Any combustible material (and some materials normally considered noncombustible) can burn rapidly when in a finely divided form. If such a dust is susdust evaluationspended 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.
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.
OSHA has re-issued a National Emphasis Program for Combustible Dust in the workplace thereby intensifying their focus on this problem. SRP Environmental’s Industrial Hygiene Group can assist your company in the evaluation of Combustible Dust hazards conducting visual inspections and the collection and analysis of dust to determine if it meets the OSHA criteria.