Sunday evening on 60 Minutes on CBS there was a segment on dust explosions. For the most part, it was an expose on the failings of OSHA. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that OSHA is lead by a bunch of dullards who are under the enchantment of an administration reluctant to impose new regulations on industry.
The thrust of the program was that OSHA is completely unable to recognize incipient dust hazards on their site inspections, partly due to a lack of training and partly due to a slack-jawed lack of direction. It wasn’t pretty.
As a dramatic backdrop, numerous instances of major plant explosions were trotted out for all to see. The message is that plants keep blowing up from dust explosions, but OSHA isn’t holding companies to higher standards- because there aren’t any. The Secretary cited OSHA’s housekeeping requirement as broad enough to cover the dust explosion scenario. It was less than convincing.
I couldn’t help but notice that the subtext was that there can only be safety if more regulations were written. I didn’t see any company officials grilled in the same manner that the Secretary was grilled.
In fairness to OSHA, someone needed to clarify just what that agency is free to do in regard to rule making and what must be done by the Congress. I know there are smart people in OSHA, but being federal employees, there is little incentive to champion new regulations. Between institutional inertia, lobbyists, and an antagonistic executive branch, who wants to charge ahead of the parade on new rules?
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Dude,
OSHA is a joke. They are over-paid do nothings that at their best ignore health and safety violations, but at their worst take payolla to ignore health and safety violations. Proto-typical fat guy eating a donut with a smug look on his face because he’s fooled the US taxpayer into giving him an 80K salary with benefits for life. They’ve been described as thugs by some of my biz associates.
If you ever have a health and safety issue, do not call OSHA. If it’s at all chemical related you should call the EPA. EPA WILL actually fine and imprison violators.
Outside of the extreme cases where the operation in question is losing money and the company wants to collect insurance money and not have to suffer the difficulties of shuttering the place, there is little incentive for CEO’s to have an explosion in their operations. You can’t make any money from a building that isn’t there and replacing the equipment will take quite some time even for turnkey operations.
Is it possible that the companies think that because OSHA says everything is o.k that everything really is o.k.? Now that’s a scary thought!
Well, regulations cost money, and if your plants blow up, insurance will pay for it, right? W’s administration figures that government that costs businesses money is a bad government, and so its hopes that if it ignores dust, it’ll go away.
I never expected to be ruled by a monster from Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy. As a side note, at least the people who voted them into power self designate. Bill Engvald should go around handing out “Bush?Cheney ’04” bumper stickers with “Here’s your sign.”
The 60-minutes report on dust explosions and the evident lack of focus by OSHA was a stunner, and I found it hard to believe.
My first introduction to dust explosions was in 1951 when I started (my first) research project at the U.K Safety-in-Mines Research Establishment, working (from 1951 to 1954) for a research unit of the H.M. Factory Inspectorate, located for background reasons at the SMRE. The major outcome of my work there was this paper: “Dust Explosions in Factories: Ignition Testing and Design of a New Inflammator”, published as the SMRE (Ministry of Power) Research Report No.188 (May, 1960).
After I left the SMRE in 1954, work on the device continued at SMRE for another year or two until it was transferred to (I believe) BCURA (the British Coal Utilization Research Association) and then, after some further (minor) modifications by them, it became the #3 Standard test for Dust Explosibility in England (as I discovered by chance some 20 years later, though it doesn’t have my name on it!).
The background to all this is that the possible explosion of factory dusts was on the front burner of the HM Factory Inspectorate going back 60 to 70 years, and presumably is still there (it would be worth checking). The corresponding lackadaisical attitude of OSHA is impossible to understand.
As an add-on, I reconstructed the Inflammator here at Ohio State University (ME Dept.) about 10 years ago because of brief (though not followed up) enquiry about possibly doing inflammation tests on factory dusts. To do this I called on a (then) senior student, Heather Klimesh, who built the device and then used it as Senior lab project. [Following that, Heather then completed an MS degree on (high-intensity) combustion of coal]. In the process of working on the Inflammator, a photgraph of one of the flames was recorded and went on the front cover of a brochure for the ME Dept. Graduate Programs. Unfortunately the equipment is no longer in existence.
Robert H. Essenhigh
E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion; Department of Mechanical Engineering; 201 West 19th. Avenue; The Ohio State University; Columbus, OH: 43210; Ph: 614-292-0403
http://rclsgi.eng.ohio-state.edu/~essenhig/
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