Tightening dust regulations

Back in 2015, I took on the role of editor for Canadian Forest Industries, Canada’s longest running trade publication dedicated to covering the country’s logging and forest products sector; and Canadian Biomass, which covers Canada’s growing biomass and bioenergy sectors. Working on these two trade publications was where I first learned about the importance of having effective dust management strategies, staff trained in the latest regulations and best practices, and the latest dust collection and dust control technologies.

A few years earlier, multiple tragedies had struck the forest products sector in British Columbia’s Northern Interior. Two sawmill explosions took place in 2012, both ending in lives lost and many injured. The Babine Forest Products sawmill in Burns Lake experienced an explosion in January 2012 that took the lives of two workers and injured 20 more. Then only a few months later, the Lakeland Mills sawmill in Prince George also suffered an explosion that took the lives of two people while injuring 22 others. The investigations into both explosions showed that combustible dust was responsible for both explosions.

Despite it being three years since these incidents, they were certainly still fresh in the minds of people in the industry. Every conference I attended during my time as editor had sessions on dust safety management best practices, regulations, case studies, and technology showcases. And without fail, the sawmill explosions at Burns Lake and Prince George were always discussed. This included all of the biomass-related conferences, as wood pellet manufacturing, woody biomass-fuelled boilers (wood pellets, wood chips and other forest residuals), and district energy systems, make up a significant percentage of Canada’s biomass and bioenergy sectors. This came as little surprise, since these incidents were shocking to the industry and were such terrible and avoidable tragedies. Dust safety is something that many process industries need to take very seriously.

I’ve spoken to people in various process industries over the years that were, in some cases, shocked to learn they were dealing with combustible dusts in their day-to-day operations. Most people think of wood dust as combustible dust, but don’t consider other potentially combustible materials like agricultural products such as flours; some plastic dusts; and processed powders. This may be because these types of dust have not been the main focus of dust management regulations in Canada. But that is changing.

In British Columbia, where failure to have proper dust management systems in place ring the loudest, WorkSafeBC is in the process of proposing new regulations that will change the regulations to include any type of dusts handled or generated at a workplace through pulverizing processes, grinding processes, material size reduction processes, material conveying, handling and storage (for more details on this topic, check out “Changes to combustible dust: New regulations coming for B.C. industries“). These proposed changes are long overdue and will hopefully assist in improving the safety of operations so Canada’s process industries can avoid the types of tragedies that occurred in B.C.’s forest products sector. After all, everyone has the right to go to work and come home safe.