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 #760496

KICK BACK,SPLINTER,ABDOMEN,IMPALED,EDGER

Event
KICK BACK,SPLINTER,ABDOMEN,IMPALED,EDGER
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
760496
Report ID
453710

Event description

Employee pierced by a wood splinter from a gang edger

Investigation abstract

At approximately 8:40 a.m. on January 15, 1988, Employee #1, of Smith's Sawmill, in Mt. Airy, NC, was struck in the abdomen by a piece of wood that had splinter ed off from lumber being run through a gang edger. This piece of wood apparently kicked back from inside the edger. The splintered wood entered Employee #1 in f ront of his abdomen just below the rib cage and exited out his back just to the right of his spine. Approximately 8 inches of the 2 inch by 2 inch by 2 foot lon g piece of wood protruded out his back. Employee #1 was taken to Northern Hospit al of Surry County and then transferred to Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. Em ergency surgery was required to remove the splinter.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 49 M

    Nature of injury
    18
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    1
    Source
    14
    Occupation code
    733
    Human factor
    9
    Environmental factor
    5
    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.