OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14194849
W R GRACE INC
COLUMBIA, MD—
Event description
EMPLOYEE BURNED BY SPRAYING CHEMICAL WHEN OPENING REACTOR
Investigation abstract
On May 31, 1985, Employee #1 was opening a pressurized reactor after cleaning. A fter checking the reactor's temperature and pressure gauge, the employee decided to remove the lip braces on reactor to complete cleaning process. While removin g the brace screws, sodium hydroxide solution sprayed out of the opening created between the base of the reactor and the lid. The spraying solution struck the e mployee on the upper abdomen and the lower right forearm, resulting in chemical burns to those areas of the body.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 4
- Part of body
- 1
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 224
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Hazardous substance
- 2260
- 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.