OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #878298
FRACTURE,AMPUTATED,BELT,AIR CONDITIONER,FINGER,GUARD,MECHANIC
Event description
EMPLOYEE INJURED WHEN FINGERS CAUGHT BETWEEN BELT'S PULLEYS
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and coworker, service mechanics, were assigned to do a complete main tated that the guard was supposed to be removed when loading on the belts. The i nspector believes that employee errors caused the accident to occur. tenance check of the air-handling units at Langston Hughes Elementary School. Tw o units were completed. As they started the third the coworker did some initial tests by turning the unit off, then on, then off again. Employee #1 was supposed to test the tension of the belts, which were behind a full guard. Employee #1 m isjudged the fact that the belts had stopped moving which they had not. When he reached around the guard to test the tension the belts, he caught his finger pul ling them into the pinch point amputating the top joint of his little finger. Hi s other three fingers were severely cut and one was fractured. Other mechanics s
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 43 M
- Nature of injury
- 1
- Part of body
- 10
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 26
- Occupation code
- 534
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 1
- 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.