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 #970798

BURN,WORK RULES,SLIP,MOLTEN METAL,TANK,UNGUARDED,LEG

Event
BURN,WORK RULES,SLIP,MOLTEN METAL,TANK,UNGUARDED,LEG
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
970798
Report ID
854910

Event description

Employee burns leg after slipping into molten zinc

Investigation abstract

At approximately 1:00 a.m. on January 26, 1989, Employee #1 pulled a roll of wir e fencing in front of a galvanizer and stepped on the galvanizer apron. He was r ethreading the fencing following cleanup operations when his foot slipped into a n approximately 16 ft by 10 in. opening, allowing the front of his left leg to c ontact the molten zinc. He was working alone, but was seen running to the large basin in the change room to cool the burn. Employee #1 was hospitalized for two weeks and as of this inspection was still under a doctor's care.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 20 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    18
    Event type
    4
    Source
    23
    Occupation code
    723
    Human factor
    10
    Environmental factor
    11
    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.