DSS090: Review of 2020 Dust Safety Week by Canadian Biomass & Canadian Forest Industries

Today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science Podcast is a dedicated overview of the recent 2020 Dust Safety Week. This is an annual event hosted by Canadian Biomass and Canadian Forest Industries to highlight dust safety best practices, technical information, and solutions for industries handling combustible dust, particularly in the wood and wood processing sectors.

Dust Safety Week is an online event. This year, it ran from June 22-26. Every day, new articles, webinars, and technical materials are made available. Not only is it an excellent educational resource, but it is collaborative in scope, with equipment operators and manufacturers, safety and industry consultants and associations, and technical experts all sharing materials and expertise. The result is a better understanding of best practices for combustible dust safety.

In this episode, we talk about:

Lessons learned from the 2012 BC sawmill explosions
Recent loss history in wood and wood product industries
The current status of risk and hazard assessment in recent research
Technical aspects of dust hazard analysis
Best practices for preventing dust explosions and fires

Lessons Learned From the 2012 BC Sawmill Explosions

Dust Safety Week was kicked off by an article entitled Lightning doesn’t have to strike. Written by David Murray, Corporate Safety HR and Environment Manager for Gorman Group, and co-chairperson of the Manufacturing Advisory Group (MAG) in British Columbia, it talks about David’s experience in the industry during two large sawmill explosions in 2012.

The first explosion occurred at Babine Forest Products on January 20, 2012. Months later, on April 23rd, there was a second fatal sawmill explosion in BC, which hinted that there might be a systematic challenge in the province’s sawmills. As he reviews the steps taken to improve combustible dust safety in these facilities, David highlights some key areas:

More investigation into lower-severity dust fires, explosions, and close calls. What caused these near misses and how could they be avoided in the future?
Seven-figure investments in engineering and dust extraction, explosion control, and warning devices.
Worker training, including supervisor, safety specialist, and regulatory agents.
Audits and risk assessments and hazard analysis.
The building of trust and accountability between industry employers and employees, regulators, safety associations, unions, and stakeholders, along with a shared commitment to creating a world-class combustible dust risk mitigation standard.

Recent Loss History in Wood and Wood Product Industries

Dust Safety Science submitted an article entitled Wood and Wood Products Loss History from the 2019 Combustible Dust Incident Report. In addition to reviewing the loss history covered in our report, it reviewed incidents from the wood and wood products industries, which accounted for 26% of incidents reported in 2019 but 34% of the injuries and 37% of the fatalities.

Several North American incidents resulted in injuries:

A contract worker was injured from a flash fire while working on ducting at an oriented strand board plant.
Contractors were welding a hopper containing sawdust, which caused an explosion. A firefighter was hospitalized for heat-related issues during the response.
After an explosion at a particleboard plant, four employees were hospitalized for smoke inhalation.
Fires were reported in a dust collector at a woodworking shop, wood pellet plant, and a sawmill. These incidents resulted in injuries to four employees and one firefighter.

Internationally, tragic disasters in woodworking industries included fatal dust explosions in Belgium and Spain and a fatal fire at a plywood factory in Myanmar.

The Current Status of Risk and Hazard Assessment in Recent Research

A WorkSafeBC article entitled The Risk Assessment, The First Step to Controlling Combustible Dust Hazards covered important points about finding the right risk assessment professionals, followed by a list of what to analyze during the assessment. One sentence in particular emphasized the importance of reviewing and revising your risk assessment findings:

“A risk assessment report does not need to be fancy. It just needs to outline the basic hazards and levels that these risks pose to workers. You will use it as a basis for your company’s annual safety plan to help you set priorities and goals for minimizing risk while using available resources as efficiently as possible.”

In other words, the risk assessment is just the starting point. It’s not the end point. The end point is integrating everything into an annual safety plan.

This point is emphasized even further in an article by Jeramy Slaunwhite of REMBE, Inc. The article is entitled The Who, What, When, and Why of Dust Hazard Analysis. He reviews more of the technical aspects of DHAs and provides a detailed checklist for reviewing the dusts present, potential ignition sources, deflagration or explosion risks, control methods, and more.

Towards the end of the article, Jeramy mentions that the job doesn’t end after the DHA document is prepared.The DHA team must then use the identified recommendations to prepare or prioritize an action item list with specific tasks, assigned parties, target timeframes, and required resources.

Technical Aspects of Dust Hazard Analysis

With respect to the technical aspects of dust hazard analysis, there was a free webinar given by Francis Petit of VETS Group on Demystifying the Dust Hazard Analysis. This one-hour presentation covered points like the following:

The background of DHAs
The role of an authority having jurisdiction
The qualifications of hazard analysis providers

Best Practices For Preventing Dust Explosions and Fires

Fahimeh Yazdan wrote an article entitled Best Practices for Managing Wood Fiber Storage and Combustible Dust, which is the result of a collaborative effort by the Wood Pellet Association of Canada‘s Safety Committee, the BC Forest Safety Council, the Manufacturing Advisory Group, and WorkSafeBC.

These organizations established a working group to lead the process on developing best practices for combustible dust management in wood fiber storage. The outcome was a risk mitigation document and gap analysis tool that facility owners and managers can use to figure out where the gaps might be in their current systems.

There were also a couple of articles on safety equipment in general:

What to Look for When Selecting Dust Control Equipment by Mike Lewis of BossTek which talks about their mist-based dust suppression equipment for finer particles.
Equipment Spotlight: Dust Collection and Suppression Equipment in 2020, which covered a variety of providers, including Airmax, which is the western Canadian distributor for SonicAire fans, REMBE’s TARGO-VENT, the IEP SmartDS-Dynamic Explosion Detection System, CV Technology’s suppression equipment, and more.

Conclusion

Dust Safety Week was an educational and enlightening collaboration between multiple groups and experts. It embodies the cooperative spirit that David Murray referred to in his article about the 2012 BC sawmill explosions. We need this collaborative approach between industry leaders, safety associations, unions, and regulators in order to get things done.

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.