WORK-RELATED DISEASES DANGERS
There is a history of deadly mistakes that caused factory disasters. Here, Paul Riddick, Co-Founder and
Technical Director at Vodex, advises on ways to ensure your business doesn’t end up as a statistic.
Although most employers make an effort to comply with Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH), few have any idea as to how much their company is losing from worker illness, work accidents, and damaged plant machinery. They know the cost of their insurance, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Together these overheads slowly erode a company’s competitive edge, but that’s nothing compared to the fallout from ‘The Big One’ - an actual catastrophe.
‘THE BIG ONE’ Almost everyone knows that dust can explode and yet almost every factory, workshop and warehouse has dust. Even those who scrupulously clean up often do it in ways that are ineffective or exacerbate the risks.
In 2009, workers dismantling an empty cement storage tank in Thomaston Maine swept cement dust, wood and fibreglass foam into a tidy pile. When this started smouldering the smoke slowly filled the storage tank itself which suddenly exploded with a force heard 11 miles away.
The West Pharmaceutical Plant in North Carolina manufactured condoms and similar items from synthetic rubber. Maintenance personnel regularly cleaned all dust from around machinery, but room ventilation was lifting dust up above the suspended ceilings. When a small disturbance of dust occurred above a light fixture, the first explosion disturbed enough dust to cause a second that caused a third... debris was propelled two miles where it started additional fires that raged for two days during which six people died.
In 2003, an explosion gutted the CTA Acoustics factory in Kentucky and killed seven people. The company produced fibreglass insulation for the automotive industry. It was considered fire-proof. Investigators concluded the explosion was fuelled by fibreglass resin dust ignited by a nearby oven.
The Pepcon plant in Henderson, Nevada used to produce a simple chemical called ammonium perchlorate, which is non-flammable and was thought completely safe. It was routinely swept up with other dust and pallet debris and tipped into waste bins. A small fire near a bin triggered an initial explosion that cracked a gas pipe. Then the combination of gas
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www.tomorrowshs.com DUSTY
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