As
a fledgling editor at Products Finishing, my first major assignment was to cover
the tragedy at Bastian Plating Company in Auburn, IN. Hydrogen cyanide killed
five men at the company on June 28, 1988. Four of the men were declared dead on
the scene, and a fifth man died two days later in an area hospital. Several emergency
workers were also injured.
The company was converting
a cyanide zinc plating solution to a non-cyanide zinc solution. The tank had been
pumped out and cleaned with high-pressure water spray. Jeffrey Link entered the
tank that morning to chemically clean out the rest of the tank. He meant to add
sodium hypochlorite to destroy the cyanide, however, he added hydrochloric acid.
This formed hydrogen cyanide gas. Mr. Link was overcome by the fumes, as were
the other workers who tried to rescue him. Apparently the chemicals were stored
in blue and black containers to differentiate them, but the colors were not always
distinguishable.
Once again there has been
an accident involving plating chemicals. At Hohman Plating in Dayton, OH, a recently
employed, yet thoroughly trained, worker apparently mixed hydrochloric acid with
a nickel stripper. No one died from the accident in October of 2001; however,
19 workers were sent to an area hospital, and the initial worker who concocted
the mixture was in the hospital for approximately a week.
I spoke with an employee
of Hohman, who told me that Hohman was not fined by OSHA because the worker had
been properly trained, all containers were properly labeled, everything was as
it should have been. So what happened? Even the worker cannot explain his actions,
although he will not return to work.
What is the moral of the
story? You can never have enough training? I think it is more that you can never
be careful enough around chemicals; no matter how familiar you become with them.
No matter how often you use them, mix them, handle them, you must always respect
them, because one wrong mixture, one slight miscalculation could be harmful or
even fatal. This includes working with them around the tanks as well. I have seen
the body of a man who fell into an acid cleaning tank because he thought he could
simply walk across some boards lying over the tank. I know he wishes he had taken
the time to walk around the line.
