Burn and Electrocution Injuries at Work in Pennsylvania

Electrical injury is not a surface injury

Current travels through the body and damages what it passes through: muscle, nerve and sometimes cardiac tissue. The entry and exit wounds can look modest while the internal damage is severe.

Delayed effects are common and are frequently missed in the first records: cardiac arrhythmia, nerve pain and numbness, memory and concentration difficulty, mood change, and muscle breakdown that threatens the kidneys. Report every symptom, including the cognitive ones, because a record focused only on the burn will be used later to argue everything else is unrelated.

Burn severity and what follows

Deep partial and full thickness burns bring grafting, contracture, repeated reconstruction and a lifetime of scar management. Valuation that stops at the initial hospital stay misses most of the cost.

Disfigurement of the head, face or neck also carries a specific loss award in Pennsylvania, separate from wage loss, and it is payable whether or not you returned to work.

Who else may be responsible

• A utility, on line clearance, insulation or failure to de-energise when notified.
• An equipment manufacturer, on guarding, insulation, arc flash protection or warnings.
• A contractor or another trade who energised a circuit, failed to lock out, or mislabelled a panel.
• A site owner or general contractor who controlled the work and the permit system.

Lockout and tagout failures are the recurring theme. The paperwork, or its absence, is usually decisive and it is retained by somebody other than you.

Preserve the scene and the equipment

Photograph the panel, the tool, the labelling, the PPE issued and the permit paperwork. Ask for the lockout records, the arc flash study if one exists, and any incident investigation. These are internal documents that become much harder to obtain once positions harden.