OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #954628
PHOSGENE,ASPHYXIATED,VENTILATION,HYDROGEN CHLORIDE,METHYLENE CHLORIDE,WORK RULES,INHALATION,TOXIC FUMES,OVEREXPOSURE,RESPIRATOR
Event description
Employee dies when overcome by solvent vapors
Investigation abstract
Between 4:00 and 5:35 p.m. on May 5, 1989, Employee #1 was using a wire brush to strip away paint from metal registers in a large vat containing a stripping sol ution. He was working alone in a room that was approximately 34 ft long by 14 1/ 2 ft wide by 8 ft high with no forced ventilation. The stripping solution was GB 150 (trade name) and contained about 80 percent methylene chloride, which is kno wn to break down and emit phosgene and hydrogen chloride. Employee #1 was not we aring respiratory protection. He was overcome by solvent vapors resulting in acu te toxicity and cardiac dysrhythmia from halogenated hydrocarbons in the solvent . He died.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 21 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 658
- Human factor
- 19
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 1730
- 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.