Combustible Dust: An Explosive Safety Issue

Dust suspended in air in the right concentration can become explosive. The force from such an explosion can cause employee deaths, injuries, and destruction of entire buildings.

In addition to explosion hazards, dusts pose a range of other safety and health hazards. Minor hazards may include reduced visibility and slippery surface conditions. Some dusts, such as asbestos and silica, pose serious respiratory hazards and long-term health effects, such as pneumoconiosis.

Dust Control

To control dust in your facility, OSHA recommends:

• Implementing regular hazardous dust inspection, testing, and housekeeping programs
• Using proper dust-collection systems and filters
• Minimizing the escape of dust from process equipment or ventilation systems
• Using work surfaces that minimize dust accumulation and facilitate cleaning
• Providing access to hidden areas to permit routine inspections
• Using cleaning methods that don’t generate dust clouds if ignition sources are present
• Using only vacuum cleaners approved for dust collection
• Locating relief valves away from dust deposits

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Whatever safety meeting you need, chances are you’ll find it prewritten and ready to use in BLR’s Safety Meetings Library on CD. Try it at no cost or risk. Here’s how.

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Ignition Control

To minimize the risk of ignition:

• Use appropriate electrical equipment and wiring.
• Adopt static electricity controls, including bonding of equipment to ground.
• Control smoking, open flames, and sparks.
• Control mechanical friction and sparks.
• Use separator devices to remove foreign particles capable of igniting combustibles from process materials.
• Separate heated surfaces from dusts.
• Carefully select industrial trucks used in areas where there may be hazardous dusts, and make sure employees use this equipment properly.
• Monitor that employees are using cartridge-activated tools and welding equipment properly in areas where dust may be present.
• Perform preventive maintenance on all equipment that could set off a dust explosion if it overheats, shorts, or sparks.

Injury and Damage Control

To minimize injuries and damage if a combustible dust accident occurs:

• Distance combustible dust areas from other areas of your plant.
• Segregate hazardous dust with appropriate barriers.
• Provide deflagration venting of buildings, rooms, or areas where hazardous dust may be present.
• Provide pressure relief venting for equipment.
• Direct vents away from work areas.
• Install sprinkler systems, specialized fire suppression systems, and explosion protection systems.

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And One More Thing

Remember the essential role employees play in preventing combustible dust fires and explosions. If the people closest to the source of the hazard are properly trained, you’re more likely to prevent accidents. Make sure your workers understand your dust-control programs and are trained to recognize and report unsafe conditions and to use safe work practices.

To make training easy, BLR’s Safety Meetings Library provides a ready-to-use training outline for conducting a comprehensive safety meeting on combustible dust. The meeting explains the hazards, tells workers how to recognize dangerous situations, and details what to do to prevent and control combustible dust hazards.

In addition to a step-by-step training outlines, Safety Meetings Library also provides you with supporting handouts, quizzes, posters, and safety slogans for every meeting. In short, this cost-effective, time-saving resource gives you everything you need to conduct timely, effective, and memorable training on any safety topic you need.

All told, the CD provides you with more than 400 ready-to-train meetings on more than 100 key safety topics—a shrewd investment in this time of tight safety budgets. In addition to the meetings’ supplemental quizzes and handouts, you also get relevant regulations (OSHA’s CFR 29), a listing of the most common safety violations cited by OSHA, and case studies of actual OSHA cases and their outcomes.

Safety Meetings Library lets you choose from a variety of training approaches, including:
 

• Mandatory—Sessions that are OSHA-required
• Comprehensive—Sessions with broadest coverage of a topic
• 7-Minute—Short, simple, targeted sessions to fit tight schedules
• Initial—A session used as introductory training on a topic
• Refresher—Sessions that follow up on or reinforce previous training
• Tool Box Talk—More informal reinforcement of a topic
• PowerPoint^®—Graphic presentations for comprehensive initial or refresher training
• Hands-on—A session in which there are training activities
• Spanish—Including Spanish-language handouts and quizzes coordinated with English sessions

You can get a preview of the program by using the links below. But for the best look, we suggest a no-cost, no-obligation trial. Just let us know and we’ll arrange it for you.

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