Today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast is a variation from our usual format, as it’s a crossover with Donovan Karki from the Dusty Jobs podcast.
Run by Imperial Systems, Inc., Dusty Jobs covers educational resources for dust collection equipment. Episodes feature things like the history of Imperial Systems, campfire chats with experts and much more. They interviewed Dr. Chris Cloney about his background, the current status of combustible dust in the U.S. and how that relates to other regions of the world, and open challenges affecting combustible dust safety.
The Mission of Dust Safety Science Continues to Resonate
After sharing his background and the mission of Dust Safety Science with Dusty Jobs listeners, Dr. Cloney emphasized that the problems that drove him to create a combustible dust incident database are very much in evidence today. They include:
- Lack of information sharing among equipment suppliers and manufacturers, insurance companies, government inspectors, research institutions like the Chemical Safety Board and other stakeholders.
- Loss history that demonstrates lack of hazard awareness and insufficient knowledge and education to fight these hazards.
- No central platform for education and exchange of knowledge.
“We’ve now created all these platforms,” Dr. Cloney said. “One communication platform for awareness- that’s the podcast. One education platform- that’s the Dust Safety Academy. And finally, one connection platform- that’s Dust Safety Professionals.”
Donovan Karki agreed that some people might not even know that they are in a situation where they need protection. Others know that they need it but aren’t sure how to get it or even what it looks like. Information sharing clearly needs to continue on a global scale.
The Four Pillars Revisited
Dr. Cloney revisited the four pillars: awareness, knowledge, connection and change.
“You’ve got to be aware of the hazard. You’ve got to know what it is, so it’s not downplayed. You need to know who you can go to solve your problem at the end of the day. You need the tools to be able to elicit change, whether that’s cultural change, change about money spent in your organization, or change in government organizations and their interpretation or approaches- they all play a critical role in the mission to make facilities safer.”
Donovan pointed out that from his perspective, every year things seem to improve in this regard. There is more education, there are more resources and there is more knowledge on what helps industry and individuals stay safer.
Reviewing Recent Gains in Combustible Dust Safety
Dr. Cloney agreed and pointed out that the most recent renaissance in combustible dust occurred in 2006, when the Chemical Safety Board released its big report. It looked at three incidents that occurred in 2003: West Pharmaceuticals, Hayes-Lemmerz and CTA Acoustics. They were all major multi-fatality incidents. A year after that report was released, OSHA came up with their National Emphasis Program for Combustible Dust.
More recently, a large explosion in the Port of Aqaba in Jordan caused regulatory bodies to audit all of their silos in that country and try to come up with a grain handling standard. The same thing happened in Zimbabwe that same year. In February of this year, there was a potato starch explosion in Singapore. By March, they had inspected 500 companies for combustible dust hazards and by May, they came up with SS 667:2020 – Code of Practice for Handling, Storage and Processing of Combustible Dust.
“Every country and every industry is going through these waves at different times,” Dr. Cloney said. “The big challenge at the end of the day is that we tend to rewrite the whole thing from scratch every time, not realizing that this stuff was created before. So instead of translating knowledge, we’re writing something new.”
Donovan agreed.
“There’s so much much information out there that we can share now. With the internet and all the different resources we have, we can take that information that we have already figured out in some situations and transfer it into other ones. We don’t want a tragedy to happen and cause people to go look for an answer. We’re trying to help provide the answers before that happens so that we can avoid more tragedies in the future.”
Dr. Cloney emphasized that it’s critical to avoid the troughs that lead to inaction.
“We know that we go through peaks and valleys. There are a couple of ways we can solve that. One is to work collaboratively with other industries in other countries so that the whole global community doesn’t go through a trough at the same time. When Singapore’s creating new standards like they are this year, then maybe we should be listening and working with them here in North America or in Canada or in Argentina or wherever. Allowing that global communication to happen from one group to another eliminates or smooths out all these peaks and valleys everyone’s going through.”
Conclusion
At the end of the episode, Dr. Cloney stressed the importance of sending the right message at the right time using the right language.
There were two lumber mill explosions in British Columbia in 2012: after the first one, the consensus was “This never usually happens.” Then it was discounted. When the second one occurred, it influenced WorkSafeBC to take a strong proactive approach to combustible dust.
“The feeling of susceptibility needs to stay high,” Dr. Cloney said. “Nobody who was in a dust explosion went to work that day thinking, “Hey, this is the day” or they just wouldn’t have gone. Nobody thinks that this stuff is going to happen, or they don’t have the awareness, the knowledge, the connection or the ability to make a change at their facility.”
It’s a reality that needs to change before things can truly improve.
If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode.
Resources mentioned
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Companies
Imperial Systems, Inc.
Organizations
Chemical Safety Board
WorkSafeBC
Podcasts
Dusty Jobs
Previous Episodes
DSS013: Lessons Learned from the Port Aqaba Grain Silo Explosion with Ali Alnajdawi
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