Hazardous Substance Shipping and Accidents

Hazardous substance
shipping and accidents
Courts and their views on public policing, private security
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Background
• Airgas, Inc. is the leading distributor of industrial and health-
specific gases in the United States.
• The plant faced a deadly explosion in 2016, causing death to a
worker and injuries to many.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration penalized
Airgas with $21000 for the failure to provide a safe workplace
to the workers ("Report: Lacking safety measures led to fatal
Airgas blast", 2017).
• This presentation will discuss the reasons that caused the
incident and the impact of it on the workers.
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Summary of the incident
• On Sunday, August 28, 2016, at 12:10 pm, in the Cantonment
area of Florida, a truck loaded with nitrous oxide exploded at
the Airgas’s chemical manufacturing plant ("Investigations
CSB", 2016).
• It was reported that there was a pump to transfer Nitrous oxide
gas to the shipment trailer and the amount of heat supplied by
the pump to the gas was beyond the safe operating limit and a
dangerous chemical reaction took place.
• The blast was caused due to overheating of the pump during
the transfer of nitrous oxide gas (Healy, 2017).
• In the blast, one of the Airgas employees died while working
at the facility at that time.
• After the blast production of nitrous oxide in the plant was
stopped for an indefinite period. 3

Impact on the health of employees
and safeguard
• As per the final report, one Airgas employee died in the trailer
blast.
• To avoid accidents and loss of life of workers working with
nitrous oxide, measures that can be adopted by the company as
per the Environment Health and Safety Guidelines, referred
below;
1. Using proper visible pictures for labeling, marking and
placards in cases of shipment for the hazardous substances.
2. Wearing a nasal mask and protective clothing is a must for
workers (Boiano, Steege, & Sweeney, 2017).
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