Pardon Your ComDust

By -

By Rich Christianson at woodworkingnetwork.com


Pardon Your ComDust

An OSHA-mandated combustible dust standard in likely a year or two away, but that doesn’t mean the federal safety agency isn’t already applying increased pressure on manufacturers to clean up their plants.

As I witnessed firsthand yesterday at OSHA’s third in a series of Combustible Dust Stakeholder Meetings (read report), OSHA is intent on making a ComDust standard real. It’s a rule-making process that might not be happening if not for the Feb. 7, 2008 fatal explosion of Imperial Sugar’s plant in Port Wentworth, GA, that killed 14 and injured dozens of other workers. But happening it is.

Ever since the Imperial Sugar tragedy, Congress has taken enhanced interest in safeguarding workers from ComDust hazards and OSHA inspectors have paid greater attention to dust accumulations in the workplace. The most recent example is OSHA’s announcement that it was fining H&H Woodworking of Yonkers, NY, $130,800 for “severe” and “willful” safety violations. OSHA’s investigation of H&H Woodworking was prompted by the report of an employee who lost part of his hand operating a radial arm saw. The inspectors not only determined that the company failed to provide the required saw guards but that it was deficient in many others areas of safety, including combustible dust prevention.

Last week, we reported on a suspected combustible dust explosion at Wood-Mode Inc. of Kreamer, PA. Fortunately no one was hurt when a 75-foot silo, containing dust burned as fuel, exploded.

Combustible dust was also suspected as a factor in the fatal explosion of the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia last month. In addition, OSHA has cited ComDust violations at Formosa Plastic, Timber-Tech, Geneva Wood Fuels and Birdsong Corp., among others, this year.

Considering the vast number of dust-generating operations that exist in this country, the number of recorded ComDust incidents is small. But be that as it may, make no mistake that ComDust is fully focused on OSHA’s radar screen and a federal rule that will mandate engineering controls, training and records-keeping, is coming down the pike.

As I have said on more than one occasion in my Wood & Wood Products’ editorials over the years, keeping your plant as clean of dust as possible is not only helpful to the well-being and morale of your workers, but to the quality of your products and the image of your company.

No matter how big or small your operation might be, this issue is too real to be ignored.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fire Triangle, Fire Tetrahedron and Dust Explosion Pentagon

By -
Image
Fire Triangle From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search The fire triangle. The fire triangle or combustion triangle is a simple model for understanding the ingredients necessary for most fires . [1] It has been replaced in the fire fighting and protection industry partially by the fire tetrahedron (see below). The triangle illustrates a fire requires three elements: heat , fuel , and an oxidizing agent (usually oxygen ). The fire is prevented or extinguished by removing any one of them. A fire naturally occurs when the elements are combined in the right mixture. Without sufficient heat , a fire cannot begin, and it cannot continue. Heat can be removed by the application of a substance which reduces the amount of heat available to the fire reaction. This is often water, which requires heat for phase change from water to steam. Introducing sufficient quantities and types of powder or gas in the flame reduces the amount of heat available for t...
Read more

Are Spices Flammable?

By -
Image
Is Cinnamon Flammable? - Science - ChefSteps Made from the dried bark of Cinnamomum verum , a tree indigenous to Sri Lanka, cinnamon's exotic perfume and subtle flavor come from its two major components: cinnamaldehyde and eugenol. These two chemicals are volatile, meaning they readily vaporize at temperatures comfortable to humans, which is in fact why cinnamon is so fragrant. But those same vapors are also highly combustible (indeed, combustion only happens in the presence of vapors), making cinnamon a highly flammable material under the right conditions. Now a cloud of cinnamon dust isn’t the kind of thing most people would consider dangerous, but add enough heat and you’ll quickly have an expanding ball of fire known as a dust explosion. For dealing with this situation, we can only recommend a good pair of running shoes. In fact, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issues warnings about cinnamon explosions in food manufacturing plants....
Read more

Functional Safety Audit vs. Functional Safety Assessment

By -
From Chemical Processing Don’t Confuse a Functional Safety Audit with a Functional Safety Assessment Understand the critical differences between the two essential evaluations By John Walkington, ABB Safety Lead Competency Centre Apr 19, 2017 Many people working in safety instrumented system (SIS) project development, execution, operation and maintenance treat a functional safety audit (FS Audit) and a functional safety assessment (FSA) as one and the same. So, based on this assumption, they simply ensure that such an activity is undertaken and perhaps signify the need to perform this evaluation at some point when it appears as a milestone on the project schedule. Moreover, often they call upon someone working on the project, who may or may not have had some previous experience in quality auditing, to deliver this audit/assessment. However, this is not a reasonable approach because the concepts for the audit and assessment markedly differ. An FS Audit provides...
Read more