In the latest episode of OnAire, hosts Taylor and Jordan take us through the sobering reality of combustible dust hazards as they examine a recent grain dust explosion in Sunray, Texas. While fortunately resulting in only five injuries and no fatalities, the incident serves as a stark reminder of how quickly a primary explosion can trigger devastating secondary events—the very chain reaction that proper dust management systems are designed to prevent.
Taylor and Jordan cover the many aspects of a dust explosion, including the lightning-fast progression from an initial spark to a catastrophic explosion (which can occur in mere seconds), the community-wide impact, as these facilities are often the hub of small agricultural towns, and the stark economic realities of facility downtime and litigation. They also discuss encouraging news from a recent Purdue University study, which shows that dust explosion incidents are holding steady rather than increasing. However, the industry goal remains to eliminate these preventable disasters entirely.
In the latter part of the episode, the hosts share some good news for SonicAire customers: despite rising tariffs affecting manufacturing across industries, SonicAire is committed to maintaining its current pricing by working closely with suppliers and optimizing internal operations, ensuring that safety remains accessible without incurring additional costs for those protecting their facilities.
Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of the ever-present risks associated with combustible dust, the encouraging trends in prevention, and SonicAire’s commitment to providing accessible safety solutions amid economic changes.
OnAire Episode 4 Transcript:
How’s it going everybody? I’m Taylor. And I’m Jordan. And we’re back for another episode of OnAire today. Today we’re going to be talking about some recent events. We’re going to be talking about all things dust as always. But more importantly, we’re going to be talking about safety. We’re going to be talking about explosions, new updates in the standards world, as well as tariffs. What does that have an impact on SonicAire? Hopefully not a lot, but we’ll find out soon. Thanks for joining us.
Hey, thanks for joining us today. So today we’re talking about current events and all things going on, where else but in the dust space. And I’m so happy to be here hanging out with Taylor again.
Yeah, excited to be here. Lots of big things going on. Unfortunately, we had an explosion. I think we’re going to hit that. And then maybe even talk some fun things like pricing and tariffs.
That doesn’t sound fun.
It…no.
All right, let’s get into it. Let’s get into the news. So unfortunately, last month, there was another grain dust explosion. They still exist as much as we are working to try to prevent these things every single day. They do still exist. And so fortunately this one had only five injuries. I know that’s still significant, especially for those particular individuals, but no fatalities, which is a win in this situation. Anytime you can have a grain explosion and no fatalities, it’s a pretty good day.
I would say so. That is a big win.
So, this was in Sunray, Texas about a month ago. And so, we’re going to watch that video and see just what happens. See if we can pick that apart a little bit.
You can see it starts there on the bottom, and then just literally blows the roof off the place. I think this video kind of loops around, and we can see it one more time, but keep an eye on the bottom right side of the screen there.
There we go. Yeah, big fireball down below and then another secondary fireball up top. So, when we see dust explosions like this, there’s always a primary event and then there’s a secondary event.
And that’s what we’re trying to avoid is all of the secondary stuff, especially with our equipment, because that’s where things get out of hand, right? We talk about, especially with new potential customers and things of that nature. It’s like, we understand that, yes, you want to get the dust out and you want to collect it and you want to get rid of those things so that you don’t have a primary event. But in the case that you do, it’s really the secondary events that start this combustion chain because it doesn’t stop. It just continues to go. And one thing that you can’t really see from that point of view, but in some of the newscasts that we’ve looked at and studied up on before looking at this is, this building just goes. Some of these grain elevators are quarter, half, three quarters of a mile long. And so you just can’t really see the impact of what one section of the building may have can really have an impact a mile down the line.
Yeah, you and I both spent a little time in grain elevators recently. And so, we’ve seen the inner workings. We’ve seen the dust that builds up, the dust that escapes. There’s dust everywhere. That is the product, is dust. So, it’s hard to get away from. I’ve seen some photos. Hopefully we can flash those up of this area as well. The lower area where it looks like the primary explosion started. And that was maybe around a boot pit or some kind of lower conveyor on the bottom of the silos. And it looks like it kicked out there. And who knows at this point, I don’t know. I haven’t seen any reports. It’s probably some type of bearing overheat or something like that. That’s a really big deal.
One of the common culprits in looking at monitoring and housekeeping and just kind of all the things that add up, even thinking back to the big one in Georgia, Imperial Sugar. Yeah. And kind of studying that, again, talking about primary and secondary events. Sure, they had an explosion, but it’s like all of the chain reaction that happens after the fact where dust doesn’t just catch on fire, but it combusts over and over and over again through those clouds. And especially each time that happens, more falls from the ceiling. And so that’s just more fuel to the event that’s happening.
But then on top of that, you start to get into the structural stuff because like in this video, you could see it kind of in the bottom right. It kicked out. Imperial Sugar, same thing. You know, you lose a section of structure and then it just starts to collapse. And thankfully that’s not what happened in this situation. I think, you know, we’ve continued to learn, you know, unfortunately as these things happen, but you know, I think that’s what impacts the standards and, you know, the housekeeping mandates and the OSHA and how they go about their business too.
Yeah, no shortage of fuel in a facility like that.
I mean, you can’t see it from this picture, but I’m sure we’ve got some photos that we can share of the silos themselves for anybody that’s not accustomed to these type of situations. You know, they have just tubes that are 50, 100, 150 foot tall where they store all of whatever their product is. In this instance, it’s either a grain or feed. And so, they’ve got that cycling through and they’re, you know, turning it over so that they can keep it graded appropriately and keep all the nasty little critters and bugs and things out of it and keep it temperature controlled. But yeah, they have no lack of fuel for any type of, you know, combustible event.
Yeah. The one thing I’m always amazed by when we see an event like this, and particularly when you’ve captured one on video and you can go back and watch it and see what happens and what’s unfolded. You know, we’re taught as kids when the fire alarm goes off in the school to march single file out the door to the rally point or whatever, and everybody checks in, and you’ve got time. When you have a dust explosion like this, time is the one thing you don’t have. So, the difference from the primary explosion to that secondary explosion when it blows the roof off the place, we’re talking two seconds, maybe? If that. Maybe. If you’re lucky. I mean, just the blink of an eye, literally, and the whole place is gone.
Yeah, and you can see there’s a little truck that’s driving through the area as it’s going on. And so just kind of like thinking about what’s going on in that person’s head as they’re seeing this unfold right in front of them. And, you know, reading the articles about this, I was kind of confused looking at it to begin with because it was like they shut down all the gas applied to the area. They turned off the electrical grid kind of in that run of space. And I was like, well, the mills that we’ve been to, they’re kind of off on their own, middle of nowhere. There’s a couple other of them right beside of it. But basically, if you’re not a rail car or truck or an employee there, you’re not really going to be there. But this view of this video shows that this was at the end of Main Street or whatever this area is, whether they built up the houses to support it, which is probably the case. But I mean, this was a whole community that was experiencing this explosion. And so, it really does bring it into perspective, like kind of the safety aspect of it. And, you know, you never want to hear about like a level of working there or being involved in the event. But like so many of these are probably in similar situations where it’s like, there is a town built around this.
That’s right, it’s the hub. And this was a co-op or still is a co-op or whatever, but it is, you know, so many of these Midwest towns are just like that. I spent some time out in Texas and in Kansas, and I’ve got family out in Western Kansas, and it’s flat and there’s these little gridded out towns, but the center hub of town is that co-op, it’s that elevator. And that’s where the whole community is built around that because all the farmers live there in town and they farm this whole region, and then they all come together and store their grain together in this one spot. And then it gets, you know, shipped out from there. And so it is, it’s the center of town, it’s the hub.
Yeah, it is pretty amazing. And looking into it and reading it, you know, Sunray, I had no idea where that was at. And it’s kind of in that panhandle area of Texas, you know, not too, you know, not too far in Texas is a stretch of a term, but I think the closest big name would be Amarillo or something to that effect. Because, you know, even some of the comments and the threads around the situation were saying like, thanks for explaining where this was because I live in Texas and don’t know where Sunray is. Yeah, I mean, those small-town co-op driven functions, it’s just, I mean, it’s proof that, you know, nobody is not impacted by this kind of thing.
It’s devastating. Devastating to these areas.
And just kind of even the flow of events that happen, because you’ve got the farmers that are bringing it in, and then we have these facilities, which I didn’t know anything about before getting involved in dust stuff. Like they fuel our country. With food, with fuel, and then they’ve got the ethanol facilities. And then, I mean, the same thing on like the meat side of things, if you think about some of the bigger entities that are doing this and they touch like every little bit of a global supply chain, because we’re shipping goods out. And it’s all because it starts with, you know, farm to grain and going into a grain elevator.
That’s it. Crucial. All right, if you work in a grain elevator out there, stay vigilant, stay on top of that dust, stay safe. All right, some good news though, around that front. So, Purdue University just released a study that said there’s been no increase in dust explosion incidents last year and a decrease in injuries. So that overall, that’s good news. They said there were nine US grain dust explosions in 2024.
There were only two injuries and no fatalities as a result of those, according to a nationwide annual study. Numbers are similar to last year with nine explosions, 12 injuries, no fatalities on par with the 10 year national average of 8.6 explosions. So, on par, but maybe not improving significantly, considering the reduced number of injuries, the grain dust explosions are of low magnitude, but look at the damage it can cause to the facility in terms of downtime, repair costs and litigation, said Kingsley Ambrose, Purdue University professor. So exactly what we’re talking about here.
Yeah, I mean, you can’t really call it a win because we’re not improving, but we’re not getting worse. And I think that’s very important. And why a conversation like this and then stuff that like our friends with Dust Safety Science, where they’re committed to trying to limit or eliminate the dust type events.
And so, yeah, I think it’s great that, we’re at least maintaining the average for now, because just kind of looking back at what we were just talking about, this impacts everything. And as an operations guy, like I get the other side of this where it’s like, if we have to shut down even for like an investigation or to go through litigation in this, that cost is going to be small compared to like our opportunity cost of loss for downtime and any kind of return we could have got on the product that we’re turning. And so that’s where it’s big to me, because it’s like, it may be cumbersome or frustrating to have to go through these safety steps, but it just points out why it’s so important. Because we can turn a dollar, we can ship out an extra pallet, but if things are different and this isn’t five injuries and it’s five fatalities, it’s a whole different conversation because it does go beyond just the four walls of where they’re working. They have families, they have a community that cares about them. And so that’s why people like to say safety first or safety is no accident. And a lot of times they just get put up as a banner. And it is of utmost importance, just because you have to realize like, it’s not just about what’s being produced.
In a former life, I was a forensic engineer. And so, I got, I won’t say the privilege, it was not a privilege, but I had to sit in on some meetings where attorneys are discussing the value, the literal dollar value of someone’s life. And it’s really sad and heart wrenching to think about that. Or even if they’re not killed, they’re thinking about, okay, can they return to work? And what would they have made over the course of their career? And then how do we compensate them fairly for that? And just trying to put a dollar value on that. It’s just, it’s sad. It’s unfortunately the world we live in. It’s unfortunately the risk that’s involved with handling dust. And most people when they get into agriculture, probably that’s not the first thing on their mind. They have a lot of other impetus for doing that and getting involved and following that path. And it’s dust explosions is way far down on the list, but it’s scary.
I got to hear Mike Rowe give a speech one time. He does all the dirty job stuff. And so, he’s seen a little bit of everything. And he was telling a story about how he talks with the camera crews and the other guys that are with him on the job about safety in general, because they get a briefing at all of the places they go. They get the toolbox talk, whatever. And they all kind of gloss over safety first. And so, he said that he had kind of come up with a saying, and if it wasn’t him, he had heard it. Safety second.
And I think started putting it on some of their equipment when they would go to these places. One, because it catches you off guard. Because that is very counterintuitive with especially these dangerous, dirty, hard to do jobs. And it was just kind of a reminder for them. When we’re here, we’re in someone else’s space, and they may know the safety rules, and they may know all the processes and things, but we don’t, okay? And so, we have to have this mentality where we keep that at the forefront. And so, I’ve got to catch you off guard with this safety second thing, so that you don’t forget this is important. And so, I thought that was a cool little way to think about safety in a different aspect, where it is your responsibility first and foremost.
Because, even in our shop, I can put signs up, I can say, don’t lift pallets. Make sure that you’re bending at the knees and lifting with your legs, or don’t wave a tool over your head, whatever it may be. But without somebody taking their own responsibility for these types of things, it’s not going to happen. And that’s the same thing with a lot of these dust explosions because it does turn into litigation. I mean, we’ve seen some of the other ones where people were forging documents or hiding information, saying, yeah, absolutely, we’re doing housekeeping. That’s just not the case. And so, it’s just a constant reminder of, this is your responsibility first and foremost.
Yeah. And it takes just a split second for something to go wrong, and then there’s no second chance. There’s no putting that back into working order once you’ve strained your back or whatever, or smashing a finger, or worse, what we’re talking about here, dust explosions. I mean, you can’t back up and just, oops, my fault. There’s no backing up from that.
So, the study goes on to say, keep your equipment in good working condition, do preventative maintenance before the start of harvest and handling season, and check for repairs so you don’t have any accidents. For example, belt misalignment in a bucket elevator can lead to friction, heat generation, and an increased risk of dust explosion, exactly what we’re talking about here. It’s a common theme. We were at the GEAPS grain industry trade show, and a lot of equipment there and discussions on monitoring systems, bearing temps, belt alignment. I mean, just, you got to stay on top of it.
Yeah, and I think that’s one of the interesting things about the grain industry, because it’s kind of, it’s been one of our strong suits as a country for a long time and something that we’ve been doing and we feel like we’re pretty comfortable. But if you talk to these people that are running these mills, I mean, they’re 100, 150 years old, and they just constantly upfit them. And so, introducing new equipment is difficult because the way it was structurally made 100 years ago is way different than it is now. Or the way that they’re pulling the electrical to get there becomes very cumbersome because the facilities are very tall. A lot of them are made just out of concrete. And then they’re also very long.
So, if you’ve got 150 foot to go up and you’ve got to go a half mile each direction to cover all of your bins, it gets very costly. And so, it does become a question of like, are you going to prioritize what you’re trying to do or are you going to prioritize safety?
Safety’s expensive. It is, it’s not cheap.
They go on to say that in 2024, two explosions originated from smoldering grain. Once grain is harvested, he urges people to pay close attention to the conditions that the grain is kept in. Improper aeration leads to fungal growth, which can cause grain and feed to smolder, increasing the risk of igniting dust in the grain bin. So, watch out for that. And then said, “Dust is no good, both for dust explosions and human health. Housekeeping is very important. Keep the place clean. Make sure there’s no visible, settled dust or suspended dust in the air.”
And good luck. I think that’s the biggest thing. I mean, we’re a dust control company, and we’re especially going after that fugitive dust and those hard-to-reach areas. And when we talk to people at GEAPS or even in other industries, like in the wood and tissue or textile space, they just kind of laugh at us because they’re like, “What do you mean? Like, how are you going to prevent this from accumulating?” Especially in the fashion that the standard that they’re held to, and so it is difficult. And that’s what we’re talking about.
But that’s where the safety piece is important because you have to put that at the forefront, or you know you’re making a sacrifice. And that’s some of the things that we talked about in the last recording, where we talked about the pyramid, trying to eliminate the different types of risks. And so, you’re trying to get it to that solution where it can’t be there.
You got to choose to take it seriously. Do something about it.
All right, you just mentioned standards. So that’s a great segue to our next item on our agenda here. NFPA 660, ladies and gentlemen, is out. The new 2025 edition, order today, as it says there on the back. Somebody recently described this as a phone book. So that’s the closest thing. Some of our younger listeners may not even know what a phone book is.
Yeah, it’s exciting. It’s out. We’ve been talking about this for years. It’s a consolidation of many different dust control standards, 652, 61, 664. I mean, just five or six different dust standards all in one place, one central location.
And you know, we’re not tested to the same thing because we’re not generating dust here. But as somebody who’s playing in that space and helping somebody understand that, I think this is great, where we’re getting it all in one place where we don’t have to look at a customer or talk to any of our certifying bodies and say, well, yeah, if you look over here and then you bounce it back off of this standard and then actually go look at the electrical code and then you come back here, it’s all in one spot.
And so, I think they’ve done a really good job of getting it together and separating it out where you’ve got kind of the first half is the old 652 with the fundamentals and really explaining and lining out things. And then as you get further into the standard, you have where they’ve consolidated the different groupings. So, whether it was food and ag or grain, just any of those extra groups, they’ve laid it out so that it’s in one place. You’re playing off the same sheet and you’re using the same language. And so, there’s not as much room for kind of guessing and, you know, trying to wiggle your way out of something or even explain your way into something by saying like, well, it says this over here, now it’s all in one spot.
But I think that’s also something exciting for us because something you’ve been working on for a while is getting on the board. And so now you’re in one of the advisory committees, correct?
Yep, yep. On the Fundamentals Of Combustible Dust Technical Committee, yeah, thanks. Five years ago, I submitted an application to get involved with the standard development process. And so, one of the great things about NFPA is they are continuously revamping their standards and updating them. Sometimes it feels like you’re chasing a moving target, but every four or five years they reissue the standard, and they are very much in tune with the industry because of the representation on those committees. And so, it’s great that they stay up to date. And I’ve worked with standards in the past that are just ancient and they’ve fallen off. And it’s still relevant, so to speak. The industry may still recognize the standard, but there’s nobody around that’s involved with it, nobody to keep it up to date, nobody to keep it current, maybe the test apparatus that was designed for that standard is not available anymore. So, what do you do? How do you modify a test procedure to fit that old standard? So, they don’t have that in the NFPA standard. So, that’s really remarkable and something to be proud of as the organization.
Yeah, no, we’re super excited and thankful that you were able to get on there. It definitely is one of those challenges because we look at especially, well, 652 in the past and now 660, we look at that all the time just because we’re having to help customers as they’re working with their documents, like their DHAs and other items that they’ve been working through. And the standard is tough because as soon as it’s published, it’s about to go into another review cycle for public comments and then their submissions and reviews. And so, I mean, every couple of years, you’re either getting a red line version or you’re getting something completely new. And so, we have to stay on top of that. And so, now having somebody that’s directly involved in that and is going to be in the meetings and seeing what we’re talking about and seeing where the industry is going, I think is super helpful for us.
Yeah, I’m sure we can put a link to this in the comments and section down below, but go check out the standard if you work in dust, which I’m assuming you do since you’re here checking us out on this podcast, but go check out the standard. You can view it for free once you create a login account there with NFPA. But if you want a hard copy or a downloadable PDF, you’ll have to purchase that, but good stuff there. And it’s exciting. And if you don’t know where to start, start with a DHA, a dust hazard analysis, and get your dust tested to see if it is combustible or not.
And we recently saw a test. We were playing around on the internet looking at all things combustible dust. And somebody’s come up with a pretty cool way to test it.
Yeah, we’ve been looking, well, we work with some local colleges here and do some capstone projects and get them to test different things. And in the middle of looking around, we did find that there’s been some students working on something at the University of Virginia, not too far from us, where they have created a repeatable test to show dust explosions, for lack of a better term, right? So, they’ve created what would basically be a silo type situation or any kind of tube storage type facility. And they’re loading the dust in there. And by dust, they’re using coffee creamer and flour and all those little neat things, giving it a stir and have a heating element in there to show that it is combustible. And have changed up a few different things so that it is a little more repeatable and quick to do the test.
But yeah, it was a pretty neat video. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that we tried to do it here. We were not as successful, given the amount of time that we tried to do it, but it was a neat little experience to try and replicate something else that is going on in education right now.
We’ll put the link up for that as well. Just a quick footnote though, and disclaimer, do not use this as your official go no go test for your combustible dust. It’s something fun to play around with, but it is not your official dust test that you’ll be able to use for your local inspectors.
Yeah, speaking of safety, this would not be the way to go in your own facility.
This is a controlled laboratory environment test, so be sure to use it just for that.
Yeah, this is where we insert disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, and have somebody read some real fast texts below us.
Yeah, sure, our legal department’s going to jump on us for this one, but oh well. We’ll ask for forgiveness instead of permission on this one. All right, tell us what’s going on with you in your world.
Well, not a lot, just kidding.
(Laughing)
So, we were talking about operations and safety is expensive earlier, and that’s been the name of the game for us here at SonicAire with all of the daily changes, depending on the humidity, that determines right now who gets a tariff and when it gets implemented and taken away and things like that, so.
I said recently in a meeting that tariff is going to become a new drinking game. Everytime somebody says the word, we have to take a shot.
Well, we would be all very highly intoxicated right now. So, with that being said, that’s definitely been a challenge, and I think one of the things that we’re committed to, especially being in the safety space, is that we’re not going to immediately impact any of our pricing. So we’re looking at doing some things with some aftermarket kits, but as far as the product that is coming out the door day to day, the new equipment, we’re trying not to touch that. And so that’s one of the things that I’ve been tasking the operations team to work on, and we’ve started since the beginning of this year at actually cutting costs. And so, we’ve been really evaluating suppliers and taking a look at what their offerings are, kind of what we need versus what we’re getting, and then who is going to be a strong partner for us, right? Because we’re not just looking for a vendor.
We have core values here and a core focus, and we’re super committed to that, and that goes beyond just our four walls, kind of like how we were talking earlier about safety expanding just beyond that, where it’s not just impacting the people that you’re working with inside of your facility. We want to have relationships with our suppliers and vendors and customers that is not just transactional. We like to have a good time here, and so we also want to have that kind of relationship with our vendors. And so, economy and tariffs and who’s paying and who’s not paying has gotten really tricky. And so, it’s also been a very difficult time to go to a supplier and say, hey, we’re not changing our price, so I need you to not change your price, or actually it’d be great if you cut it. And so that’s been a tough conversation.
But it has really been eye-opening looking at them as partners, because we talk about growth a lot here and even use the phrase 10Xing this place and where we’re trying to get to. And so having those conversations and understanding we’re in this for the long haul, we’re not just some new cool thing to throw in a facility and we’re going to sell out and move on, and seeing like, all right, this is our vision for the long term. This is how we want to be able to help serve people. And getting people on board with that has been great. And in some cases, like our prices are going up, because we’re going to change a vendor or whatever, but we’re offsetting in other areas, or we’re going to eat it in some of the other areas. But finding that partnership has been really rewarding.
I ran into one of our partner vendors over the weekend, and he has just gone through this process and reduced his prices to us and been able to go back to his supplier and renegotiate things there. But he’s grateful for the opportunity, grateful for the relationship, and doesn’t feel beat up in the process, feels partnered with. And so, we’re continuing to work together and he’s thrilled about it.
Yeah, I think that’s been the biggest piece. It’s kind of just the honesty and clarity behind it, because I get hundreds of emails a week from vendors. And since the beginning of the year, it’s definitely been like, “Hey, we’re gonna send you 5%, just kidding. “We’re gonna take 5% away.” And then it’s like, “Oh, we’re gonna add 10%, now it’s six.” And so, just getting clarity from them and an understanding of like, we move good product here. We’re not moving millions of units a year by any stretch of the imagination. But we’re trying to protect ourselves. Like, we have to generate money so that we can get the product out and protect people. But so do our vendors, and we understand that. And so, I think that understanding where they’re coming from and why they’re making changes and how we’re going to be impacted, I think just kind of the transparency has been the biggest thing. And so yeah, like I’m not going to these people and saying like, “If you don’t cut $5, you’re out.” Because we have a hard time getting components in anyways, because they have to be UL approved. And then if it’s slightly different, we have to send it in for a construction update. And so that’s money, money, money every time.
It’s a pretty unique product, too.
It is. And so, if somebody just turns off the gates, like, and we can’t produce, then we’re not helping anybody. So, I think having this long-term vision of what we’re trying to do and explaining that to the vendors and trying to get them on board with us has been great. Yeah.
I recently heard that Walmart said they’re fighting back on their suppliers and saying, “We’re not taking your tariffs. You can figure out a way to work it out yourself.” And so, we’re taking that Walmart approach.
Yeah. And I mean, and what’s different is they obviously have a little bit more footing. They’ve got the volume. Yeah, they can do it. And so, I think that’s where leading with who we are and our why and going to these vendors has been a rewarding experience for both parties. Because we understand that, you know, we’re not just doing this to make money, right? You know, we’re trying to live out our vision for, you know, where we’re trying to go in the dust space. That’s right.
Well, I think that’s about it for today. So, you heard it here first, folks. No new tariff increases on SonicAire fans. So, we’re doing our part to hold it down and keep providing that same great product that we’ve been creating for years.
Yeah, excited to do it. Yeah.
All right, hey, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for checking us out once again. If you enjoyed what we’re doing here, please like and subscribe down below or wherever you are getting your podcast content. I’m Jordan. Thanks for watching.