OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14560072
CHEMICAL FINISHING INC
SPRINGFIELD, MA—
Event description
Suicide by ingestion of sodium cyanide
Investigation abstract
An employee was doing normal tasks as laboratory supervisor. He was found face d cyanide antidote was administered. The antidote failed to work, and the supervis or died. He had been under psychiatric care and had access to sodium cyanide in the laboratory as part of his job. own in the president's office at 3:30 pm. A secretary and coworker administered cardio-pulmonary and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while an ambulance was on the way. The supervisor had a runny nose and oral discharge and was bright red in co lor. His breathing was weak, with evidence of edema. The supervisor was taken to a hospital. Afterwards, the coworker noticed a coffee cup with white crystals i n it on the supervisor's desk. There was also vomit on the desk. The president o f the company took a sample of the contents in the coffee cup, and the sample te sted positive for cyanide. This information was passed to the hospital, where a
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 17
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 9
- Source
- 34
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 7
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Hazardous substance
- 0790
- 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.