Page 49 - Dust Explosions in the Process Industries

22 Dust Explosions in the Process Industries

for 16% of all the fatalities and 11.2% of all the injuries but only 3.2% of the material
losses. The food and feed dust explosions also were responsible for higher percentages
of fatalities and injuries than the 51.4% share of the number of explosions.Furthermore,
food and feed caused by far the highest material loss per explosion.The pulverized coal
dust explosions (not mining), on the contrary, caused lower percentages of fatalities,
injuries, and material losses than their share of the total number of explosions.

1.2.3
DUST EXPLOSIONS IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC
OF GERMANY, 1965-1 985

Berufsgenossenschaftliches Institut fur Arbeitssicherheit (Institute of Safety at Work of
the Trade Unions) in the Federal Republic of Germany conducted a program of record-
ing dust explosion accidents in the Federal Republic of Germany since the beginning of
the 1960s.The first comprehensivereport, covering 1965-1980, was by Beck and Jeske
(1982). A condensed version of the findings was written by Beck (1982). The compre-
hensive report contains a brief description of each explosion accident,specifying the type
of plant, the precise plant item, the type of dust, the likely ignition source, the numbers
of fatalities and injuries, and the material losses. A further comprehensivereport cover-
ing explosions recorded from 1981 to 1985 was written by Jeske and Beck (1987), the
corresponding short version by Beck and Jeske (1988). Finally, Jeske and Beck (1989)
produced an informative overview covering the whole span 1965-1985.
The total numbers of explosions recorded were 357 for 1965-1980 and 69 for
1981-1985. Beck and Jeske (1982) estimated the recorded explosions from 1965 to
1980to be about 15% of the total number of explosions that actually occurred. The esti-
mated number of actual dust explosions in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1965
to 1980was therefore about 2400, that is, about 160per year. The number of explosions
recorded per year for 1981-1985 was somewhat lower than for 1965-1980. However,
because of the low percentageof recorded explosions,it may not be justified to conclude
that the annual number of accidental explosions dropped significantly after 1980.
Table 1.4 provides some data from the Federal Republic of Germany that can be com-
pared directly with the older data from the United States in Table 1.3.There are interesting

Table 1.4 Dust explosions in the Federal Republic of Germany 1965-1 980: fatalities and injuries
in a sample of 357 explosions

Source: Beck, 1982.