OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #705269
BETHLEHEM STEEL CORPORATION
SPARROWS POINT, MD·
Event description
Employee overexposed to carbon monoxide
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and a coworker were assigned to replace the dampener cylinder of a g ad been instructed to return to the area after activation of the meter's 180 ppm level alarm. Employees were not fully advised of the hazards of carbon monoxide or of the company's written policy covering carbon monoxide detection procedure s. alvanizing furnace. After four short trips of 5 to 15 minutes, for a total of ap proximately 40 minutes, it was noted that Employee #1 was experiencing symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, including blurred vision, discharge, dry heaves, d rowsiness, staggering, and slurred speech. Employees were using a direct reading carbon monoxide meter and observed carbon monoxide levels of 200 to 500 ppm. Th e meter had been placed on a work surface during the repair operations and its s ound and light alarms were not noticed. The alarm was also below ambient sound l evels and the meter was not capable of determining 8-hour exposures. Employees h
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 45 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 518
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 0560
- 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.