Page 23 - Occupational Health & Safety, May 2018

COMBUSTIBLE DUST
Think You Don’t Have Combustible Dust in Your Facility? Think Again!
The bottom line is this: if your facility contains dust, you should have it tested for combustibility.
BY STEPHEN WATKINS
“Combustible dust isn’t a concern in our industry.”
“Our facility has never had a combustible dust problem.” H“We have dust, but the particles are too big to be combustible.”
ave you heard (or thought) any of these a dangerous level and that the company hadn’t even things? We hear them all of the time from performed a hazard analysis to ensure that their new- people in many industries as reasons they ly-installed dust collection system would work.4
don’t need to worry about combustible dust Food manufacturing
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hazards. But ideas like these are exactly the reason combustible dust incidents continue to happen. The false belief that hazards don’t exist prevents compa- nies from taking steps to mitigate them. The unfortu- nate result is explosions like the 2008 incident at the Imperial Sugar factory1 that claimed 14 lives, injured 38 people, and led to OSHA fines of nearly $9 million.
The Imperial Sugar explosion brought combus- tible dust into the spotlight . . . at least for the sugar industry. But the fact is that if you work in any sort of manufacturing or industrial processing facility, you likely have combustible dust in your facility. And where there’s dust, there’s risk.
Let’s take a closer look at these misconceptions.
‘Combustible Dust Isn’t a
Concern in Our Industry.’
This is almost certainly untrue. While the “usual suspects”—e.g., grain milling, sawmilling, sugar—get most of the attention, combustible dust and the haz- ards associated with it exist in almost every industry.2
Here are some examples of combustible dust hazards in industries you might think are immune to the problem.
3D printing
Most materials used in 3D printing are combus- tible, and the printing process itself generates very fine dust particles. In some cases, these particles can be very reactive and burn very fast. In 2013, combustible metal powders including titanium and aluminum al- loys led to an explosion at 3D printing company Pow- derpart, causing third-degree burns on an employee. Powderpart was fined $64,400.3
Ink manufacturing
During the ink manufacturing process, fine par- ticulate solids are mixed with liquid oils. These sol- ids can be highly combustible. In 2012, seven work- ers were injured at U.S. Ink when powder containing Gilsonite (a hydrocarbon) and carbon black that had accumulated in ductwork above a tank ignited. In its investigation, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board found that the dust had taken only one day to accumulate to
It’s not just sugar. Nearly every ingredient used in making food can potentially become combustible. That includes starches, milk powders, and powdered forms of everything from beet root to tomatoes.5 Re- cent high-profile incidents include a 2014 grain dust explosion at a Nestle Purina PetCare processing fa- cility6 and a dust explosion in a malfunctioning hop- per at food texturizer and stabilizer manufacturer T.I.C. Gums.7
Power generation
Even the power generation industry has seen its share of serious combustible dust incidents. The most well-known is the 1999 explosion at Ford’s River Rouge manufacturing plant, which killed six workers and injured 36. Michigan OSHA concluded the com- pany’s housekeeping procedures were insufficient to control the accumulation of coal dust, which is what led to the explosion.8
With the rise of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the oil and gas industry also faces a combustible dust threat—from the plastic composites used to manufac- ture fracking balls.9
These are just some examples of industries with combustible dust risks. They can also be found in aerospace, automotive manufacturing, metal recy- cling, and more. The bottom line: If your facility con- tains dust, you should have it tested for combustibility.
‘Our Facility Has Never Had a
Combustible Dust Problem.’
This idea is understandably pervasive—it’s easy to grow complacent when you’ve never had a problem. However, it’s an idea that can get you into trouble in more ways than one.
First, although some companies are repeat offend- ers when it to comes combustible dust incidents,10 the vast majority of these explosions take place in facilities that have never had a problem before.
In fact, if you have combustible dust, the longer you go without an incident, the worse the problem is likely to be. This is because dust accumulates over time, and this accumulation is what puts your facility at risk.