If you were one of the many American industrial workers on the morning of February 7, 2008 unaware of the threats posed by combustible dust, there’s a good chance that things changed pretty quickly by the following morning. That’s because on the evening of the 7th, Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth, Georgia, sugar refinery exploded, killing 14 workers and injuring 40, in what has been described as the most catastrophic North American dust explosion since 1980.

The blaze occurred almost four years after the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (USCSB) conducted a study that highlighted the dangers of combustible dust, following three high-profile incidents in 2003 that saw 14 workers killed. That same study made a number of recommendations to the U.S.’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the interest of improving preventative regulations — but only a portion of them had been implemented at the time of the Imperial explosion.

Though the overall awareness, regulations and preventative practices surrounding the issue of dust explosions were already beginning to change across the U.S., the incident at Imperial was a wake-up call. Regulatory bodies and health and safety professionals quickly realized it was a serious issue, and one that needed to be addressed immediately to prevent any future tragedies from happening. Legislation was passed. Employers and employees were educated. Plants were temporarily shut down for renovations and refurbishment. The culture began to change and change fast.

Sleeping neighbours
We’re now over three years removed from the Imperial explosion — and while the incident has spurred on its southern neighbours to implement better hazard control and safety management in industries with higher risk of combustible dust — not much has changed in Canada.

“In the States, based on the CSB report, OSHA actually went ahead and started getting much more involved because of all the fatalities that they had,” notes Laurence Polley, president of C&R Engineering Solutions, Inc. and a combustible dust advocate here in Canada. “A lot of states passed laws, and OSHA passed some more laws, so it’s very, very much on their radar screen down there. Up here, to my knowledge — certainly in Ontario and I’m guessing across the country — there has been no activity on the regulation front. It’s kind of business as usual.”

One of the biggest obstacles facing those trying to raise awareness about the topic of explosive dust in Canada is the lack of comprehensive statistical data on this hazard.

“One of the problems you would find if you went to try and get reports of fires caused by dust explosions is that it’s not something that’s captured with the statistics up here,” Polley says. “It’s there in black and white. We do have fires, some of which I’m sure are partially caused by dust explosions. We just don’t look at them that way.”

The fire reporting system currently employed in Canada, the Canadian Code Structure for Fire Loss Statistics, has been ineffective in adequately documenting the incidence and ignition sources of combustible dust fires, according to John Astad, a combustible dust expert based in Texas. It’s an issue that Astad sees down in the States, as well, though not to the same extent as in Canada.

“[Combustible dust fire reporting] isn’t good in our system either,” he says. “I was looking at the Canadian Code Structure— it’s called the CCS— and yours is more watered down than ours; and we still need to do a lot of work on ours. We need to work together more. Your Canadian Fire Code uses the NFPA as a reference. There’s over half a dozen National Fire Protection Association codes for combustible dust— they’ve got codes for wood, for metal, for food parts for sulphur. They’ve got codes for explosion ventilation and explosion suppression.”

What’s missing, though, are data elements that require fire responders to discern the source of ignition for each fire, says Astad, who is also the director and research analyst with the Combustible Dust Policy Institute — an advocacy site dedicated to minimizing the severity and occurrence of combustible dust-related fires and explosions through ongoing exchange of best practices and lessons learned from combustible dust related incidents.

“I’m doing a little bit of research on something called Co-FIRS, or the Computerized Fire Instant Reporting Systems. I’m reviewing it and it’s missing equipment involving ignition. Many of your combustible dust fires start in the dust collectors or in the ductwork. When you do incident reporting, if you don’t report on the equipment involved in ignition, how are stakeholders going to be able to evaluate it and control it comprehensively? How are you going to raise national or provincial awareness without having the correct data elements?”