BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | Published October 11, 2007

A recently released Occupational Safety and Health Administration report concerning the investigation into college employee Paul Rodgers’s death in the Science Center last January due to asphyxiation from acute nitrogen inhalation has concluded that there is no evidence of occupational hazards at the college. Though Swarthmore was ultimately determined to be a secure workplace, the college was cited and fined $2,925 for not alerting an OSHA area office of the accident within 8 hours of its occurrence, according to Associate Vice President of Facilities and Services Stu Hain.

The law is that you must call in … to notify OSHA of a fatality on the job, Hain said. It’s a federal rule. According to Hain, the college did not inform OSHA of the accident until the next day.

My suspicion for [OSHA necessitating this early notification is] they want to be sure that they can get to the scene of the accident so they can see what happened … before anything is disturbed, Hain said. We closed the doors and changed the locks. Except for the EMTs, nobody from the college touched the scene that Friday night. But because nobody called in the prescribed time, we violated the rule and that’s why we were fined.

Though workplace conditions were found to be acceptable, there was a precaution measure in the form of revised procedures for handling nitrogen in the Chemistry department, in addition to their regular provision of safety training in such procedures.

The chemistry department has done safety training with the students and faculty as to handling liquid nitrogen and nitrogen in general, Hain said. They were reviewing how to handle liquid nitrogen and revisited the procedures and wrote some new ones for the handling as a result of the accident.

Another issue is safety upon entering a confined space. According to the OSHA Web site, confined spaces are spaces that are considered confined’ because their configuration[s] hinder the activities of employees who must enter, work in, and exit them. Rodgers’ body was found in a Science Center storage room.

Paul Rodgers was working on how to teach people … how to enter a confined space, Hain said. The training would say [that] you wouldn’t go in the confined space without someone else outside. We can’t tell if [Rodgers] did that or not.

Once an employer has a death, OSHA comes in to see if there are good conditions, to see if the employer is running a good work place, Associate Vice President of Human Resources Melanie Young said. There were … no findings … that there was anything wrong on campus. It was really just a tragic accident.

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