UPDATE: Reports of worker fatalities during manual tank gauging and sampling in the oil and gas extraction industry
By Bradley King, PhD, MPH, CIH; Eric Esswein, MSPH, CIH; Kyla Retzer, MPH; John Snawder, PhD, DABT; Sophia Ridl, BS; Michael Breitenstein, BS; Marissa Alexander-Scott, DVM, MS, MPH; Ryan Hill, MPH.
On May 19th, 2014, NIOSH posted a Science blog titled “Reports of Worker Fatalities during Flowback Operations.” This blog post provided information that NIOSH received from several sources indicating that acute exposures to hydrocarbon gas and vapors likely played a role in the deaths of at least four workers in the oil and gas extraction industry. The four workers were employed in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana. Specific activities the workers had in common at the time of death included manual tank gauging of production tanks or transferring production fluids at the well site.