Sugar Explosion -- Much Less than Perfect

A few days ago, there was an explosion and fire in a sugar refinery near Savannah, Georgia. Killed at least four people, probably eight.

As anyone knows who has been to the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, suspended dust particles (released when producing foods like flour or sugar) are easily combustible. The flour mills of Minneapolis were destroyed and rebuilt numerous times, until their owners installed dust scrubbers to remove the dust from the air.

If memory serves from my tour at the museum, that change was made at least 50 years ago. Yet in 2008 we have a sugar dust fire in the American South, in part because OSHA has never adopted regulations to prevent dust explosions in sugar mills. According to the AP, "In the past 28 years, about 300 dust explosions have killed more than 120 workers and injured several hundred others. Most are preventable by removing dust as it builds up..."

So with that outrage as context, check out this information graphic from today's Star Tribune, which accompanied the AP story. The graphic is placed adjacent to the story quoted above -- the one that says there have been 300 explosions in less than 30 years (that's over 10 per year on average) -- but the graphic is headlined "Perfect Storm Needed for Dust Blast."


Ummmm ... no. Last time I checked, a "perfect storm," even though greatly overused, still meant a combination of unrelated events that form an unusually catastrophic environmental result. Not something that happens once a year, let alone ten times a year. This is less like a perfect storm and more like a chemical reaction that occurs the same way time after time until the conditions change.

But maybe the most disturbing thing about this disaster is that I don't recall hearing a word about the other 299 explosions or 100+ people killed over the last 30 years.