In this episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, we’re talking about dust explosion loss history in the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom UK. Last week, we went over North American loss history from around 1900 to the present, and next week we plan to discuss loss history in Asia to provide a global perspective of combustible dust hazards.
There are a number of different resources that address loss history in Europe and the United Kingdom, three of which we cover in this episode. They are:
- ‘Dust Explosions in the Process Industries’ by Dr. Rolf Eckhoff. This volume includes a chart that covers the period from 1965 to 1980 in Germany.
- ‘Lessons Learned from Incidents. A Paradigm Shift Is Overdue’ by Dr. Sam Mannan and Simon P. Waldram. This was published in the Journal of Process Safety & Environmental Protection Volume 92, pages 760 to 765 in 2014. This covers the period from 1958 to 1988 in the UK.
- ‘Metal Dust in Sweden’ by Ken Nessvi and Lennart Evaldsson. This paper was published and presented at the 12th International Symposium on Hazards Prevention & Mitigation of Industrial Explosions in 2008.
Health and safety coverage and workplace accident reporting levels vary greatly across the different European countries. Some countries might tie their health care payments directly to incident reporting while others may have no incentive or even negative incentives for reporting workplace safety accidents and incidents. This results in vastly different reporting of combustible dust and other workplace safety issues.
Germany
The Beck data reported by Rolf Eckhoff covers a 16-year period, from 1965 to 1980. It reports an average of 22 explosions, 31 injuries, and six fatalities a year in Germany, which is similar to what was reported in the U.S. during the same time period.
United Kingdom
In ‘Lessons Learned From Incidents. A Paradigm Shift is Overdue,’ Sam Mannan and Simon P. Waldram reported that in a 30-year period from 1958 to 1988, there were over 984 incidents involving dust and powders reported to the UK Health and Safety Executive.
They mentioned that there were 1357 injuries and 39 fatalities and that 46% of the incidents involved dust explosions. While they don’t specify how many of the injuries and fatalities were due to explosions, we’re probably looking at a maximum of 15 explosions, 45 injuries, and 1.3 fatalities per year.
Sweden
Ken Nessvi and Lennart Evaldsson collected their information from the Swedish Work Environment Authority. Covering a five-year period from 2015 to 2017, they reported 237 incidents involving combustible dust, 18% of which involved metal dust. They also state that 27% of the metal dust incidents involved explosions and while most events resulted in extensive material damage, there were only a few cases of injuries to personnel.
Interpreting the data is difficult because they don’t give the percentage of incidents related to fires and explosions, but they do report an average of two and a half metal dust explosions per year and maybe up to 13 dust explosions per year in total.
Three Key Takeaways
Here is a summary of three key takeaways from this incident reporting.
1. Different Regions of the World Have Different Challenges With Combustible Dust
In Sweden, one specific challenge is metal dust, which accounts for 18% of incidents. In the U.S., approximately 10% of the combustible incidents involve metal dust, and Germany falls between the two, with 13% of the incidents involving metal dust. As you see, different countries have different industries that are more popular or more active, and these are the ones that are going to be experiencing the combustible dust challenges.
2. Dust Incidents Will Be Captured Differently Based on Workplace Reporting Requirements
We’re seeing different levels of reporting from one country to the next, which may have a big impact on what gets captured in the incident database.
In the U.S., we’re seeing 20 or 30 explosions, 30 to 35 injuries and six fatalities on average per year. In Sweden, which has one-fourth of the GDP, we’re seeing up to 13 explosions per year but very few injuries and fatalities. This incident total is around 30% of what is being reported in the U.S.
Why is Sweden reporting a higher ratio of GDP combustible dust explosions than the U.S.? This is probably due to workplace safety reporting requirements. It’s also likely that injuries and fatalities scale more of a GDP than total incidents. If someone is injured or killed, there will be more stringent reporting requirements behind that incident.
3. A Global Approach to Incident Reporting is Needed
We need a global approach to incident reporting. Some countries are reporting fires, others are only reporting the total number of fires and explosions. Some aren’t providing separate information for injuries while others are doing a more deep analysis.
Trying to combine this all into one system becomes a big challenge when all this information is reported in such a heterogeneous way at the end of the day. This confirms the need to develop a global reporting network where you say, “These are the standards on how we’re going to actually report this information, what we’re going to report and what format we’re going to put it in in order to be usable by the community over time.”
Conclusion
Examining loss history in the EU and the UK has highlighted the variations in incident reporting requirements and practices. By taking the positive aspects of each one, we may be able to build a global reporting framework that’s accurate and can facilitate change.
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
Organizations
UK Health and Safety Executive
Swedish Work Environment Authority
Publications
Eckhoff, Rolf. ‘Dust Explosions in the Process Industries’
Mannan, Sam and Simon P. Waldram. ‘Lessons Learned from Incidents. A Paradigm Shift Is Overdue’
Nessvi, Ken and Lennart Evaldsson. ‘Metal Dust in Sweden’
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