Many food, pharmaceutical, and chemical manufacturing facilities maintain excellent housekeeping programs. Floors are clean, overheads are inspected, and visible dust accumulation is minimal. Yet serious combustible dust incidents and dust safety management failures  continue to occur in facilities that believed they were managing the risk appropriately. The reason is rarely a lack of awareness or effort. Instead, it is often a gap between what facilities believe their Dust Hazard Analysis...

A pharmaceutical plant explosion triggered by a tiny static spark reveals how a missed detail in the Dust Hazard Analysis (DHA) can lead to disaster. Learn what went wrong, how electrostatic hazards were overlooked, and what every facility handling powders must do to prevent similar incidents.

Figure 1. Locations of workers inside the mill at the time of the incident. Circles represent workers who sustained fatal injuries, and...