The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has once again called on the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) to enact standards that would reduce the risk of plant, refinery, and pipeline explosions from combustible dust.
“Combustible dust-fueled fires and explosions continue to injure and claim the lives of workers across a broad spectrum of industries, including food processing, oil production, fuel storage, waste treatment, and pulp and paper manufacturing,” the CSB stated in a fact sheet published in April.
Plant Explosions Can be Triggered by As Little as 1/32 of an Inch of Accumulated Dust
The Board – which is tasked with determining the root cause of major chemical disasters and explosion – is urging OSHA to develop a standard similar to the National Fire Protection Agency’s (NFPA) voluntary standard, which states that as little as 1/32 of an inch of accumulated dust can trigger an explosion.
The NFPA’s voluntary combustible dust standard recommends that companies:
- control fugitive dust emissions;
- design facilities to prevent dust from migrating and accumulating; and
- perform rigorous housekeeping to remove any accumulating dust.
While OSHA Fails to Act, Combustible Dust Explosions Continue to Kill & Injure Workers
The CSB first called on OSHA to enact a combustible dust standard in 2006, after a study found 281 dust-related plant explosions and incidents had killed 119 workers and injured 718 between 1980 and 2005.
Since 2006, the CSB has investigated an additional 5 dust-related incidents that involved 27 deaths and 61 injuries.
OSHA actually did propose a combustible dust standard in 2008, after an explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery outside of Savannah, Georgia, killed 14 workers and injured dozens of others, some of whom sustained serious and disfiguring burns.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration abandoned efforts to enact a combustible dust standard last year, purportedly due to a lack of resources and other priorities.
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CSB investigators determined that the disaster was “entirely preventable” and had been ignited by massive amounts of combustible dust that had accumulated throughout the plant.
“If the dust was not allowed to build up, this terrible accident would not have happened and we would not have had the terrible injuries that we saw,” CSB Chairman John Bresland said at the time.
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