"doctors discovered the aluminium had solidified inside his chest."

 

After 9 years and over 700+ incidents posted sadly nothing surprises us in terms of injuries and fatalities. We have posted so many unusual incidents that it is hard to pick one or two out above them all. No doubt this incident will be remembered for the injury and that the worker survived. Which we are ecstatic about. Here is the story;

Miracles don’t happen every day. But one did this past week in our own (name of province), when a worker miraculously survived being splashed across the chest with molten aluminium at a temperature of no less than 660 degrees Celsius.

The accident took place on 9 January 2021, at a die casting factory the city of (name removed) in Asia.. There, worker, (name removed), was carrying out his daily duties as normal when the blast of molten aluminium struck without warning.

(The injured worker) was rushed to hospital where doctors discovered the aluminium had solidified inside his chest.

Under any other circumstances, such an incident would have without doubt been fatal. Yet, something was smiling down on (injured worker) that fateful day.

After surgery, dozens of aluminum pieces of varying sizes had been one by one taken out of his heart, reported (news media) earlier today.

Some of the solid globules had come to within just one millimetre of (injured worker’s) heart. Amazingly, the vital organ suffered no serious damage.

Surveillance camera footage of the accident taking place, which can be seen via (link omitted) may be distressing to some viewers.

(Injured worker) can be seen being splashed with what appears at first sight to be a steam-like substance. All the while, a coworker who was facing away from the blast of aluminium, looks on as if mystified by why (injured worker) is desperately removing the many layers of winter clothing on his upper body.

That (injured worker) was able to do so and was not immediately knocked to the floor by the blast to face imminent death is nothing short of a miracle.

Aluminium Under High Pressure

The manufacturing process that is aluminium die casting produces accurately defined, smooth and textured metal parts, with end uses in a variety of sectors, including aerospace, automotive and commercial transportation. To achieve such precision parts, the molten aluminium is forced into the mold under high pressure.

The as-yet unexplained release of the aluminum under high pressure was the cause of last week’s near-fatal accident. (Injured worker’s) condition in hospital remains stable.

Accidents involving molten aluminium are thankfully relatively rare. That said, just last month, in (city, state omitted) USA, at least one person was taken to hospital after a molten aluminium explosion at the (company name omitted) facility in (town name omitted), reported (news media name omitted) at the time. (This incident the author is mentions was posted previously on the APSB here).

We are glad that the worker was not killed and was able to be taken to a nearby hospital quickly. Without that we shutter to think what could have occurred.

Ok, let’s discuss this incident. It should go without stating, that we do not place blame on this injured worker. Initially, we are leaning toward “being in the wrong place and the wrong time”. Regardless, we have heard of incidents where workers had been injected by accident with fluids in our industry. We have heard rumors that a worker(s) was injected with molten metal. But, until this incident we had not confirmed such an an injury. We did post an incident in the past where a molten metal explosion occurred and metal was propelled under a visor.  The nearby worker inhaled the molten metal. We will let you re-read that previous sentence. Yes, a worker inhaled molten metal. The story came out after a number of years the injured worker was able to be operated on and the solidified metal was able to be removed. We have heard of numerous incidents from seasoned workers who were employed in our industry back in the 1950’s-1960’s of similar incidents.

How can the reader take this unusual incident and make their plant safer? Fair question. Next question: “Do you have molten metal under high pressure?” If the answer is yes, then you are obligated to print this post out and investigate in your workplace. Please note some simple of simplest solutions are the most effective. Do not look for a complex engineering solution when a simple solution may be as effective. Just a thought.

Please comment.