Industrial Fire Prevention

Report Finds 85 Fatalities in The Chemicals Industry Last Year Fri, 11/06/2015 - 3:38pm Andy Szal, Digital Reporter A British chemical engineering group said this week that serious accidents in the U.S. chemical and processing industries resulted in 85 fatalities and more than 600 serious injuries in 2014. The Institution of Chemical Engineers, a professional membership organization, surveyed media coverage of explosions, fires and other incidents in the U.S. last year. The analysis found 228 separate incidents in chemical manufacturing and a number of related industries, including mining, refining, food processing, biotechnology, wastewater treatment, and oil and gas exploration and production. "Many of these incidents commanded just a few column inches, but there are 75 reports that detail fatalities," said Andy Furlong, the group's policy director. "Each one is a grim human tragedy that could have been avoided, had the appropriate safety ...

National Fire Protection Association Blog NFPA 652 - new combustible dust standard Susan Bershad is a Senior Chemical Engineer in the Industrial and Chemical Engineering division at NFPA® and is also the staff liaison for the Combustible Dust project . Susan has been working diligently on NFPA 652 which has the following scope: “This standard shall provide the basic principles of and requirements for identifying and managing the fire and explosion hazards of combustible dusts and particulate solids.” I had a few minutes to talk to Susan about the challenges and importance of the document and about a training event she is hosting on December 3 about NFPA 652 . Q: What was your biggest technical challenge with updating the NFPA 652? A: The biggest challenge for the committee with NFPA 652 was identifying those requirements that are fundamental to all facilities and processes where combustible dust hazards are possible. Q: How is NFPA 652 different from NFPA 654 ...

The OSHA Defense Report OSHA Law Updates from the OSHA Practice Group at Conn Maciel Carey   Breaking News – OSHA Max Penalties Set to Nearly Double November 9, 2015 By Eric J. Conn , Chair of Conn Maciel Carey’s national OSHA Practice Group For as long as I have been practicing OSHA law (more than 15 years now), four things have remained constant: The maximum per violation penalty that OSHA has been permitted by the OSH Act to assign to Serious violations has been $7,000, and for Repeat or Willful violations it has remained $70,000; The Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA makes an annual pilgrimage to the Hill where he or she pounds on the table and demands that Congress enact OSHA reform legislation to increase the maximum penalties OSHA can assign (with common refrains like: “employers can be fined more for mistreating cattle on federal lands than for allowing an employee fatality!”); There has been one iteration or another of such reform ...

From Woodworking Network Was Extra Fine Wood Dust Factor in Mill Fires and Explosions? By Bill Esler October 10, 2015 | 8:17 pm EDT Aerial photograph of the east side of the Babine sawmill. The large yellow arrow indicates the easterly direction of the explosion’s  expansion from the point of origin. Source: WorkSafeBC incident  report, January 2012. BURNABY, BC - A trend to finer wood dust - resulting from dryer beetle killed wood and finer-kerf saw blades - may have contributed to a series of fires and plant explosions in British Columbia mills and wood products factories. A 2012 internal memo from WorkSafeBC, released through a Freedom of Information request, also predicted industry resistance to wood dust control rules  "if an enforcement strategy is pursued at this time." WorkSafeBC circulated an internal document stating the agency was concerned that an enforcement strategy to address wood dust in sawmill...

FromPowder/Bulk Solids Four Steps to Control Combustible Dust in Your Plant Hi-Vac manifold piping system to help clean up chips and cuttings from machine centers According to the Spring 2015 Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs report, combustible dust explosions have been an OSHA focus for years. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reported in late 2006 that 199 workers had died in 2005 alone as a result of combustible dust events. OSHA has increasingly focused on how to prevent explosions caused by combustible dust. Together with the U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA published a bulletin in November 2014 titled, “Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions.” According to the bulletin, there are three components of a dust explosion, and those are dust, an ignition source (usually heat), and oxygen in the air that helps the fire spread rapidly. Together with hazard assessment, OSHA suggests in the bul...

From Powder/Bulk Solids NFPA Introduces NFPA 652 Combustible Dust Standard July 27, 2015 Every year, destructive and deadly dust-related fires and explosions affect a wide range of industries around the world. In the United States alone, 50 combustible dust accidents occurred between 2008 and 2012. To manage the dust-related fire, flash fire, and explosion hazards in industries that use dust collection and handling equipment, or have processes that may generate combustible dust, the  National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) introduces the first-time NFPA 652: Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust. This important new Standard serves a wide variety of industries including chemical, wood  processing, metals, and agricultural. In addition to providing new general requirements for managing combustible dust fire and explosion hazards, NFPA 652 directs users to NFPA's appropriate industry- or commodity-specific standards, such as NFPA 61: Prevent...

From Powder/Bulk Solids ACC Publishes 2015 Guide to Chemical Industry The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has issued its 2015 edition of the Guide to the Business of Chemistry, a detailed economic profile of the chemistry industry and its contributions to the U.S. and world economies. American chemistry is the global leader in production, providing over fifteen percent of the world’s chemicals and representing 14 percent of all U.S. exports. It is also one of America’s largest manufacturing industries, an $801 billion enterprise providing 804,000 high-paying jobs. For every one chemistry industry job, 6.3 others are generated in other sectors of the economy, including construction, transportation, and agriculture, totaling nearly six million chemistry-dependent jobs. “The business of chemistry is the building block for everything around us,” said the publication’s lead author, ACC chief economist Kevin Swift. “Supporting nearly 25 percent of the U.S. GDP, the b...