Pacific Commodities Corporation: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Jun 8, 2020: Employee's thumb tip is amputated by plastic bottle trimmer

At 4:45 p.m. on June 8, 2020, an employee was working for a temporary staffing employment agency. She had been sent to a firm that made plastic jugs for liquids like dairy products and bleach. The jugs were made in a thermosetting plastic molding press or blow molder and carried by a conveyor belt into cutters, where impact trimmers knocked off excess plastic. The employee was on machine number 9, a Uniloy 5700 series blow molder with an impact trimmer section. She was a packer, putting finished bottles into plastic bags. Machine number 9's trimmers had been malfunctioning for two to three weeks, causing bottles to accumulate. Normally, a machine operator operated the blow molder. When the machine acted up, the operator stopped it and called maintenance. On the day of the incident, though, no machine operator was present. Instead, the employee was throwing improperly cut bottles into a tub to be processed and run through the blow molder again. A bottle got caught in the machine before it was cut. Stuck bottles had to be removed by hand, through an interlock door at the front of the machine. When the cutter interlock door was lifted, the conveyor stopped, but the trimmer blades did not. The employee reached into the machine, but this time, she reached in from the side, through the unguarded opening where the bottles entered. Her right thumb got caught in an impact trimmer, and the tip was amputated. She was seen at an occupational clinic and told to go to an emergency room. She took herself to the hospital. She was hospitalized. She had been told not to put her hands in the machine, but it was normal for her to do so. The manufacturing firm and the staffing agency were in the same building. The agency claimed that it provided maintenance for the machinery and on occasion provided temporary workers for production. The employee worked for the agency, but her supervisor was employed by the manufacturer. Both firms had employees whose job title was operator or packer.