OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #904698
BURN,EYE,HYDROFLUORIC ACID,WORK RULES,FALL,NITRIC ACID,LOST BALANCE,TANK,WATER
Event description
Employee sustains burns in fall into acid tank
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 climbed on a 40 in. guardrail and stepped 16 in. over to a steel pla tform between two pickling tanks to pull up a 5 ft by 11 ft 1 in. plastic bottom liner. The liner, which was weighted down for some reason, started floating to the top. Employee #1, who had a 8 ft steel hook, inserted it in the opening on t he end of the liner and attempted to pull the liner to the surface. The hook app arently slipped out of the opening, causing Employee #1 to lose his balance and fall backward into the other pickling tank, which contained 2 percent hydrofluor ic acid, 10 percent nitric acid, and 88 percent water. He was hospitalized with chemical burns to his eyes and body.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 57 M
- Nature of injury
- 4
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 796
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 9
- 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.