRUCK,MEK,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,FIRE,LIGHTING FIXTURE,TOLUENE,EXPLOSION,FALL
Event description
Employee burned from ignition of flammable vapors
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 entered a 5,000 gallon capacity truck tank containing flammable wast e including toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, and methyl chloroform, to attempt to u nstick the internal anti-leak valve. He entered and exited once. At the start of the second entry, he was sitting at the dome opening with a water hose putting on gloves when the flammable vapors ignited. The force of ignition threw Employe e #1 against the underside of the roof; he fell 20 ft to the concrete floor. Emp loyee #1 sustained 3rd-degree burns over 90 percent of his body and other injuri es. The probable ignition source was an unapproved shoplight that was in the tan k's vapor atmosphere.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 887
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 10
- Hazardous substance
- 2460
- 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.