A team of reporters from the Wall Street Journal has investigated the massive explosion at the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery in Georgia and concluded that a lack of local government inspections, attention from the plants’ owners, and federal government oversight combined to create the fireball that ignited on Feb. 7, 2008.  The problem, as Paulo Prada, Betsy McKay and Stephanie Chen write, was "all because of dust."
It turns out that fine particles of quite a few substances — from sugar to sawdust to metals — if suspended in the air in sufficient amounts, can ignite with the smallest electric charge or even the heat from a lighted cigarette. In the case of the sugar plant near Port Wentworth, Georgia, it was fine sugar dust that exploded.  Though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has issued rules for the cleanup and filtering of these dust particles, they have not followed through to be sure that local inspectors keep an eye on the real conditions inside plants like Imperial Sugar.  The Journal report notes one employee, who produced confectioner’s sugar, saying that there were times when "you couldn’t see in front of you, there was so much powder floating up." 

As a result of the fire, 13 people were killed, 45 were injured, and the plant must be rebuilt — though the company is behaving decently — it has promised to rebuild and is continuing to pay the 358 workers who survived for a 40-hour work week, even if only 275 are presently involved in the cleanup effort.

The tragic loss of life will mark this small Georgia town for decades.  The question, beyond the town’s recovery, is how the federal government and local officials will deal with similar plants around the country.  One expert from another U.S. government agency, the Chemical Safety Board, says that it is OSHA’s "gotcha" approach that makes improvements unlikely.  "They look hard and creatively to identify sometimes arcane interpretations of rules that were broken."  But what they don’t offer is "clear guidance…[t]hey don’t tell industry the things to do to prevent a disaster like this."

The idea is that OSHA and other agencies responsible for public and worker safety must be pro-active.  They must look at factory conditions and identify the things that business owners must do to prevent — to the maximum extent possible — the possibility of loss of life.  In the case of Imperial Sugar, this meant increasing inspections and proposing technologies to remove the fine sugar dust from the air.  "Clearing the air" in this fashion will help both the public health and the government’s reputation.  For surely when tragedies like this happen, people in the neighborhood wonder how and why their government let them down.  Read Prada, McKay and Chen here.  EH

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