"Worker seriously injured by drum explosion..."

Dealing with the removal of waste in an aluminium plant is a hidden hazard. The collection internally, the sorting, and removal of waste is commonly overlooked. The following incident is sadly very common throughout industrial workplaces. Our sincere hope is that the reader will take this incident and make sure that it never occurs at their workplace.

Around 2:30 pm on Saturday (1st), an explosion occurred at an aluminum processing plant in a city in Southeast Asia, when a worker was cutting one of the drums with an electric welder.

In this accident, a 49-year-old factory worker was rescued and taken to the hospital, where a skull fracture was found and his condition is serious.

He was working alone outside and was found slumped in the courtyard. A colleague heard the sound of the explosion and ran out of the factory when he found him and called for help.   

According to reports, as the drums were no longer needed, the worker was removing the lid with the welder, to reuse them as a trash can.

According to what the police found, this cut drum contained a cleaning agent, but it is not yet known what was inside it at the time of the work.

The police thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident .

We pray that the worker recovers fully from his injuries and does not suffer any longterm health effects. As we mentioned this incident is very common in industrial workplaces. Thankfully most of the incidents result in fatalities and this incident did not.

This incident commonly occurs with maintenance workers who are either directed to cut off the top of a drum or do so without direction. Regardless, the fumes in a drum will ignite if a flame source is introduced. We have seen similar explosions when workers used a grinder to cut the head of drum off. Our recommendation will prevent an explosion from occurring. But, it is still hazardous. Our recommendation is to used high pressure water jet to cut the drumhead off. The high pressure cutting can easily cut through a steel drum. But, it can also easily cut off a foot or a hand… So, caution has to be taken. If this method is used we would suggest that the cutting head be fixed and the barrel is rotated to minimize the chance of worker losing control of the device.

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