Recent dust explosions in 2025 and 2026 prove the same problem still exists that we’ve been dealing with since the beginning of automation: dangerous dust buildup that leads to preventable incidents. Most facilities rely on reactive methods, but true safety comes from stopping dust from accumulating in the first place. If you want to protect your people, stay compliant, and avoid the next incident, it starts with a better approach to housekeeping.
Episode Transcript:
Hey, we’re back. Welcome back to the OnAire podcast once again. I’m Jordan.
And I’m Taylor.
Hey, it’s episode 15. We’re back in the studios.
I know. Yeah, it’s crazy. Cause we didn’t even really, I don’t think we really talked about getting through a year of doing this.
We didn’t know if we’d make it past the first episode.
I know, it was very much just like, all right, we’ve got to get Taylor on here and bash UL one more time. No, I love you guys at UL. You do great work for us, and you keep us safe out there. It’s a little slow sometimes, but it’s great to work with you.
I’m still waiting on a quote.
Aren’t we all? No, I’m just kidding. But no, it is really crazy that, you know, we were like, hey, we should probably think about doing this. Everybody else does a podcast, so why not us?
Everybody gets a podcast, right?
And so here we are working on episode 15, 15 months into doing this. It’s been really cool. We’ve talked to a lot of great people with a wide knowledge base and many things to draw from. And just, I mean, cool people, too.
Yeah. It’s gone farther than I thought it would. And we’ve talked to more people, and it seems like the more we talk, the more people there are to talk to about this thing.
I’m excited about some of the ones that we have lined up that are coming in the next couple of months. Can’t give too much away.
Stay tuned for more. But it is really exciting. Glad that we’re able to do this and get this content out there so that more people are aware of the dangers of fugitive dust, which we’ll hit on a little bit today. And then also just kind of what’s going on in our industry.
Speaking of fugitive combustible dust, it is dust season here in North Carolina.
I’d say so.
Good grief. My voice is just shot because of the pollen in the air. It is everywhere.
It’s crazy because sometimes I walk out to my car, and it looks like I’m in one of our customers facilities. It’s like, which of you turned off the dust collector, and why is there so much dust on my car?
I was driving with my kids last weekend from eastern North Carolina, and as we were driving along, you could see it swirling in the air coming out of the trees. I was like, oh no, we’re stuck in a pollenado! But it was ridiculous. But we’re making it.
Yeah, I mean, we’re maybe out of the false spring of North Carolina where we do this like up and down dance with like, is it really spring?
No, we’re not. It’s 85 today and tomorrow’s 57. Come on. That’s Fahrenheit for all you folks up north.
Yeah, we don’t play with Celsius here. But yeah, it’s really confusing, because 85 is not spring for us either. That’s like early summer. And we’re just getting into March. North Carolina is a confusing place to live. It’s a great place to live.
It’s bipolar.
But sometimes you do have to do a little bit of a double take when you look at the weather forecast.
So, what’s been going on?
Well, a few things for us. We got a cool award.
Oh, that’s right. We did. Hey, where’s that award? Thank you, Betsie. Speaking of Betsie, Betsie and Kevin and Rob Alexander was involved in this. We got an award from the TRSA, the Textile Rental Services Association. The textile rental folks gave us an award. I actually went up and got to receive this in Washington, DC. It was an incredible honor. This is for our videography team. If you can’t tell already, they’re phenomenal. But we did a video at an Alsco facility in Lanham, Maryland about their installation of SonicAire fans. It was just a phenomenal story. So, thank you, Alsco, for trusting us with telling your story. Thank you for trusting us with your facility.
But yeah, the video turned out great. You should go watch it. Go check it out. We’ll put a link to it somewhere where you can find it. Maybe up there, maybe down there. I don’t know. But we’ll put a link. Go check it out. And yeah, that was great. And here’s one of the funny things. The facility we were at there in Washington, DC, phenomenal hotel downtown, and we’re having this dinner. And they actually got up and announced that the tablecloths and linens were produced or cared for at the Alsco Lanham facility.
Oh, wow.
And provided by them.
That’s a neat little full circle opportunity. Yeah. And then they showed a few minutes of the video as part of the award process.
You’re like, there’s your tablecloth, right there.
That’s right. That could be the very one. So yeah, that was great.
That’s awesome. That is cool. Also, shout out to you guys again behind the camera. You can’t see them right now. Betsie’s right there. Kevin’s right there. You guys did a great job getting all that together.
Yes, as always.
And then we also just wrapped up GEAPS season. Oh, yeah. GEAPS, not J E E P S.
Not the car.
G E A P S, Grain Elevator and Processing Society.
Now, the Jeeps with a J, that would be a cool one to go to as well.
That would be, I would be in on that. I’ll take my old rusty Jeep out there.
Yeah, but the grain side of things is definitely one of the bigger industries that we’ve been playing in recently. They have a ton of cool equipment. And it’s just fun to walk around and see things there.
I love that show. It’s in Kansas City, Missouri. If you are in the grain industry, go check it out next year. It’ll be early spring, late winter kind of thing, February, March timeframe. I think it’s going to be in Kansas City for the foreseeable future. But it’s phenomenal. It’s one of my favorite shows that we do. Lots of boots and hats. Great people there. Travis Davis was there. We had Travis Davis on a previous episode. If you’re in the grain industry, go back and watch that one with Travis, a really good one there.
A lot going on. Phenomenal keynote speaker, F 18 fighter pilot, a real top gun guy. He said he does not play volleyball in jeans as much as you might think. Doesn’t ride a motorcycle. But one of the things he said, as he showed us video from his cockpit doing carrier takeoff and landings, it was just unbelievable to hear him firsthand talk about those things. But he said, “You want to be shot up, not shot down.” And I thought, wow, what a perspective. And he had been shot up.
Oh, my goodness.
So that’s where you want to be. You got to go into the danger zone sometimes. And on the highway.
I was going to say he’s in the danger zone.
Yes. He took the highway to it. But yeah, just one of the best keynote speakers I’ve heard in a long time.
That’s really cool.
GEAPS does a phenomenal job putting on a great event and a great expo.
Yeah. The couple of times that I’ve been, one of the cooler things is always seeing them do the silo escapes. Just because, I mean, that’s a danger in that industry, which is really foreign to us. Cause we just don’t see a ton of those things outside of doing site visits and whatnot, but what a terrifying position to be in.
I mean, it’s literally quicksand. The bin rescue stuff.
And you’re a hundred feet in the air in some of these places. And I mean, it’s wild to see that. Was there anything new and exciting? This industry doesn’t move very fast. I mean, we’re new. We’re kind of the new thing that we’re trying to get in there, but anything new and exciting going on in the grain world?
So, I happen to be sitting at the lunch table beside a guy. I started talking to him, and one of the things he talked about he and his company do is, you know, we talked to Travis, we talked about turning the grain to keep it cool and keep the temperature down. You keep the temperature down to keep the decay down. And one of the things this guy’s company does is they purge these silos with nitrogen. And so, the nitrogen keeps the temperature down. It also kills any bugs or pests or things like that. It’s also, you know, kind of a naturally occurring thing in our atmosphere. And so, it is a pesticide free way of doing that. I don’t know if it works. It’s outside of my wheelhouse, but it sounded intriguing to me. So, it’s kind of cool to hear about that.
Yeah, that’s cool. It is cool walking around and, you know, getting to see the different tech and then the huge earth moving equipment that they’ve got in there as well as the grain collectors and whatnot.
Yeah, the railroad car movers and things like that. Occasionally they’ll hit the air horn during the show.
Or when we have to stay and clean up the booth, you get to watch them drive out or whatever. And I mean, the tires are twice as tall as we are. It’s cool stuff.
It is great. So yeah, overall great show for us. Oh, one of the cool things. I came downstairs on, I think it was Sunday morning in the bar area. They had huge TVs and people just crowded and huddled up around the TV. Well, you know, the predominant region for this industry is kind of that grain belt in the middle of the United States, and a lot of people there from like the Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota kind of region. Well, that’s a big hockey region.
Oh yeah.
And that Sunday morning was the big hockey game, the US Canada hockey game. I walked up just in time to see us hit the goal there in overtime. And so, everybody was ecstatic and high fiving and all that stuff. So, it was fun. It’s great place to be. Great to be in that environment to mark that point in history.
Yeah. I mean, what better group of people to be around than those? I mean, we live in North Carolina. We have a good hockey team. The ‘canes are good. But it’s not like our…I mean, we’ve got the blue blood rivalry and kind of all of college football and basketball, and we don’t make it to a lot of hockey, but we got the Thunderbirds in town.
Hey, let’s go.
It’s MMA on ice there more than anything. Which is a good reason to go.
It’s very, very entertaining. But yeah, people that truly appreciate the sport of hockey and understand it. And a lot of them have played it. So, it was fun to be around there for that.
All right. So, some current events going on in the combustible dust world.
Yeah, we just got a report. One of the articles that came out of Purdue university, They do kind of an annual report, if you will, looking back at the year in grain explosions, unfortunately. And one of the interesting things was that, I think the number of total explosions was down.
It’s down over the 10-year average.
But the number of fatalities and injuries was up.
That’s right. Seven incidents in grain dust last year in 2025. 10 injuries four fatalities. Unfortunately, we’re still talking about it. We’re still talking about the same thing, same problem. So, this is from the grain journal. They did kind of a summary of the report. Explosions occurred in two grain elevators, one farm operated grain elevator, one seed processing facility, one feed mill, one flour mill, one biofuel plant. So, it’s not just isolated to one type of operation within the industry.
Probable ignition sources were identified in one case as smoldering grain. One is equipment maintenance work. One is overheated bearing. One is a dust fire, three ignition sources unknown. So again, just got to stay vigilant and aware of all these things.
I think the further you get into the article, they get into just like the dust problem is something that can’t go away. And when we had Travis, we were talking about their different seasons and how they prepare to do all the loadout during one part of the year. And then in the other time of the year, they’re just turning the grain to keep the temperatures down. And the article really is pointing at like, when you’re trying to do that, that’s the time that you need to think about preventative maintenance. You need to go and check all of these things, because once you start loading trucks and rail cars, you’re not going to have the time to do that. And so, you have to take advantage of what’s in front of you. But yeah, I mean, it is unfortunate. Us being in the dust space, we hear and see this more than most people do, but we just know that it can be prevented.
Yeah. And what you were just talking about is, I think, really important, a great observation: that some of this equipment that they use is seasonal. And so, maybe it’s been nine months since this piece of equipment was operated. We probably should check it out and monitor these bearing temps and things like that and go around and check stuff out. Make sure it’s maintained and ready to go. Yeah, this article was written by Kingsley Ambrose, professor from Purdue, as you mentioned, a professor of agriculture and biological engineering. Kingsley said, dust is not good, both for dust explosions and for human health. Housekeeping is very important. Keep the place clean. Make sure there’s no visible or settled dust or suspended dust in the air, period. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Yeah. I mean, we’re not just here plugging our stuff or whatever, but that’s what we aim to do is keep that housekeeping piece. Because that’s so important, because when we talk to folks, they’re like, but I have a dust collector and I have some guy that cleans it and we do our regular filter changes and stuff. But you know, unfortunately it’s not always enough. I was with a customer recently, and they were telling me that the best day for their dust collector was the day they turned it on. Since then, it’s downhill. I mean, it’s just endless upkeep. You have to continue to be vigilant in keeping those filters clean and your change out processes. And if you change the workflow of your facility, your entire system might have to change as far as like input air, motor sizing, vent sizing, duct work, like all of that. I mean, it’s an ever-alive math problem, basically.
It is. It’s dynamic. It never stays static, it’s never the same. Yeah, and you’re right. That’s an excellent observation. Once you put that system in place, it’s great day one, but from there it’s a maintenance opportunity going forward. So, feed and grain also kind of did a summary synopsis of the same report, said the deadliest incident occurred July 29th at Horizon Biofuels in Fremont, Nebraska. They say killing three workers, but of course I think we know that it was an employee and his two daughters, which is absolutely tragic and heartbreaking that that had to happen. And then the explosion we talked about on here at Panhandle Milling in Dawn, Texas, killed one worker and injured three others. It’s real.
Yeah. And that’s just the hard part about it, is we know that these things are preventable, and it’s just a matter of doing it. It sucks, you know, working in operations, I don’t want to spend the money. I don’t want to have the downtime. I don’t want to do that. But when the stakes are as high as they are, you have to put forth the effort. And that’s no knock on these people. Like obviously they’re not looking to have this happen, but you know, when they do the investigations and they come through these things and you see where housekeeping wasn’t how it should be or a piece of equipment wasn’t quite where it needed to be. That’s where it starts to get really tough.
And it’s not isolated, just the big companies either. It’s not just the big facilities we’re seeing. It seems like we’re seeing more and more of the smaller locations just kind of independent standalone facilities are having these same issues. And that’s probably a resource problem. They probably don’t have the resources that the bigger guys have to take care of and manage that fugitive dust. And so unfortunately it is a known hazard now. We know how bad it is. We know how dangerous it is. And it just takes resources to keep it clean.
Yeah. And then, that’s just really looking back at 2025. Here we are in March of 2026 and we’re dealing with the same thing. With stuff even local to us. I mean, Perdue, not Purdue University Purdue, but Perdue P E R had an explosion here in Cofield, North Carolina?
Yeah, northeastern North Carolina.
Yeah. And I mean, it’s the same things.
Fatality in that one. We don’t know a ton of details on exactly what went down there, but same story.
Yeah. A couple injured, I think one’s still in the hospital kind of thing. So obviously, our hearts go out to all those that were involved and our thoughts and prayers with the family’s impacted, but then also the people that are still dealing with it. I was reading the fire is still smoldering because they can’t get in there to do a demo because they have to get a lot of the information out of it.
Yeah, not only that, but then you’ve got the issue of a potential structural collapse, getting it shored up and all that. Yeah, not good. And then there was another one, an aluminum dust explosion.
Novelis in Greensboro, Georgia. Yeah. And that was less than a month ago. It was in March, I believe. So, from the article, there’s still not a ton of information because this one is very fresh. And there is a lot of state, local investigation going on, but it seems like it was an outside of the facility incident in a filter system.
Yeah. In a collector.
Yeah. Just reading some of the reports where you could feel the explosion from a great distance and hear it as well. Thankfully, this one was less damaging because it was outside of the facility. But some of the interesting pieces of the article is, as that explosion occurred, the conveyors coming off of the bagging system or the filtration system allowed some of the flames to go inside as well. They were able to control it, obviously. But I mean, really scary incident, especially in a metals application. Because things start to get a little funky when you’re working with those because of their chemical properties and whatnot.
Again, it’s not just isolated to grain. It’s all the dusts. Almost all the dusts have this potential. And that sounds like there was probably a multi-stage failure there that happened. Probably some spark detection failed to extinguish a flame, maybe going into the collector and then it blew backwards. And so, there should be abort gates and again, spark detection, things like that in the system to take care of that. Probably multi-stage failure or some kind of design failure on that, just hearing those details from this standpoint. But man, it’s real.
It is. And I think that’s why, on our side of things, because we’re obviously not in the collection world. We’re more on the housekeeping side of things, but that’s where it becomes so important. Because, if your housekeeping is good, in the off chance that you have one of these events, it is minimized. So, we have to plan for the worst case scenario. I mean, when you’re going through hierarchy of controls or risk control, risk analysis, you know, when you put it in red for high risk, but green for low probability, when loss of life is considered a risk, you have to do some of these hard things. And that is where housekeeping can just do so much for any industry, any facility. Because you minimize those after effects.
Well, to that point, hats off to Novelis, because this probably could have been a lot worse. Be interested to find out what all types of controls they’re using to take care of housekeeping and things like that. Hopefully that’ll come out. We’ll get more details on how they’ve been able to manage that. Because if they did have a large fugitive dust problem inside the facility, it would have been really bad. They would have had the secondary event that could have cost life and facility.
Yeah, it’s an unfortunate reality. But I mean, a lot of the people that we’ve been talking to have been really encouraging. You think about Tommy Cocanougher, Cintas, and how they go about keeping things clean and managing their dust issues. And then on the DHA side of things, I think about Diane and the work that they do to go in and tell people what their risks are. And like, this is how we can work through these issues. It’s not just like, oh, I have a dust problem. Let’s keep producing. It’s like, no, there are clear things that can be done, either from a manual side of things all the way to an automated solution where we can control the controllables.
That’s it. Well, that’s what’s going on in the world of current events. But hey, before we get out of here, speaking of Tommy Cocanougher, that man is still changing the world. He’s outside of his role at Cintas now. But he is working with an orphanage in Nigeria. And he reached out to us and said, I need to get linens in this area for this orphanage. Do you know anybody that can help supply that? And so, I was like, I don’t know anybody in Nigeria that I can call. But he did say he had a resource. He said, if we can get it shipped, I can get it state side, but just shipping is expensive. So, we’ve been able to partner with Tommy and say, Tommy, you get the linens. And so, Superior Linen out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, donated the linens, and we’re working with Tommy. You know, we’ve got some connections with our freight forwarder. And yeah, we’re going to partner with Tommy and see if we can’t get those linens for the kids in Nigeria and help them out.
That’s awesome.
So, if you didn’t see the Tommy Cocanougher episode, go back and watch that. What an amazing individual, amazing human, and grateful for the work Tommy’s doing.
That’s great. That’s really cool to hear.
All right. Thanks for watching another episode of the OnAire podcast. If you enjoyed it, send it to somebody who you think might be interested in it, or not.
They need to watch it, too.
Send it to somebody, they need to watch it. So, thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.
See ya.