6 Workers Dead after Exposure to Manure Pit at Dairy

Safety at Work

Keenesburg, CO (WorkersCompensation.com) – Six workers are dead after being exposed to deadly gas from a manure pit at a dairy, officials said.

The six workers included a 50-year-old father and two sons, Weld County Chief Deputy Coroner Jolene Weiner said. All of the six were Hispanic males and had worked repairing machinery in and around dairies near Keenesburg, Colo.

Rescuers were called to Prospect Valley Dairy located about 45 miles northeast of Denver. Officials said the crews entered a confined space at the dairy and recovered the bodies.

According to Denver’s ABC affiliate, one of the workers at the dairy, a contractor, was working on an underground manure pit and accidentally released hydrogen sulfide into the confined space. Hydrogen sulfide is a gas formed when manure decomposes. According to OSHA, “Hydrogen sulfide gas causes a wide range of health effects. Workers are primarily exposed to hydrogen sulfide by breathing it. The effects depend on how much hydrogen sulfide you breathe and for how long. Exposure to very high concentrations can quickly lead to death.”

Workers around the contractor attempted to rescue him, despite a supervisor warning them against it. Five other workers entered the manure pit, and all five also met the same fate, news reports indicate.

OSHA health hazards indicated that higher concentrations of the gas can cause a quick death. At 500 to 700 parts per million in the atmosphere, victims would begin staggering and collapse within five minutes and suffer serious damage to the eyes in 30 minutes. Exposure at that concentration for between 30 to 60 minutes would cause death. 

But at 700 to 1,000 ppm, a victim would experience rapid unconsciousness and immediate collapse in under 120 seconds and death within minutes. At concentrations of between 1,000 and 2,000 ppm, death would be “nearly instant,” OSHA said.

OSHA said it is currently investigating the incident.

Weld County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Melissa Chesmore said the incident appeared to be a mistake.

“We didn’t find anything criminal in nature,” she said. “It looks like an accident.”

The victims were identified as Alejandro Espinoza Cruz, of Nunn, 50, who perished with his 17-year-old son Oscar Espinoza Leos, and his 29-year-old son, Carlos Espinoza Prado. The father and his sons were related by marriage to one of the other victims, Jorge Sanchez Pena, 36, of Greeley, officials said. The remaining two victims were identified as Ricardo Gomez Galvan, 40, and Noe Montanez Casanas, 32, both of Keenesburg.

“They were extremely hardworking and humble,” Tomi Rodriguez, an outreach worker for Project Protect Food System Workers, told media outlets. “They were a very united family.”

It is a more common incident than one would expect. Earlier this year, two men died from exposure to a manure pit - a New York dairy farmer tried to retrieve a tool from a manure tanker and collapsed. When his co-worker tried to rescue him, he also collapsed. Both men died as a result. In 2021, three Ohio brothers died in a manure pit, and in 2007, methane leaking from a manure pit pipe in Virginia killed four family members and one worker at a dairy.

In addition to being one of the most dangerous industries to work in, working at dairy farms is among the most dangerous jobs within that sector, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In a study done in 2015, researchers found that immigrant labor used at dairy farms felt, farmers needed to address environmental hazards and equipment issues quicker in order to avoid putting animals and humans at risk.

“There was a shared belief among participants that dairy management tended to prioritize cow health and safety over that of workers,” the study found.

In a study by the National Institute for Food and Agriculture in 2022, researchers found that between Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2019, more than 60,000 people were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal, agricultural-related injuries. Of those injured, more than a third were youths.

“This study revealed the true magnitude of the agricultural-related injury problem,” he said. “We were slightly surprised at the sheer number of farm-related injuries and concerned by the high number of youths who were injured.”

Prior to that, information in 2019 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the agricultural sector was the most dangerous in America with 573 fatalities, or 23.1 deaths per every 100,000 workers. More recently, according to the National Agriculture Safety Database, about 60 to 70 per 100,000 farmers are killed annually as of 2023, and nonfatal injuries occur to about a third of the farming population, with about 3 percent of those accidents resulting in a permanent disability.

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