The case studies will help students recognize situations with workplace hazards, and reinforce thinking about prevention.

For each case study have the students answer these questions:

1. What is the hazard?
2. How could the person have prevented the accident?

Case Study One

Stephanie is 16-years old and works in the kitchen of a nursing home. To clean cooking pans, she soaks them in a powerful cleaning solution. She uses kitchen gloves to protect her hands and arms.

One day, as Stephanie was lifting three large pans out of the cleaning solution at once, the pans slipped out of her hands and back into the solution, which splashed all over the side of her face and into her left eye. She was blind in one eye for two weeks. Stephanie was lucky...she got her eyesight back.

Suggested Response

1. Cleaning solution was hazardous - corrosive
   Unsafe work activities: Lifting three pans at once; not wearing eye protection
2. Prevention:

Case Study Two

Hi, I'm Spencer. This is what happened to me at work. I work part-time for a friend of my father's. He runs a woodworking business and sometimes I help him out. One day I was applying some gasoline to clean wood cupboards. I was working alone because my dad's friend was really busy and I had done this job hundreds of times before. I guess I was rushing and I spilled some of the gasoline on my clothes. Oh well - my mom would wash them. It was getting dark, so I turned on a propane lantern beside me, and then it happened. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, everything seemed to catch fire at once. I don't remember much else. They tell me that I wasn't found for 2 hours. Rehab has been hard and I know the scars are not going to go away, but I guess I am lucky to be alive.

Suggested Response

1. Gasoline is hazardous - flammable
   Ignition source was close to flammable products.
   The worker was working alone with hazardous products.
2. Prevention: