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 #971374

FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CAUGHT BETWEEN,BALER,PALLET,WRIST

Event
FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CAUGHT BETWEEN,BALER,PALLET,WRIST
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
971374
Report ID
854910

Event description

Employee fractures wrist when caught by bale

Investigation abstract

At 7:30 a.m. on August 10, 1989, Employee #1, who had been working for one month he employee had to move very fast to get in the position in which the accident o ccurred. as a stock boy, was in the rear of a store emptying the cardboard box baler. Wh en the baler is activated, two wire chains are attached to the bottom front of a bale and then run up its back. The chain rise causes the bale to rotate up and out onto a pallet positioned in front of the baler. At the time of the accident, a bale coming out onto the pallet began to sway. When the employee tried to sto p it from rocking, he jammed his arm between the bale and a pallet of food. This caused his wrist to be bent backward, fracturing it. The compactor has safety d oors with interlocks and the ON button must be held down during the operation. T

Victim

  1. #1 Non-hospitalized injury Age 32 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    24
    Event type
    1
    Source
    27
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    1
    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.