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 #976878

AIR PRESSURE,HEAD,WORK RULES,MILLING MACHINE,HIGH PRESSURE,VALVE,STRUCK BY,CONCUSSION,FLYING OBJECT,BRAIN

Event
AIR PRESSURE,HEAD,WORK RULES,MILLING MACHINE,HIGH PRESSURE,VALVE,STRUCK BY,CONCUSSION,FLYING OBJECT,BRAIN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
976878
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee killed when struck by valve assembly

Investigation abstract

At approximately 10:30 a.m. on November 17, 1988, Employee #1 was removing the v alve assembly to replace the grating on the back of a Paul O. Abbe, Inc., ball m ill, serial #101129234, on the drum. Employee #1 had already removed all four ho ld-down bolts when the air pressure that had not been drained blew the valve ass embly out of the hole, striking Employee #1 in the back of the head. Suffering a concussion and massive brain damage, Employee #1 most likely died instantly. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 48 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    2
    Occupation code
    756
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    5
    Hazardous substance
    8420
    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.