WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has released a new safety video depicting how accumulations of combustible dust at worksites can provide the fuel for devastating explosions that kill and maim workers, shut down plants, and harm local economies.

 

Entitled, “Combustible Dust: An Insidious Hazard,” the new video is available online at www.CSB.gov, and on YouTube. It can also be ordered free of charge on a new two-DVD set of all CSB safety videos by filling out the CSB’s online DVD request form.

 

“Combustible Dust” features all-new CSB computer animations that illustrate three major dust explosion accidents the CSB has investigated: West Pharmaceutical Services in Kinston, NC; CTA Acoustics in Corbin, KY; and Hayes Lemmerz International, in Huntington, IN.

 

For each accident, the animations show how explosive dust accumulated over years on plant equipment, pipes, floors, ducts, dust collectors and other areas. The video shows how conditions develop needing only an ignition source to set off a primary explosion, which lofts the accumulated dust, leading to deadlier secondary explosions.

 

News footage and still photographs depict actual damage caused by these explosions, as well as other accidents including last year’s tragedy that killed 14 workers at the Imperial Sugar Co. in Port Wentworth, GA.

 

The video points out that dust accumulations – and the resulting secondary dust explosions – can be readily prevented. National Fire Protection Association standards have long been available to general industry and, if followed, will prevent such accidents, as NFPA official Amy Beasley Spencer states in the video.

 

Laboratory footage in the video depicts how easily combustible dust ignites, as a small dust sample gathered by investigators in the rubble of a dust explosion site is lofted over a flame and creates an instant fireball.

 

For additional information about the new video, visit www.csb.gov.