"His cause of death was blunt force injuries to the chest..."

There are more incidents that occur in our industry then are posted on the Aluminium Plant Safety Blog. Why? For several reasons such as; foreign language, not in the news media, not in the government safety enforcement news releases, etc.. There are incidents such as the following post that our industry is made aware of but no one knows anything about. These are the incidents that simply scare our industry. Why?  Well because most of our plants have similar equipment and similar hazards. Our industry acknowledges that one incident can easily be reproduced in another plant. So when this incident occurred several contacts in the industry reached out to the APSB on if we had information about it. We did not. Local news media did not. Nor was there a press release by OSHA. All of which we found perplexing because this incident involved a fatality in at an aluminium extrusion plant. What shocked our industry was simply the lack of knowledge other than a life was lost. The goal for every manager in our industry should be to ensure that their workers leave their workplace in the same health as they arrive. We use this simple analogy. Assume you have an automobile. If you heard that a road was covered with ice and that a car slid of that road. Would you drive down that road or find an alternate way? We hope that you would chose an alternate way? Why? Because you were provided information of a hazard that you were previously unaware of. Here is the story.

An aluminium extrusion plant in the United States was fined €23,000 in citations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) following an incident in late 2014 which a maintenance worker died. OSHA announced the citations late last week.

The worker died, following what the aluminium extrusion plant manager called “an unfortunate and tragic event.” A field agent with the local County Medical Examiner’s Office, confirmed to hat official records of the incident described the worker’s death as an accident. “His cause of death was blunt force injuries to the chest in combination with traumatic asphyxia.”

A government document stated “Worker performing maintenance fatally crushed between saw motor machine and air duct.”  The aluminium extrusion plants latest OSHA citations, which also don’t mention this worker’s death, list four serious violations:

The employer had not conducted periodic inspection of the energy control procedures for equipment including, but not limited to, the 9-inch press line;

Affected employees had not been instructed in the purpose and use of the energy control procedures including, but not limited to, the 9-inch press line.

In late 2014, at the 9-inch press line, when employees completed repair of a lower puller pulley shaft and were testing the repair, the proper sequence of actions was not followed, including removal of employees from hazardous areas during the testing and the de-energization and re-application of energy control measures before continuing maintenance activities;

In late 2014, at the hot saw for the 9-inch press line, employees lifting aluminum so that it could be picked up by a high puller were exposed to moving machinery.

OSHA spokesperson said in an e-mail that “OSHA cites the hazard and not the accident. Therefore, we don’t mention the names of employees (the deceased) on any citations.”

In 2013, it was reported by (news organization) that OSHA had cited the aluminium extrusion company for 15 safety violations that totaled over €147,000 in penalties, including failure to protect workers from the inadvertent start-up of machinery during maintenance.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog offers our sincere condolences to the deceased worker’s family, friends, and coworkers. Even though over a year has passed since the incident. Time does not ease the pain that the worker’s family and friends are experiencing. Nor do the worker’s former coworkers forget the day that their colleague was killed.

The exact cause of the incident is not told in the news media article. But we can gather that in the past the lack of lockout tagout or safe isolation programs were not followed on certain occasions. In our experience the “Worker performing maintenance fatally crushed between saw motor machine and air duct.” has occurred before. It is unknown what the age of the equipment or if there were any safety mechanisms that could have prevented this. No matter the age of equipment, all equipment should be outfitted or modified (by the equipment manufacturer) for the latest in safety mechanisms.

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