Combustible Dust: Solutions Delayed

CSB safety video about a fatal combustible dust explosion at the AL Solutions metal recycling facility in New Cumberland, West Virginia. The December 9, 2010 accident at the facility that milled and processed scrap titanium and zirconium metal killed three employees and injured a contractor.

[Francois_Dupont]

i worked at a wood sawing plant, they were 3feet of wood dust behind each machine. nobody cleanining anything. one time a guy welding caught many wood piles on fire at 4AM when we were only 3 person in the whole plant. i had to extinguish the fire myself. then i stopped everything and cleaned everywhere with a 6inch diameter suction hose. they fired me later because i told the boss they were endangering the whole plant by penny-pinching and keeping 1foot long scraps and putting them in big piles everywhere. 3years later the whole place burned down. i never laughed so much.

[LanceCampeau]

Another excellent visual production and script. The overall quality of the USCSB safety videos and safety messages has really increased over the last 2 years.

Considering how visual our society has become, I really feel these videos are important for communicating the danger of inaction when it comes to process safety and I frequently reference this channel, both personally and professionally. 

Thank you all for putting these together.

[johngdoty]

You could say that OSHA let the CSB's report gather dust. Let's hope for their sake it doesn't explode.

[Verdafolio]

To those people making these videos, you're doing a fantastic job.

[andrewallen]

Q: How do you put out a titanium fire?
A: By waiting for all the titanium present to be burnt up.

[meenie]

I am not an industrial employee, but I love all your videos. There really does need to be a legal standard for combustible dust control. Companies are clearly not complying on their own and the people who make the decision not to enforce the standards in the factory (i.e., people in management or at corporate) are not the ones who will be killed or hurt if an explosion happens; rather, people who are just trying to make ends meet and are powerless in many cases to mitigate the risks even if they recognize them, are the ones who will be hurt.

[flyback_driver]

I do a lot of prototyping and fabrication in my shop at home. A lot of materials I work with is steel and aluminum. My bench grinders see a lot of use but I rarely did much for dust collection besides sweeping off the bench and floor. The grinder protective case had iron powder caked on the inside and I was working with an aluminum alloy of unknown composition. Turns out it had magnesium and once some magnesium sparks caught the iron powder that grinder went up and literally melted. I did manage to unplug it and holding it from the cord put it outside but nothing would put it out. I was talking to a friend about what happened and he showed me the csb video iron in the fire. I knew metal powders are flammable but I figured it wasn't enough to be serious. Well now I have coolant pumps circulating water and filtering dust from grinding. As well as a vacuum for catching potential sparks.

[ObliqueStrategy]

I'm not sure why I like your narrator so much, but he's awesome. 

[whofandb]

Metal, wood, flour, and sugar become a problem when they have been been processed. Some of the biggest disasters were at flour mills that exploded due to flour dust igniting.

[OAleathaO]

So many of these videos make me furious in that all these agencies, like the CSB, NTSB and the National Fire Protection Association (mentioned at 3:46) can only *make recommendations* and cannot *mandate* that a company or industry act on those recommendations. Massively frustrating.

[DugrozReports]

If you find out the company you're thinking of working for has major fires and explosions every 5-10 years ... run far & run fast!

[burdizdawurdOfficial]

While most of our government is waiting their time over political battles, CSB is actually tacking major safety problems. Can the rest of the government learn from these people?

[TheTrainChasingPoet]

Pay attention: the closest the CSB can get to being a regulatory agency is declaring a response to their recommendations to be unacceptable.

[GeneralChangFromDanang]

This reminds me of a wood fiber plant in my area. My friend was an EMT with the fire department and said they'd be called to that factory usually about once every couple of weeks. Finally, something caught and blew the roof off one of the buildings and killed a worker. Other than just putting a tarp over the roof, I don't know if they actually did anything to improve their processes.

[trespire]

Any progress from OSHA on establishing required safety standards ? It is now August 2015. Hope no more lives will be lost before OSHA pass the standards.

[crangus]

This legitimately gives me hope for the US government when these guys do this well

[joshuabaughn]

Zirconium! That's really flammable! The metal chips are known to combust when machining Zirconium. If you heat it to a certain temperature it burns away quickly.

[Darkhunterable]

Terrifying phrases: burning metal dust cloud

[bearursidae]

So I’ve gone from watching like unsolved case files to these cool little vids

[broden]

The recent combustible dust explosion being investigated by the CSB now is one that occurred several years ago at a milling company in central WI
(5 dead, 14 injured)