The global marine cargo handling community is saddened today, upon understanding that a twenty year old longshore worker was suffocated aboard a coal-carrying vessel at the port of Oxelösund, Sweden last Friday night. He succumbed to the effects of that incident the next day (yesterday), while in hospital.

Local news accounts (see media links below) provide information that would have us understand that the worker was seeking access to the vessel’s cargo hold, but in doing so found a below-deck passageway that had accumulated an oxygen-deficient atmosphere and was overcome by it.

This is the latest in a long series of similar accidents, wherein longshore workers and mariners have died owing to oxygen deficient atmospheres and the failure of supervision to adequately ensure that spaces within which workers may enter are free from atmospheric hazards or, in the alternative, are blocked off and posted. Coming in the wake of relatively recent IMO requirements which mandate the availability and use of atmospheric testing instruments aboard internationally trading vessels, these accidents punctuate the need for more circumspect compliance and more stringent control.

Oxelösund is an important port in Southeastern Sweden, known for its sizable bulk cargo trade. Indeed, imported coal and coal products arrive at Oxelösund in large quantities, accommodating the need of local, high quality Swedish Steel mills.

Harbor activities there are undertaken by Oxelosunds Hamn: http://www.oxhamn.se/en/, a full service, operating port authority.

Expressions of sadness are memorialized at the organization’s Facebook page: