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Combustible Dust Explosion 1967 Hawthorne New Jersey
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On February 21, 1967, a series of explosions and fire wrecks a chemical plant in Hawthorne, New Jersey. Eleven workers are killed and eighteen workers are injured. An explosive dust, a by-product of corn starch, is believed the cause of the blast. The plant, part of the Morningstar Paisley Division of the International Latex Corp, manufactured preservatives for foodstuffs and adhesive materials. The first explosion thundered through a three-story building in the block-long, L-shaped complex. Other blasts followed and the raging flames swept the rest of the plant, which included an attached one-story structure and a separate one-story building. A report said the explosions might have started in an oven used to roast corn starch and make dextrine from it. It said accumulated dust in the area could have caused a spontaneous explosion. The company response was typical (and is often repeated by employers today) - We are completely puzzled by this, said an executive in the firm's New York City office. The most explosive things we manufacture are food preservatives made from ground starch. How inflammable is starch? Any combustible material (and some materials normally considered noncombustible) can burn rapidly when in a finely divided form. If such a dust is suspended in air in the right concentration, it can become explosive. The force from such an explosion can cause employee deaths, injuries, and destruction of entire buildings. Such incidents have killed scores of employees and injured hundreds over the past few decades. Materials that may form combustible dust include metals (such as aluminum and magnesium), wood, coal, plastics, biosolids, sugar, paper, soap, dried blood, and certain textiles. A combustible dust explosion hazard may exist in a variety of industries, including: food (e.g., candy, sugar, spice, starch, flour, feed), grain, tobacco, plastics, wood, paper, pulp, rubber, furniture, textiles, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes, coal, metals (e.g., aluminum, chromium, iron, magnesium, and zinc), and fossil fuel power generation. In 2003, the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) launched investigations of three major industrial explosions involving combustible powders. These explosions - in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Indiana - cost 14 lives and caused numerous injuries and substantial property losses. The Board responded by launching a nationwide study to determine the scope of the problem and recommend new safety measures for facilities that handle combustible powders. The results of the CSB study is available at http://www.csb.gov/investigations/det... . In 2009 OSHA started a rulemaking process to develop a combustible dust standard for the industry. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) completed a study of combustible dust hazards in late 2006, which identified 281 combustible dust incidents between 1980 and 2005 that killed 119 workers and injured another 718, OSHA reported. Based on these findings, the CSB recommended the Agency pursue a rulemaking on this issue. OSHA has a good Combustible Dust website with much good information on this hazard and how it can be controlled at http://www.osha.gov/dsg/combustibledu... . This clip is taken from the Universal Newsreel, Volume 40, Release 16.
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