suffered burns to his right hand, face and neck after a fire ignited...

Maintenance personnel in our industry are the unsung workers. Without these men and women our facilities could not operate without continuosly. No other job position has been affected more from incidents then the maintenance department. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has been invited to speak to aluminium plants and companies about the importance of safety. The APSB always asks for an opportunity to speak with the maintenance department separately. Why? Because their job is so dangerous. Maintenance workers on a daily basis deal with numerous hazards that can easily result in an injury or fatality if they do not follow precisely their training. Here is the story:

A man cleaning vents in a factory one night suffered burns to his right hand, face and neck after a fire ignited during the week of December 7, 2014.

The injured worker told the local Police Corporal that he was on a scissor lift cleaning an exhaust vent when he blew aluminum powder onto hot oil.

That caused a fire and the building was full of smoke.

The APSB prays that the injured worker recovers fully from his injuries. This incident was brought up to all maintenance department personnel at one aluminium plant in the USA that APSB met recently. There are so many instances where the maintenance personal have to clean off dust on the piece of equipment they are servicing. It was explained that the hazard of dust/fine explosions could occur when servicing equipment.

This video was shown to the maintenance department personnel to illustrate that a small amount of aluminium dust airborne is very dangerous.

  

The Aluminium Association has a great document dealing with aluminium fines/dust.

The Aluminium Times Magazine had an article about dust/fine safety