Zach Panther hadn’t yet figured out his future: whether to pursue college, or find a job in a nearby city. To put away some money, his mother encouraged him to work at a hog farm outside his hometown, St. Edward, Neb.
Pulling early morning shifts, the 17-year-old helped with maintenance at Beaver Valley Pork, one of the nearly 100 farms owned by Pillen Family Farms, the largest pork producer in the state. The company was founded in 1993 by Jim Pillen, now the governor of Nebraska.
On April 1, 2024, just six weeks into the job, Zach used spray foam to seal up cracks in a barn, then did inventory in a maintenance room. When he didn’t show up for lunch, his supervisor went looking for him — and found him collapsed on the floor.
None of the dozen or so other employees witnessed his death, according to a report by the Boone County Sheriff’s Office, and there was no evidence of foul play. Monthslong inquiries by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency, and the county coroner’s office did not determine how Zach died.
Those investigations, however, were hampered by limited information sharing by the agencies, missteps and missed opportunities, The New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press found.
The sheriff, his deputies and a state trooper examined the room where Zach had died, but looked at little else on the property. The farm, which would raise concerns about a potential air quality issue, blocked OSHA from conducting timely tests. An agency medical officer suspected that Zach had died from an immune response to a chemical in a spray foam, and recommended a test, but the lab contracted by the coroner’s office accidentally destroyed the only suitable blood sample.
“The type of investigation that really should have been done wasn’t done,” said Dr. Erin Linde, the forensic pathologist who conducted Zach’s autopsy.
Not all deaths can be explained, medical examiners caution. But Zach’s mother, Justy Riggs-Panther, could not understand how officials were unable to provide a cause for the sudden death of a teenager at an industrial-scale farm. This fall, she requested a tissue sample from her son’s autopsy for independent testing, but the county attorney refused to release it.
“My son is dead,” Ms. Riggs-Panther said in an interview. “There ought to be answers.”
Zach’s death shook St. Edward, a rural community with a population of 720. And the mystery about how it happened has stirred questions, concerns and rumors. “There’s no explanation, no rhyme or reason,” said Renata Ketelsen, whose daughter was a classmate of Zach’s. “Just this healthy young man is gone.”
In many workplace deaths, OSHA is charged with identifying safety violations and preventing future harm. Several former agency officials from other states who reviewed the Omaha office’s report criticized its work in the case as not thorough, and said that the office should have cited the farm for failing to protect employees from hazardous chemicals.
OSHA concluded that there had been no workplace violations at the farm. Courtney Parella, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Labor, defended the investigation in a statement, saying it was thorough and “supported by multiple consultations with medical experts.”
While teenage workers die in agricultural settings more often than in other workplaces, OSHA has far less latitude to inspect or cite farms for safety violations. The farm lobby has won exemptions to many OSHA regulations, allowing practices deemed punishable in other industries to persist on farms.
There should be steps, Ms. Riggs-Panther said, “to make sure that nothing else happens to anybody else.”
‘This is the family business’
Sarah Pillen, the governor’s daughter and co-chief executive of Pillen Family Farms, said the business had “fully cooperated” with the inquiries. In a written statement, she added, “While we share the frustration that some of the issues which led to his passing remain unanswered, we understand those investigations have been closed, and there have been no safety violations attributable to the workplace.”
Ms. Pillen informed OSHA of Zach’s death at 6:30 p.m. on the day he died. In the call log, an agency employee jotted down phrases like “had been foaming — insulation,” “head injury” and “poss. medical episode.”
The next day, OSHA sent Philip Pisasale, a veteran industrial hygienist, to inspect the farm. Thousands of pigs are kept in enclosed barns, and ventilation must be carefully monitored.
Farm personnel did not let him bring air-monitoring equipment — or even paper and a pen — into the facility, according to the agency’s report. The document does not say what Mr. Pisasale intended to measure, but some emissions from livestock manure at high concentrations can sicken or even kill people. Air monitoring could have indicated, or ruled out, poisoning from these emissions.
The next day, Mr. Pisasale interviewed farm employees, who told him about other areas where Zach had applied spray foam during his final hours.
When Mr. Pisasale returned to the farm on April 4, Ms. Pillen and Mark Fahleson, a lawyer, initially denied him entry, according to the OSHA report. They said that the agency was “fishing for violations” and that Mr. Pisasale could endanger the pigs by bringing in pathogens, the report added.
After some back and forth, he was allowed to walk through the farm without monitoring equipment.
“We simply requested that OSHA follow our established biosecurity protocols,” Ms. Pillen wrote in an email to The Times, noting that all outside materials required “disinfection and downtime” before entering farms. (She did not provide answers to a written list of other questions sent by The Times.)
Robert Triplett, a former assistant area director in OSHA’s Savannah office, said that he obtained court orders when faced with pushback from other workplaces. He was among a half-dozen former OSHA officials interviewed for this article who expressed surprise at the Omaha office’s acquiescence to the restrictions.
On April 5, Matthew Thurlby, the Omaha area director, emailed a colleague about the case: “It is important to note that Pillen Family Farms is affiliated with Governor Jim Pillen of Nebraska,” he wrote. “This is the family business.”
The governor maintains a stake in the company, which is among the top 15 pork producers in the nation. The governor’s daughter Sarah, along with one of his sons, Brock, oversees day-to-day operations.
OSHA did not respond to a query about why the director mentioned the governor. Douglas Parker, who led the agency until early 2025, said it was not unusual for OSHA officials to flag political sensitivities in cases likely to draw media attention.
A representative for the governor said neither Mr. Pillen nor anyone in his office had spoken to OSHA or local officials about the investigations.
Dr. Linde said she was puzzled by what she found during Zach’s autopsy, including congestion in multiple organs and an enlarged spleen.
One finding jumped out: Zach’s lungs weighed 4.5 pounds, almost twice as much as those of a healthy adult his size. She observed no indications of an asthma attack; Zach had asthma when he was younger, but had no problems in recent years.
Over the next few weeks, she spotted a mast cell in his lungs, then found many more — signs she would eventually attribute to an immune response to an allergen that had set off dangerous inflammation, she said in an interview.
Early on, Dr. Linde was informed by the sheriff that the teenager had used spray foam, but she was not aware that a chemical in the foam and other products was known to have caused severe illnesses and even deaths.
Toxicology tests found low levels of THC from cannabis use and therapeutic amounts of amphetamine consistent with Zach’s prescribed A.D.H.D. medication. The results also indicated exposure to hydrogen sulfide from manure gas, but not at high levels.
Mr. Pisasale would finally be able to test the air quality at the farm in August, finding low levels of gas emissions from manure. He noted in his report that the conditions were similar to the April day that Zach died, but Pillen employees and industrial hygienists disagreed, saying in interviews that the farm would have had better ventilation in summer.
There is no reliable test for measuring concentrations of spray foam chemicals in the air after application, as they dissipate quickly.
Making little progress in Zach’s case, Dr. Linde contacted OSHA in May. She spoke with Mr. Pisasale the next month, and was told that on the day he died, Zach had applied “small amounts of spray foam insulation,” according to the autopsy report. But Mr. Pisasale didn’t offer any information about Zach’s possible previous foam exposures.
“That’s a huge missing piece,” Dr. Linde said. She also had not seen OSHA’s photographs of the farm until recently; they showed more extensive foam application than she had expected.
Sticky Orange Foam
Zach was described by his family and friends as very smart, but not so motivated in school. “He had such a bright future,” said Anne Martinez, a teacher. He was thinking of studying computer science in college, said his brother, Riley Riggs.
In high school, Zach clashed with his mother over his marijuana use and was eventually sent to a rehabilitation program in Omaha, where he earned enough credits to graduate. After returning home, he was hired at Beaver Valley Pork as a part-time maintenance trainee in February 2024.
His job included sealing up cracks. One day, after picking up Zach after his shift, Ms. Riggs-Panther noticed her son picking off pieces of orange foam from his arms. That occurred on at least three different days, she said.
She recalled Zach joking that the farm was held together by duct tape and spray foam. Michael Blankenship, a friend of Zach’s, remembered him talking about monotonously filling gaps and adding that Zach had mentioned spraying foam at work a few days before he died.
Hog barns contract and expand with temperature changes, creating cracks that need to be sealed, often with polyurethane foam, so that airborne diseases cannot enter from outside.
The orange foam was from Great Stuff, manufactured by DuPont and sold at stores like Home Depot. It contains a hazardous chemical compound called isocyanate.
Many people have used the foam for home improvement projects with no ill effects. But after exposures to isocyanate via inhalation or skin contact, some people can become sensitized to it; in such cases, even tiny amounts can trigger severe asthma, skin burning or inflammation. The manufacturer’s safety sheet instructs users to handle the product only with sufficient ventilation or while wearing a respirator.
The day before Zach died, his brother recalled, he lifted 225 pounds at the high school gym. That night, while playing a video game, Mr. Blankenship said that Zach had a deep cough, which had begun a few days earlier.
During his final shift, Zach applied spray foam for one to two hours without a respirator, according to OSHA documents. The OSHA report said it was the second time Zach had used Great Stuff, which is at odds with Ms. Riggs-Panther’s recollections.
Dr. Dawn Cannon, an OSHA physician in Washington who consulted on the case, was familiar with isocyanates; she was the first to ask whether Zach’s death was linked to foam. Along with a retired OSHA medical expert, Dr. Cannon believed that it was “likely” that exposure to foam caused a reaction that led to Zach’s death, she told Dr. Linde in an email in September 2024.
Eight experts — toxicologists, pulmonologists and other specialists — who independently reviewed the OSHA and autopsy reports also said the most likely explanation for Zach’s death was a reaction to the foam.
Dr. Steven Pike, an occupational medicine physician and toxicologist in New Mexico, said he believed that Zach probably had become sensitized to the foam. He suggested that additional exposure set off “a runaway immune reaction” in the teen’s body, but cautioned that he could not be certain.
Seven additional experts raised other possibilities, including a cardiac cause, but most said they couldn’t reach a conclusion.
In September 2024, Dr. Cannon recommended a lung tissue test and a blood test that together could help determine if an immune response to the foam had led to Zach’s death. But as Dr. Linde’s lab prepared to ship the blood sample, a technician accidentally destroyed it.
It was the last suitable blood sample — and chance for the test — they had left.
Unanswered Questions, But a Case Closed
Kyle Litz, who oversaw Beaver Valley Pork, told Mr. Pisasale in an interview that members of the maintenance staff had also used Froth-Pak, an industrial-grade foam, about a month before Zach died. “We usually blitz that pretty good about once a year,” he said in the interview, a recording of which was obtained through a public records request.
Froth-Pak also contains isocyanate, and its manufacturer, DuPont, provided guidance in its safety training and manual: People applying the foam and anyone nearby must wear a respirator and protective clothing.
The OSHA report did not say whether Zach could have been exposed to Froth-Pak. Beaver Valley Pork did not make respirators mandatory while applying any spray foam, Mr. Litz told Mr. Pisasale. In interviews with The Times, a manager and a former employee at two nearby Pillen farms also said they didn’t use respirators when spraying foam.
“DuPont expects our publicly available safety guidance to be followed,” Dan Turner, a representative for DuPont, wrote in a statement. “Our products are routinely handled safely under these guidelines.”
OSHA closed the case in September, meeting an agency deadline. The agency’s report concluded that an allergic reaction to spray foam was “unlikely” to have caused Zach’s death, given his “limited” usage of the foam.
Because the cause of death was undetermined, OSHA considered the farm in compliance with agency rules, Mr. Thurlby, the Omaha office director, wrote to a supervisor. The farm was not required to change how it handles spray foams.
Few OSHA standards involving respiratory protections apply to agricultural businesses. Still, some former agency officials said that Beaver Valley Pork must follow a broad rule to keep workplaces “free from recognized hazards” that are likely to cause death or serious harm.
Keith Demerest, a former OSHA industrial hygienist in Ohio, said an employer could not ignore the manufacturer’s guidance on respirators unless they proved workers were not at risk.
Citations for such violations are rare. “Because of difficulty in obtaining samples that reflect working conditions, chemical exposures are very much under-enforced by OSHA,” said Mr. Parker, the former agency chief.
Ms. Riggs-Panther is haunted by what-ifs. What if her son had better respiratory protection? What if there had been a buddy system in place? What if there had been stricter rules that workplaces, regardless of whether a farm or factory floor, needed to follow?
“The idea that maybe it could have been preventable is really intolerable,” she said. “But how do you know what to do to keep it from happening again when you don’t know what happened in the first place?”
Julie Tate, Kirsten Noyes, Alain Delaquérière and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
The post The Mysterious Death of a Teen at a Hog Farm appeared first on New York Times.
