Inspection Detail

Inspection: 309910222 - International Juice Concentrates Inc

Inspection Information - Office: Long Beach District Office

Investigation Summary

At approximately 10:00 a.m. on July 8, 2008, Employee #1 was working at a cold storage facility that specialized in fruit juice concentrates. The company is also involved in fish processing, packaging and freezing. Employee #1 was hired the day before to help in moving the boxes of fish from the packaging line to pallets. On that particular day, the employer had hired too many temporary workers and some of them were sent out to do other tasks. Employee #1 was one such employee and after working two hours in the fish line, Employee #1 was reassigned to help in the maintenance department. The company's refrigeration system could not keep up with the automatic defrosting of ice causing it to accumulate on the evaporators over time, making their refrigeration system very inefficient. To resolve this, the employer resorted to having its employees manually "chip" the ice by providing them with hammers. On Employee #1's second day of work, he continued chipping ice off the same evaporator. Employee #1 was working on the top part of a ladder that was propped against the evaporator. Employee #1 had chipped a big portion of ice and as it fell, it hit and punctured an anhydrous ammonia line. Ammonia vapor was released and caused severe chemical burn to Employee #1's eyes, face, neck, hand and lungs. With his eyes closed, Employee #1 managed to climb down the ladder, crawl over several 55-gallon drums of concentrated juice to exit the freezer room. Once outside of the freezer, other employees secured a water hose and doused him with water. Employee #1 was then taken to a local hospital where he stayed for seven days for burn treatment.

Keywords: EYE, LUNG, AMMONIA, CHEMICAL BURN, NECK, FACE, HAND, CHEMICAL