OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #867531
ASPHYXIATED,VENTILATION,CONFINED SPACE,VENTING,PURGING,ARGON
Event description
EMPLOYEE DIES IN CONFINED SPACE ENTRY
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a welding technician, descended a ladder into a cylindrical compone hift. Employee #1 had been informed of the above actions. The time lapse between replacement of the pads and entry of Employee #1 was three hours and twenty min utes. Entry had not been scheduled nor anticipated and the companies confined sp ace procedures were not in place. No tests had been conducted prior to entry. Th e employee died of asphyxia. nt which contained argon gas to check the quality of a pending welding operation near the top of the component. The component was approximately 7 ft diameter an d 16.5 ft in depth. This could have been done with a mirror without entering the tank. The bottom openings were covered with removable pads and the only opening was at the top. Employee #1 did not inform management of his intent to enter an d an unreported entry had also been made during the previous shift for the same purpose. An additional argon purge had been added during the previous shift and some of the bottom pads removed for ventilation and replaced at the end of the s
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 42 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 7
- 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.