WAITING for the dust to settle in factories can be deadly. The US House wisely recognized this danger last week and passed legislation to help prevent combustible dust explosions like the one in February that killed 13 workers in a Georgia sugar refinery. Now it's the Senate's turn to clean up this problem.
The disfiguring injuries suffered by workers in a 1995 explosion of nylon flock fibers at Malden Mills in Methuen seared their way into the public mind. Four years later, three workers died in a resin dust explosion at the Jahn Foundry in Springfield. The federal Chemical Safety Board, which investigates such accidents, has documented 281 dust-related explosions or fires between 1980 and 2005 that killed 119 people and injured 700 more. Since then, about 70 more dust explosions have occurred in the United States.
The loss of life, mutilation, and economic devastation from combustible dust is largely preventable. Stricter regulation is required in the wood, metal, grain, dye, pharmaceutical, rubber, and other industries where clouds of industrial dust can come into contact with hot surfaces, open flames, electrostatic discharges and other ignition sources. But the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration is taking a languid approach to the problem. Congress needs to take stronger action.
The House bill would require OSHA to issue specific rules on minimizing dust hazards through engineering controls, worker training, and stricter housekeeping. Further study is not required. Such standards are already available from the National Fire Protection Association, a Quincy-based nonprofit. What is needed now is a bipartisan effort to pass the bill in the Senate, where a hearing is expected to take place in early summer, according to the office of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.
Officials at OSHA insist that current regulations are sufficient to address combustible dust. And the agency has increased the rate of inspections of high-risk workplaces. But the deadly explosions are proof enough that OSHA should adopt and enforce specific limits for dust accumulation in industrial plants. The House is clearly frustrated with OSHA. And the Chemical Safety Board is openly concerned that many employees are not even aware of the potential dangers in their own workplaces. In 2006, the board urged OSHA to develop better standards to communicate with workers about the hazards. But so far, that effort is also stalled.
Congress needs to act quickly to counteract the explosive threat posed by combustible dust.
