---

BY MARA REVKIN

In print | Published March 22, 2007

Following the release of additional documents from the Medical Examiner’s office and Swarthmore police, more details surrounding the death of Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Paul Rodgers have surfaced. According to the police report, the medical examiner determined the cause of death to be asphyxia due to acute nitrogen inhalation.

According to Director of Human Resources Melanie Young, Rodgers was working on a training program the night of his death. “He created training programs for any part of the staff that had to handle hazardous materials or who had to deal with hazardous conditions,” Young said, although she could not specify the department for which Rodgers was developing his latest program. In the past, Rodgers had created programs “for Environmental Services employees who handle cleaning chemicals and Facilities workers who may find themselves in dangerous situations,” Young said.

“The Medical Examiner’s report confirmed what we suspected,” Young said. “[The cause of death] was an accidental exposure to nitrogen. We don’t know how it happened, but we know it wasn’t due to any equipment malfunction and that the building is safe.”

According to the police report, Swarthmore Borough police officer Ann M. Bardo responded to a call from Karen Rodgers, Paul Rodgers’ wife, after 10 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 19. Karen reported that her husband had not returned home from work that evening. Bardo promptly conveyed the message to college Public Safety and was told that a campus-wide search was underway to locate Rodgers’ car, which could not be found in its usual location outside his office in Ben West.

At approximately 10:20 p.m., Public Safety notified the police department that Rodgers’ car had been located in the parking lot adjacent to the water tower. Public Safety officer Dominick Martino, who identified the vehicle, subsequently searched the Science Center. Fifteen minutes later, Martino entered Science Center storage room L59 where he discovered Rodgers “lying face down on the floor halfway inside a cardboard box,” according to the police report. Martino noted tubes leading into the box, one of which was actively emitting nitrogen gas and another that was attached to an air quality control meter. According to the report, after unsuccessfully attempting to wake Rodgers, Martino “cut the top of the box away and checked for a pulse with negative results.”

Fire Company personnel were summoned to the scene, where they placed a meter in L59 “to determine nitrogen levels and cleared it as safe for further processing,” the report stated. Medics pronounced Rodgers dead at the scene, estimating his time of death as approximately eight hours earlier that day.

According to the police report, an examination of the room itself yielded a “confined space mockup,” a sketch that corresponded to the cardboard box in which Rodgers’ body was found. Public Safety later reported that similar sketches depicting the design were found in Rodgers’ office.

Young confirmed that in addition to Fire Department and Borough Police personnel, an investigator from the Medical Examiner’s office was also called to the scene. According to Young, “this team cleared the scene on the night of the accident and declared that the building was safe.”

The college notified the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of Rodgers’ death in compliance with requirements that employees report work-related fatalities within eight hours of the occurrence. According to Young, “OSHA arrived the next business day following Paul’s death and spent a few days collecting the information they needed for their investigation, which is required by law anytime there is a death in the workplace.”

Director of the Philadelphia area OSHA office Al D’Imperio confirmed that the agency is indeed conducting an investigation, although due to its pending status he could not release any information on the report.

“The investigation is still open, so I can’t release anything from the report,” D’Imperio said, adding that OSHA is obligated to produce a written report within six months of each incident.

Director of Public Safety Owen Redgrave said that Rodgers’ death was, to his knowledge, the only occupational fatality that has been documented on Swarthmore’s campus. “Of course there have been staff and students who have passed away on campus, but none of those incidents were work-related as far as I know,” he said.

According to D’Imperio, OSHA has assigned a compliance officer as well as an industrial hygienist to examine the Science Center and is working closely with the Medical Examiner’s office to investigate the incident.

“They’re going to look at all the facts, take pictures, take airborne samplings, conduct interviews and gather any notes that might be relevant to the case,” D’Imperio said.

According to Young, Rodgers’ notes are among the only indications of his work on the safety program due to the fact that he worked alone on the project. “All we knew at the time was that [Rodgers] was working on a safety program. He didn’t share the details of his work with us, but he did leave notes,” Young said.

Young emphasized that OSHA is not actively investigating the circumstances of Rodgers’ death because there is no evidence indicating that the Science Center poses any threat to the safety of students or employees. “If OSHA believed the Science Center presented any potential harm, they would certainly have already articulated their concerns and asked us to take immediate steps to eliminate any unnecessary risks. That has not happened in this case,” Young said.

Rodgers was exposed to a quantity of nitrogen that students never encounter in laboratories, and in a confined area of the Science Center to which students do not have access. According to Lori Sonntag, a laboratory instructor for the chemistry department, "We never use nitrogen in Chem 1 or Chem 10.

“We use nitrogen in only one of the Chem 22 organic labs to create a dry environment for a reaction.” When nitrogen is used in labs, “the entire reaction is performed in the fume hood, so all nitrogen leaving the reaction would be removed through the hood exhaust,” Sonntag said.

Melanie Young said that students should not be concerned about the safety of the building. “It’s very important that the campus community understands that the Science Center is safe.”

As the only occupational and environmental safety engineer employed by the college, Rodgers’ death creates a vacancy that Human Resources will eventually move to fill. Young said. “We aren’t looking at candidates yet, but we will post [the availability] shortly,” she said.

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »