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 #884379

CHEST,PORTABLE POWER TOOL,LUNG,NAIL,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,PUNCTURE

Event
CHEST,PORTABLE POWER TOOL,LUNG,NAIL,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,PUNCTURE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
884379
Report ID
953210

Event description

Employee's chest punctured by nail from nail gun

Investigation abstract

At approximately 7:15 a.m. on July 13, 1989, Employee #1 was doing finish nailin g on plywood side panels on a one-story building. He was using a pneumatic nail gun working from an 8 foot stepladder. Employee #1 laid the nail gun down on the painter's platform on the ladder and began to descend to get more nails. The na il gun fell from the platform. Employee #1 attempted to catch the nail gun, caug ht the trigger handle, and accidentally depressed the trigger. The head of the n ail gun hit Employee #1 in the upper left portion of his chest and discharged a 3 inch nail into his chest. Employee #1 sustained a puncture wound to his chest and the upper edge of his left lung.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 17 M

    Nature of injury
    18
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    1
    Source
    21
    Occupation code
    569
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    2
    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.