OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #825570
D.L.D. ASSOCIATES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
JESSUP, MD·
Event description
Employee suffers asphyxia when overcome by vapors in tank
Investigation abstract
At approximately 5:45 p.m. on May 7, 1988, Employee #1 went inside a 6,500 gallo he went to the top of the tank to check on Employee #1, who he found lying at th e bottom of the tank car. The standby went to get help. Company personnel entere d the tank and pulled Employee #1 out. Emergency help arrived and Employee #1 wa s taken to a hospital, where he was treated for asphyxiation and chemical burns to his back and then released. Employee #1 was not wearing either a safety harne ss and gear or a respirator. In addition, he did not test the tank's atmosphere for oxygen deficiency before he entered and was not in immediate and constant co mmunication with the standby man. n tank car to clean it. He was using a scraper to remove stuck on, paint-like re sidue from the sides of the tank. Employee #1 left the tank car to retrieve a cl eaning solvent called Presolve 1900 that would speed up this time-consuming proc ess. He went back down into the tank car and began swishing the solvent on the s ides of the tank. A few minutes later, Employee #1 was overcome by solvent vapor s and passed out. The standby man was washing the tank's exterior. It took him 5 to 7 minutes to wash one side of the tank car, during which time he had no comm unication with Employee #1. After he had finished washing one side of the tank,
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 448
- Human factor
- 19
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 1730
- 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.