OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #967729
STA-TEK CORP.
ORANGE, CA·
Event description
Employee dies of asphyxia when nitrogen is fed to respirator
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 entered a bell jar to clean it wearing a Survivair Mark 2 airline re spirator. The employer had decided to stop using removable, cleanable bell jar l iners, and employees routinely wore supplied-air respirators when entering the b ell jars to clean them with solvents. Management had anticipated a need for nitr ogen gas in the airline piping and prepared a bypass to feed it in. Employee #1 was fed nitrogen gas through the completed bypass and died of asphyxia. No knowl edgeable supervisor was available on site, and coworkers at the scene had not be en trained in first aid or informed about the hazards of nitrogen gas. Key lock systems available at the bell jars were not used to bar entry.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 25 F
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 14
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 1900
- 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.