OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #964577
MAINTENANCE,ROTATING PARTS,PAPER SHREDDER,WORK RULES,LOCKOUT,CLOGGED,BALER,FALL
Event description
Employee killed in fall into paper shredder
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was operating a Bloapco shredder-baler (Serial No. 78666) in the bal the shredder and clearing the paper by hand or with hand tools. At the time of the accident, Employee #1 was standing on a 16-in. by 40.5-in. flat portion of m etal, trying to clear the conveyor while the shredder was running. He fell into the rotating cutter rollers and was shredded and killed. Employee #1, who had be en operating the shredder for approximately 1 year for the same employer, had be en told to shut it down before clearing the conveyor. He was last told this 4 mo nths ago, but coworkers said the practice continued despite the warnings. The ma nufacturer recommends that all power be locked out before maintenance or repair. Employee #1 had received only on-the-job training for the machine. e room as part of his normal duties. Waste paper in wire bins would be dumped in to a feed chute where it was carried by a double conveyor to the top of the shre dder, 13.31 ft above the floor. Once shredded, the paper would accumulate in a b in where, at a predetermined point, a compactor would bundle the material into b ales. The double conveyor that was used to transport the paper to the top of the shredder was a modified piece of equipment that had been changed, in part, by t he employer. Under this setup, the conveyor became clogged with paper on a regul ar basis. Employee #1 would clear the jam by climbing the conveyor to the top of
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 37 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 26
- Occupation code
- 769
- Human factor
- 13
- Environmental factor
- 2
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.