The Dangers of Industrial Mixers

On January 4, a 57-year-old worker at Gowan Milling in Yuma, Arizona, was cleaning the inside of an industrial chemical mixer when the machine was accidentally activated. A coworker who had entered the mixer to assist with cleaning managed to escape, but the original worker became trapped inside.

Although the power was shut off immediately, rescue operations took five hours and required a hazmat team due to chemical exposure. The 57-year-old was hospitalized with broken ribs, a broken leg and arm, and extensive injuries throughout his body. He died on January 10, six days after the incident.

The details of what happened at Gowan Milling are still emerging, but the broader reality is already clear: industrial mixers are among the most powerful—and most dangerous—machines in modern workplaces. When something goes wrong, there’s no margin for error.

Understanding the Risk: What Makes Industrial Mixers So Dangerous?

Industrial mixers are indispensable in many workplaces. They can be found in manufacturing plants, chemical production facilities, energy operations, pharmaceutical labs, and food processing centers across the country. They blend raw materials, stabilize chemical reactions, ensure product consistency, and enable the large-scale production that modern economies depend on. But the same characteristics that make these machines invaluable also make them hazardous.

Industrial mixers rely on immense mechanical force: high torque, rotating blades, powerful motors, and enclosed vessels designed to withstand pressure and friction. Many operate continuously or handle materials that are corrosive, abrasive, or extremely dense. Once engaged, their internal components do not distinguish between the things that are supposed to be there and items—or people—that may fall in.

Unlike smaller commercial mixers, industrial units often involve confined spaces, elevated platforms, and large access openings for cleaning and maintenance. Workers are required to enter these spaces regularly. A single miscommunication, a bypassed safety protocol, or a failure to fully shut down a system can turn a routine task into a life-threatening emergency.

Common Types of Industrial Mixers

Understanding how industrial mixers work helps explain why they pose such serious risks, and why the margin for error is so slim.

Low-Shear Mixers

Low-shear mixers are designed to gently blend materials without damaging delicate components. They're often used for liquids, emulsions, or materials that require minimal agitation. Think: large tanks filled with slowly rotating impellers. These machines can look deceptively safe because of their measured pace, but "low-shear" does not mean low-risk.

These mixers frequently involve large tanks, long rotating shafts, and wide impellers. Workers may be required to access the top of the unit for monitoring or cleaning, which leads to serious fall hazards. The rotating components may move slowly, but they carry enough torque to trap clothing, pull workers off balance, or cause crush injuries if limbs become caught. If guarding is inadequate or procedures are ignored, even slow-moving components can cause irreversible harm.

High-Shear Mixers

High-shear mixers operate at extremely high speeds to break down particles, emulsify liquids, or achieve uniform consistency. They're common in chemical manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food production, and anywhere precision blending at the molecular level is required.

These machines are particularly dangerous because of their rotational speed. Entanglement can occur almost instantly. The forces involved can cause devastating trauma, from deep lacerations to degloving injuries, amputations, and death. Once a worker is caught, escape is nearly impossible without immediate shutdown. Mere seconds can make the difference between survivable injuries and fatal ones.

High-Viscosity Mixers

High-viscosity mixers are built to handle thick, resistant materials, such as adhesives, sealants, pastes, and heavy slurries. They typically operate at slower speeds but with enormous torque; the kind of rotational force capable of moving materials that resist flow.

This combination creates crushing forces easily capable of breaking bones and tearing tissue. The risk is especially high during cleaning or inspection, when workers may be required to reach into or enter the mixing vessel to manually remove buildup or residue. If lockout/tagout procedures are not strictly followed, if someone assumes the machine is off when it's merely paused, or if a system restarts unexpectedly, the results can be catastrophic.

How Industrial Mixer Accidents Happen

Industrial mixer injuries are rarely random. They tend to follow predictable patterns tied to how these machines are used and maintained.

Common accident scenarios include:

• Being caught in rotating blades or shafts
• Falling into open or inadequately guarded mixers
• Becoming entangled while attempting to clear material buildup

The resulting injuries, such as crushing trauma, amputations, severe lacerations, blunt-force damage, are often life-altering if not fatal.

Many of these incidents occur during cleaning, maintenance, or adjustments. These tasks are essential to daily operations but are often treated as secondary to production. Workers may be required to climb onto or into equipment, lean over open vessels, or manually intervene to ensure proper mixing. These are the moments when they are most vulnerable.

When machines are not fully shut down, when energy sources are not properly isolated, or when safety systems are bypassed to save time, the risk increases exponentially. What should be a carefully controlled task becomes a gamble with odds no worker should ever have to face.

Industrial Mixers & Workplace Injury Data

Machinery-related injuries remain a leading cause of serious workplace harm. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that contact with objects and equipment, including instances where workers are caught in or between moving parts, accounts for a considerable portion of fatal workplace accidents.

Thousands of workers suffer serious or fatal injuries each year from industrial equipment. In 2023 alone, contact incidents resulted in 779 fatal workplace injuries, according to the most recent data from the BLS. This amounts to nearly 15% of all fatal workplace injuries in 2023, a statistic that remains relatively consistent year after year.

While fatalities involving industrial mixers are less common than those involving vehicles or heavy construction equipment, the injuries they cause are often severe and irreversible. The enclosed nature of mixers, combined with their mechanical power, means that rescue is difficult—but survival almost always depends on immediate intervention.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has documented industrial mixer accidents where workers became caught in rotating mixer paddles, resulting in fatal injuries despite immediate rescue attempts. In recorded cases, workers trapped inside mixers have suffered extensive fractures, deep lacerations, internal organ damage, and massive blood loss. Workers can also experience crushing injuries from the force of rotating components, traumatic amputations when limbs become caught in machinery, and systemic injuries from prolonged entrapment.

Injury severity often depends on the type of mixer, the speed of rotation, and how quickly the machine can be shut down. Unfortunately, even when coworkers respond immediately to shut down equipment, the complexity of mixer mechanisms or the presence of harmful materials can delay rescue efforts, leading to severe injury or death.

Why These Events Are Not "Freak Accidents"

Companies often describe catastrophic machinery incidents as rare or unforeseeable, but investigations tell a different story.

Time and again, industrial mixer accidents reveal the same contributing factors:

• Inadequate guarding allows workers to access dangerous areas.
• Lockout/tagout procedures are incomplete, poorly enforced, or ignored altogether.
• Workers are required to enter mixers for cleaning or manual stirring without sufficient protections in place.
• Production pressures encourage shortcuts and discourage shutdowns.
• Worker training is inconsistent, outdated, or treated as a formality rather than a safeguard.

In some cases, post-accident investigations have found that known hazards were never fully addressed, even after prior incidents or near-misses. Similar patterns have emerged across different industries and facilities, proving that these tragedies are not isolated. They follow recognizable, preventable paths.

The question is not whether the risks of industrial mixers are known. They are. The question is whether employers treat them with the urgency they demand.

Employer Responsibility in High-Risk Mixing Operations

Industrial mixers are dangerous by nature. That does not mean worker injuries and deaths are inevitable.

Employers have a responsibility to identify hazards, enforce safety protocols, and design processes that protect workers from foreseeable risks. That includes proper machine guarding, strict lockout/tagout enforcement, comprehensive training, and procedures that eliminate the need for workers to enter hazardous spaces whenever possible.

Workers should never be placed in a position where doing their job requires gambling with their life. Safety systems are not optional add-ons or administrative burdens. They are fundamental obligations.

When companies fail to meet those obligations, the consequences are measured not only in statistical data, but in real injuries, real deaths, and real families permanently altered by loss. The worker who died after being injured cleaning the industrial chemical mixer at Gowan Milling in Arizona left behind a wife and two children. Families like his are forced to deal with one of the most tragic experiences anyone can endure. Families like this deserve answers, and they deserve justice.

Powerful Equipment Requires Absolute Accountability

The incident at Gowan Milling is under investigation by the Yuma County Sheriff's Office and the Industrial Commission of Arizona, a process that could take months, but the fundamental lesson doesn't require an investigation to understand.

Industrial mixers are essential to modern industry, but they demand uncompromising attention to safety, oversight, and accountability. These machines do exactly what they are designed to do; it is the responsibility of employers and manufacturers to ensure that machinery design, maintenance procedures, and jobsite protections function together to keep workers safe.

At Arnold & Itkin, we investigate serious industrial accidents to uncover what went wrong and why. We stand with injured workers and families who deserve answers and accountability after tragedies that never should have happened.

Because the equipment workers use to make a living should never be what costs them their life.