The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Grain Elevator Explosions

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Just before Christmas three grain elevators in widely separate locations exploded, and a fourth caught fire. The fire occurred on December 22 in an elevator belonging to the J&R Grain Company at Court-land, Kansas. No one was injured. On December 22 the grain drying room at the Sunshine Mills and Grain Plant in Tupelo, Mississippi exploded, killing two people and injuring seventeen. That same day an explosion at the Continental Grain Company elevator at Westwego, Louisiana killed at least thirty-five workers. Five days later a modern, eighteen-month-old elevator in Galveston, Texas exploded, killing eighteen. Total casualties from the four incidents: fifty-five killed and fifty injured. Tonight, what really caused those tragedies, and what`s being done to prevent more? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the grain elevator explosions also set off a series of bureaucratic explosions here in Washington. There are four federal agencies involved in regulating different aspects of grain elevator operations, and three of them have been directly involved in the fallout from the recent tragedies. Here`s the agency situation: there`s the Agriculture Department`s Federal Grain Inspection Service. Its inspectors check the weighing of the grain at the largest elevators. It has no direct responsibility for safety, but it can pull its inspectors out of any given elevator considered unsafe, action which has the effect of closing it down. Twelve FGIS inspectors died in the recent explosions; one is still missing. Then comes the Environmental Protection Agency.

It enforces clean air standards, which restrict the amount of grain dust that can be discharged out of elevators. Next, the Labor Department`s Occupational Health and Safety Administration -- OSHA. It sets and monitors safety work standards within the elevators. This includes the permissible level of grain dust allowed inside. The fourth agency is the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the healthful quality of the grain itself. So far, at least, the FDA has not been caught in the post-explosions flack.

But the other three have, accused of either not enforcing their standards or enforcing them too stringently, among other things. The most serious charge is that the differing federal regulations are in conflict with each other, and the confusion could have even contributed to causing the explosions themselves. Robin?

MacNEIL: For an explanation of why grain is so dangerous, and some thoughts on what might have happened, we turn to Richard Ginnold, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School for Workers. Professor Ginnold has studied hazard in the grain industry, and he`s the author of a paper called "Grain Elevator Occupational Safety and Health Problems." Professor Ginnold, how common are explosions in elevators -- how many a year, for instance?

RICHARD GINNOLD: Insurance records show that there are from 2,000 to 3,000 significant fire and explosion losses annually. Now, only probably a hundred or so of these would be considered major explosions, and maybe ten of those would involve loss of life or major numbers of injuries. But there have been something like 1,200 major explosions in the last sixty years, and they`ve been occurring regularly over that period.

MacNEIL: What causes them, in the sense of why precisely is grain dust so explosive?

GINNOLD: Grain dust is an organic dust, and any dust which is combustible, like grain dust, if it`s in suspension in air and oxygen and it has the right mixture, can be exploded. And there are many reasons that grain dust is so explosive, but just for a relative measure, coal dust is the standard of explosibility, and grain dust is approximately seven to ten times as explosive as coal dust.

MacNEIL: The danger is greater in an elevator than in a coal mine, given the concentration.

GINNOLD: Given the same kind of concentration, yes.

MacNEIL: Could government regulations prevent these explosions?

GINNOLD: Back in the early 1900`s, there were many coal mine disasters, and some major grain elevator explosions before 1920, causing hundreds of deaths. And this touched off an interest in dust explo sions under the old Bureau of Mines Chemistry Division. And they came up with guidelines and common sense measures for preventing explosions based on dust control and eliminating ignition sources and various specific measures thirty to forty years ago. Most of these measures have not been implemented in grain elevators. Now, in coal mines we have had more concentrated application of these codes; we have had laws, codes and enforcement and inspection, which has been much stricter in that area than for grain elevators. I feel that possibly you can`t prevent all explosions, but you certainly could eliminate many of the ones that are now occurring, through good enforcement.

MacNEIL: Why have these standards not been enforced in grain elevators when they have been in coal mines?

GINNOLD: Because the grain industry has had a position of resisting enforceable codes, and because grain workers, who are the ones affected, have not been as politically and organizationally strong as the miners. But I think this is changing to some extent, and people are waking up to this problem.

MacNEIL: Jim reported a moment ago that it`s been suggested that regulations between the different agencies are even being blamed -- possibly the conflict between regulations of the different agencies may even have had some connection with these explosions. What is the agency conflict as you see it? Do you have a sense of the conflict between different agencies? For instance, the EPA has encouraged grain elevators not to let the dust outside so that it will pollute the atmosphere; OSHA doesn`t want the dust in the grain elevators where it`s going to harm the health of workers. And there seems to be a strain between these two different ends.

GINNOLD: I feel that the two regulations are complementary, and the systems exist for filtering and collecting grain and having an effective exhaust ventilation system, and I think they`re quite compatible. One problem is that neither agency has been fully enforcing its codes. The local agencies of EPA perhaps have put their requirements in place to a greater extent than OSHA; that is, they have been requiring of terminal elevators that they have bag filter collection systems, but OSHA has only been inspecting a very small number of these elevators to see whether dust concentrations actually are above health limits. Dust concentrations have to exceed health limits by about 3,000 times before you can have an explosion occur, so I feel that if you were actually enforcing the standards for health, you would be eliminating most if not all grain explosions. And I think the engineering is there, these are technically feasible; they do cost some money, but there`s no reason that they`re not compatible.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: One of the country`s largest grain companies is Cargill, Incorporated. They operate some 175 grain elevators, including large export elevators like the ones that exploded last week at four cities. Bob Hubbard is the Cargill vice president who is responsible for plant operations. Mr. Hubbard, what is your educated theory as to what caused these elevators to explode?

BOB HUBBARD: The elevator explosion is explained as when you have a mixture of oxygen and a dust which -- in this case, grain dust -- may have some mineral dust in it because there`s soil in the grain dust; when it reaches a certain mixture and certain conditions exist, and if you then have an ignition source of sufficient energy to ignite and set off an explosion, you can have an explosion within a confined area. And that`s technically what happens. There are many reasons that have caused grain dust explosions in elevators over the years, and the grain industry has recorded those explosions and we`ve worked to eliminate the ignition sources, the concentrations of the dust...

LEHRER: Ignition sources, meaning a spark from a piece of electrical equipment, that sort of thing?

HUBBARD: Right; doing anything in the elevator that would cause ignition, such as smoking, burning or welding -- any hot operations; or in our maintenance programs, to be sure that we`re not operating with hot bearings or overheating motors; to be sure that our electrical equipment is enclosed so that we don`t get sparks or hot contacts from those things. So we`ve had procedures within the grain industry over the years to counteract explosions.

LEHRER: Well, what do you think has happened to cause this recent rash, a relaxation of those procedures, or an ignoring of them, or what?

HUBBARD: It could be only coincidence, but I don`t think we can rely on that. We have spent time individually as grain companies and also the industry itself in the last few days, doing some soul-searching and looking at what we`re doing differently to determine if something is different that could be causing additional explosions.

LEHRER: Any conclusions?

HUBBARD: No, we have something that had to be checked further. For one, we know that there are different chemicals being used in the agriculture industry; farmers are applying different pesticides. It`s possible that they are residuals that, present in the grain, may complicate or increase the explosive mixture. So we have to pursue Chat one. We do have to look at the changes that we`ve made in our dust and ventilation systems to be sure that we haven`t done something that`s causing us a greater problem than we had before.

LEHRER: It was suggested at the first, when these explosions first occurred -- and I want to ask you this to set the record straight, at least from the industry`s standpoint -- and that was the suggestion that they could have been caused by sabotage. Is there any indication at this point of that?

HUBBARD: I have not seen reports on these explosions, but that is seldom the case, and it`s again one of the things that you cannot avoid -- or you`d be negligent if you don`t investigate it; but I believe that that is probably not the case here.

LEHRER: You heard what Professor Ginnold said, that these kinds of explosions could be prevented if the existing federal regulations, particularly the OSHA regulations, were fully enforced by OSHA and were honored by the industry. Do you agree with that?

HUBBARD: I`m not sure that OSHA has specific regulations in the explosion areas. They have their general safety regulations, which they are enforcing in grain elevators, but when you get into the causes for explosion, you not only have explosions that can start in the open areas of the elevator -- that is, what we call the space areas -- but they can start within machinery. And I don`t believe that we have regulations covering those things at this time. I think OSHA has been working in those areas.

LEHRER: The professor also charged that your industry has resisted the enforcement of whatever regulations do exist. Is he right?

HUBBARD: No, I don`t believe that. I think that some people in unions maybe feel that we haven`t done all that we could do, but I think there`s been a very conscientious effort over the years to improve the elevator operations. One thing that we used to have, a tremendous number of what were called "spontaneous combustion" fires in grain elevators because a grain bin would just heat up and all of a sudden there would be an explosion and there would be loss of life and loss of property. We have developed systems where we now have temperature cables in those bins, and we monitor the temperature rise and we do something about it if it starts to rise; so we don`t have those spontaneous combustion fires. We`ve greatly improved our dust collection, and we`ve improved all of our safety hazards. We`ve got more to do, but we have been conscientiously working on the program.

LEHRER: All right. Thank you, Mr. Hubbard. Robin?

MacNEIL: As we`ve heard, the federal agency with prime responsibility for the quality of the work environment is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also known as OSHA. It`s the job of OSHA to enforce its industrial safety and health standards in grain elevators. Frank Greer is a special assistant in the office of the director of OSHA. Mr. Greer, has OSHA had trouble enforcing its regulations in this industry?

FRANK GREER: Well, I think that the important question is not simply enforcement but whether you have compliance. And our first responsibility under the Act is to set standards. We have extensive standards covering ignition sources, covering the cause of these types of explosions, and the question is whether the industry complies with those regulations.

MacNEIL: Does it?

GREER: Well, unfortunately, in some situations we`ve found that they do not. In New Orleans we had had five inspections at that grain elevator; and as recently as November we actually had a serious violation of an electrical grounding provision. It was later abated, we did a follow-up inspection, but in some situations it unfortunately appears that all of these standards are not being met. Something is setting off the explosions, some ignition source; and we feel that if the standards were followed that are provided for in the general industry standards, we could prevent some of the ignition sources that cause these explosions.

MacNEIL: Professor Ginnold just said that the concentration of dust that makes the mixture explosive is, I believe he said, 3,000 times the concentration that is regarded as injurious to a worker`s health. If the health standard level were enforced, would the explosive mixture be there, whether there was an ignition source or not?

GREER: That`s true; and I think that the one other thing that I may have failed to point out is that we actually have very limited resources, especially inspection resources. At best, we can inspect maybe

two or three percent of the work places in the country in a year.

MacNEIL: There are thousands of elevators, aren`t there?

GREER: There are over 10,000 elevators, as a matter of fact.

MacNEIL: And how many inspectors have you got to look at those?

GREER: About 1,400, but that`s to cover five million work places

and many other hazards that confront American workers.

MacNEIL: How many who just do grain elevators?

GREER: I really don`t have those figures.

MacNEIL: I see. The Federal Grain Inspection Service, which Jim mentioned, said last week -- the administrator said -- that his people had found serious hazards at the Galveston elevator, the other one that exploded with such loss of life, and that the company had not been cooperative in correcting them. Was OSHA aware of that situation?

GREER: Unfortunately we were not. There had been extensive negotiations between the Grain Inspection Service and the company. We were never called in; we were never notified, and we had no knowledge of the conditions that existed there. Perhaps if we could have come in, we could have avoided that tragedy.

MacNEIL: Would it be a good idea if the Federal Inspection Service talked to OSHA, and vice versa?

GREER: Well, I want to say that over the last week there`s been very close cooperation between all the agencies involved, and a commitment on the part of the Grain Inspection Service to notify us of hazardous conditions that may be developing. And we`ve had a commitment on that from Secretary Bergland and from the head of the Grain Inspection Service as well.

MacNEIL: But that wasn`t happening up until just before Christmas.

GREER: Unfortunately not.

MacNEIL: Just one other question. Your department is about to issue, as I understand, a hazard alert for elevators sometime in the next few days. Can you give us some sense of what that`s going to do?

GREER: Well, we`ve had extensive meetings with technical experts, and we`ve had a great deal of assistance, actually, from the industry as well, to try to develop any recent information that would be valuable to put out to the industry and to the workers involved. It will also reiterate the standards that cover the prevention of the ignition sources and give basic information that we`ve been able to develop from the investigations that we`ve carried on so far. Those investigations are continuing, and we may come out with more detailed guidelines in the future.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: As I said at the beginning, the Environmental Protection Agency is interested in the environment outside the grain elevator. Through the Clean Air Act of 1970, EPA set standards for the permissible level of dust, including grain dust, in the general environment. David Hawkins is the Assistant EPA Administrator for Air and Waste Management. Mr. Hawkins, applied to grain elevators, what do your regulations specifically require?

DAVID HAWKINS: The federal government doesn`t have regulations for pollution control which apply directly to grain elevators. Instead, what we at the federal government do is set general standards for air

quality for general levels of dust, and it`s then the responsibility of state and local governments to develop specific regulations that apply to different industries which limit the amount of dust that goes into the air.

LEHRER: But you set the overall standard.

HAWKINS: We set the overall standard, which is designed to protect public health, that`s right, and it`s up to the states to select the particular kinds of industries that they want to regulate in order to meet

the overall public health levels. And what most states do is set a general type of regulation which says that for industrial and materials handling operations you may emit so many pounds or tons of pollutant into the air. There`s a misimpression, however, that those regulations convey an interest on the part of the agencies that the dust be kept inside the buildings, and that`s not the way these regulations are implemented. What agencies do when they work with the industries to meet these regulations is they tell them about the installation of control equipment which will collect the dust from inside the building, take it out of the building and collect it in control equipment; and that`s why Professor Ginnold said that the OSHA regulations and EPA regulations are compatible.

LEHRER: Well, in other words you`re saying specifically that EPA, or through whatever state regulations that might filter out of the EPA regulations, that you do not require the elevator operators to keep that dust inside, right?

HAWKINS: That`s right. We ask them to collect it, get it out of the work place, collect it in equipment that filters the air so that when the air is ventilated from the building it doesn`t have dust in it as it goes to the outside air, but is collected outside the building and is kept from going into the general environment.

LEHRER: All right. Has there been a regular coordination between EPA, OSHA and FGIS on grain elevators specifically before these tragedies occurred?

HAWKINS: Yes, there has been a coordination in the development of future regulations that EPA is considering for new grain elevators, and we, back in 1976, when we were first drafting these regulations, which haven`t been issued yet, did consult with the Agriculture Department and did get comments from other federal agencies and state and local agencies and from the industry involved, and that`s been continuing.

LEHRER: It`s been suggested, as you know, that EPA might relax its air standards as it relates to grain elevators specifically for safety reasons. Is that a realistic possibility?

HAWKINS: Well, when we had the technical experts in from the industry, we asked them on two different occasions, would there be any advantage that could be seen from your point of view in relaxing any emission limits; is there anything in state emission :Limits or the way they are being enforced that is stopping you from taking some step you might feel necessary to prevent a hazard. The general answer we`ve gotten is no. The one possibility that some of the industries want to explore is the possibility that while they`re in the process of installing control equipment at some of these currently uncontrolled elevators, whether they would be allowed to open up windows and doors and things like that. And this is something that we`re certainly going to look at very carefully, and if we conclude that this would make sense, we`re going to advise the states that they ought to look at individual elevators and determine whether they can do this.

LEHRER: Other than that, does EPA plan to do anything that it wouldn`t otherwise do as a result of these grain elevator explosions?

HAWKINS: Well, we are going to go through our regulations once again to make sure that we focus on not just the installation of the control equipment but to make sure that we have adequate safeguards to ensure that this control equipment is adequately maintained and operated. This is a policy that we are following generally in the agency to give more emphasis to, because it`s one thing to put the control equipment on, but it`s also equally important that that control equipment is well-maintained and well- operated and so we`re going to be focusing on that; we probably would have done it anyway, but this concern will give us added impetus for that action.

LEHRER: All right, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Hubbard, as a representative, or a member of the industry, does the industry believe that this EPA regulation in any way could have contributed to the situation by encouraging -- as I`ve read is be lieved -- encouraging you to keep the dust in the elevator?

HUBBARD: I don`t believe there is a general position of industry that takes that point of view. There may be some individual people that have their private reasons to believe that. But I believe that the technology is available so there need not be a conflict between air pollution control and the protection of our environment, and the explosion problems that exist within elevators. I don`t believe there has to be a conflict.

MacNEIL: The industry has, as I understand it, Mr. Hubbard, a financial interest in the disposal of the dust. The dust is actually valuable; if you take it out of the grain it lessens the weight of the grain, and it actually has some nutritive value -- I believe it is used in making dog food and things like that. It has actually a value, is that right?

HUBBARD: Yes. It has a nutritional value, sometimes very close to that of the grain itself. However, it is extremely difficult to handle, so once you`ve separated it out it is not as attractive a product to merchandise, and we do not have a system in the country for really merchandising the tremendous quantities that would be produced if we separated it out completely from the grain.

MacNEIL: I see. One other question, just on the industry`s side: is the fact that the United States has a bumber grain crop this year, which represents such a large part of our exports and our exports are so crucial in view of the balance of payment situation -- I believe more than twelve billion dollars will be the sales abroad this year -and your having to push through an awful lot of grain through these elevators in a hurry -- is that possibly a factor in this current situation, the rush to get it out?

HUBBARD: Only if a facility overloads their safe capacity, and that`s true in any industry; it`s true in the grain industry. You have a known safe capacity of your plant, and you cannot be doing business beyond that. And we all have to remember that and stay within those limits.

MacNEIL: Do you suspect that those limits may have been exceeded recently?

HUBBARD: I don`t really think that it has been exceeded, because most elevators actually operate quite a bit below their capacity. I believe that even with two elevators out of operation for a period of time we will be able to handle the grain movement without a problem. It is a very competitive industry, and I do not think that it really has been overloaded.

MacNEIL: Professor Ginnold, listening to all this, would you make very specifically your point again? Do you believe that it is simply that the government hasn`t tried hard enough to draw up and enforce regulations and the industry hasn`t been made to cooperate? Is that the point you`re making?

GINNOLD: Yes. I think if we were as serious about preventing grain explosions as we are about preventing coal mine explosions that we could apply some of the same techniques of better application of dust control and of better elimination of ignition sources, and solve the problem. One further point on what the industry is doing with its dust. It`s returning the dust to the grain and shipping the dust on to the next transfer point so that the next elevator has to take it out of the air. And in many cases it creates a higher dust concentration; this aggravates the problem. Also, the exhaust systems are not being maintained. I know elevators up in the Superior-Duluth area where they have dust a foot and a half on the floor, and the people go around and knock down the exhaust ducts and pounds and pounds of dust falls out of them. They don`t do housekeeping, and in many elevators this is true; this is the problem.

MacNEIL: I`d like to pursue that, but I`m afraid our time is up. We`ll have to keep an eye on this story. Thank you all very much in Washington, and good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Thank you, Professor Ginnold. That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.

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