Things that won’t ignite or explode in their usual forms (like metals in bar or sheet forms) will ignite when in a large enough quantity of very fine dust particles. The ignition source can be something as simple as a static discharge caused by the friction of all the dust particles jostling each other.

To have a dust explosion, you need large amounts of a combustible dust suspended in the air at high concentration, plus an oxidant (usually just the oxygen in the air will do), and an ignition source.

Metals such as aluminum, magnesium, zinc, and titanium are combustible in dust form. And you probably know that sawdust, tobacco dust, pesticides, and coal dust can trigger explosions as well. But you might be surprised to realize that grain, sugar, flour, spices, feed, powdered milk, dyes, and even pollen can combust as dust. Just another incentive to conduct good housekeeping. Indeed in 2008, 14 workers were killed in a sugar mill in Georgia when the sugar dust ignited and violently blew up the plant.

Good housekeeping and cleanliness are especially important in large industrial settings like the feed plant in Omaha, where large concentrations of fine and combustible dust could be produced by daily operations.

Investigators of the accident at the International Nutrition plant in Omaha are focusing their inquiry on the final seconds before the explosion and collapse (or the collapse and explosion) to try and determine which came first. Our industrial plant collapse attorneys understand that the plant was more than 40 years old. So large amounts of dust might have collected in the spaces between walls and strucural members. If the massive collapse of the top two floors occurred first, that accident might have released a dense cloud of potentially explosive dust.

And since ignition of a cloud of combustible dust doesn’t require open flame, merely the friction of the particles, an electrostatic discharge, electrical arcing from equipment, or even just a hot machine or surface, any number of things might have triggered the explosion.

Click the link to read more from the industrial plant collapse attorneys at Denena Points, PC about the issues involved in the deadly Omaha feed plant accident.