Oxygen Consumption by Quaternary Organic Clay in Tsurumi District, near Yokohama City

At Tsurumi, the earthworks' death in caisson (No. F-9 in Fig. 1) of foundation works occured in March, 1954, The writers studied this accident from the standpoint of geoche mical aspects of the Quaternary inflammable natural gas deposits. On the basis of the following data and Table 1, the writers concluded that the cause of the asphyxiating death was oxygen consumption of the air by younger organic clay near that caisson. Oxygen consumption of clay was determined, and the following data were obtained. Contact time of O2 and clay sample Consumed oxygen 25 minutes 0.47cc/5g of sample 24 hours 1.19 _??_ 44 hours 1.58 _??_ 95 hours 2.38 _??_