Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1482111.015 - 151 Foods Llc

Inspection Information - Office: Marlton Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. on July 3, 2020, an employee was working at a commercial bakery. He had been hired on and had completed new worker orientation on July 1, 2020. The facility had seven oven lines. The workers wore hairnets and cloth smocks, provided by the company, over street clothes. The employee was working on oven line number 7, the "Wawa line", in the production/baking department. He loaded dough onto a conveyor belt and unloaded boards from the conveyor. The conveyor belt fed product into an oven that operated at temperatures ranging from 288 degrees C (550 degrees F) to 302 degrees Celsius (575 degrees F). On July 3, the oven was operating at 288 degrees C (550 degrees F). The National Weather Center recorded the high temperature for the day at 2:27 p.m. The highest relative humidity reading was 79 percent, at 11:00 a.m. The line operator noticed the employee walking back and forth from the oven line to the bathroom, acting erratically, and sweating. The line operator sent the employee for an additional break to cool off and hydrate. When the employee returned, he was still behaving erratically, disoriented, and sweating profusely. The line operator notified someone in management, who enlisted the help of the manager of line oven 7 to find and assist the employee. The employee had left the building through a breakroom. The two supervisors found the employee passed out in the parking lot. He was wearing two cloth smocks. The supervisors began removing his clothing to cool him down and called for emergency medical services immediately. The employee was non-responsive when EMTs or paramedics arrived. His temperature was 40.6 degrees C (105 degrees F). He was taken to the Emergency Department at Cooper Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He had died due to heat-related illness. The medical examiner confirmed that it was a heat-related death. There was no training for the heat. Out of COVID concerns, the fans had been removed from the floor that day.

Keywords: Clothing, Emergency Response, Food Preparation, Food processing, Heat, Heat Exhaustion, Heat Stroke, Heat-related illness , Loss of consciousness, Oven, Protective Clothing, Training, Unresponsive