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After a cloud of toxic gas escaped from a factory, a worker who came in contact with the gas died, reports say. The worker, Paul Doyley, from Immingham, near London, was fatally injured when titanium tetrachloride fumes escaped from the Cristal Global site earlier this year. Although he received treatment for chemical burns and inhalation of toxic fumes in a specialist burns unit at Pinderfields General Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Doyley, who was 48 and had been with the…

Steven Lewenden, 34, was feeding paper into a machine when he was pulled in and trapped on a reeling drum. Eventually freed from the equipment by paramedics and taken to hospital, damage to Lewenden’s arm was so severe that doctors had to amputate his limb at the elbow. The accident happened at the closure-threatened International Paper mill in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. The firm and the Health and Safety Executive have launched inquiries into Tuesday’s accident, and company spokesman reportedly said that…

According to published reports, the United Steelworkers Union of British Columbia has filed suit against forest company Weyerhaeuser, charging the company was criminally negligent in a tragic 2004 accident in which a sawmill worker died doing a job that management knew was unsafe. The worker, Lyle Hewer, 55, died on Nov. 17, 2004, when he entered the bottom of a hopper — called a hog — filled with wood debris. The debris came loose and buried him alive. Less than…

An Oregon accident left an employee dead and the company for which he worked searching for answers and a way to prevent future accidents. Two employees for an unnamed Oregon company were excavating a buried irrigation pipeline for an agricultural operation. One employee was operating a backhoe to unearth concrete vaults in a trench 35 feet long, 14 feet wide, and 14 feet deep. The second employee entered the trench to remove soil remaining around the pipeline and vault. While…

An employee in the Midwest had just filled a bulk storage silo with cattle feed and was repositioning the metal overhead delivery boom to its storage position on the truck when the boom contacted an overhead 7,200-volt power line. The driver, who operated the boom from controls mounted on the truck, suffered severe electrical shock. Electric current traveled through the vehicle to the driver’s hand, finally exiting through the driver’s feet. The driver reported his hand becoming ‘locked’ to the…