I think it's bc whoever is making them actually cares about human safety, not corporate profit margins. Industries that put profit before employee safety are literally always volatile/toxic, regardless of the type of business the industry conducts. For example, the gaming industry burns out its employees with crunch, the film industry meddle with projects to get more money (ruining the film in the process), etc etc
Its because its not really a "commercial venture" just pure safety, so you get rid of all the parts of BUILDING TENSION, STORYLINE , its just basically, THIS IS WHAT WENT WRONG THIS IS WHAT TO DO TO STOP IT HAPPENING AGAIN
Who is the plastics expert? (why does everyone feel horny now after having read it aloud) and why would one need to be one to repeat a basic fact from history?
@@straifus3742 I'm the plastics expert and touche, I guess I was just repeating a basic fact. I thought perhaps I might get questions on PTFE and its toxicity I could answer.
I imagine, DuPont having invented Teflon, that they go around like well we could use the right thing here and people won't die BUT WHAT ABOUT USING TEFLON INSTEAD
Phosgene is one of the nastiest poisons on earth. Years ago, I was doing a weld repair on the rear axle from my racecar. I had ground out a crack, and used brake cleaner to flush out the oil residue. Before welding, I noted that the brake cleaner was non-flammable, so I didn't bother cleaning up all the residue before I started welding. As soon as I started a weld, and within seconds of taking a single breath of vapor, I nearly passed out. I'd never had a vapor affect me that quickly, so I immediately shut off the welder and ran outside to get fresh air. After some time catching my breath, I opened up doors on both sides of the shop, and grabbed the can of cleaner to take back outside and read the label. At the time I didn't realize this was a chlorinated solvent. The label prominently stated it was non-flammable, but I had to read the fine print to learn that upon exposure to high temperatres, it would react to form other hazardous compounds, one of which was Phosgene. I looked Phosgene up online, and the first thing that popped up was that it was the chemical weapon agent responsible for the most deaths in WW1. Since that day, I'm a lot more aware of the chemicals I use, and the sometimes unexpected results of their use.
Yea, chemicals can be nasty like that. They can be 100% safe and perfectly fine until you do something to them. Thank you for sharing, I'm planning on doing some stuff like that to my car and I'll be sure to not do that
By the sounds of it, the cleaner (I'm assuming it was a chlorinated cleaner) contained carbon tetrachloride or tetrachlorethylene, which when heated produces phosgene gas. It works awesome as a degreaser, but can be quite deadly from prolonged exposure (in liquid form), as it causes cancer among other joyous diseases. Prior to the 1950s it wasn't uncommon to see CTC used in fire extinguishers as it is really damn good at putting out fires, the only problem is it also kills the person putting the fire out. I actually have a Ford branded fire extinguisher from the very early 1940s that used CTC as its extinguishing agent. If I'm not mistaken, CTC is so toxic, it can be detected on your breath for up to a year after preliminary exposure. Tl;dr Don't use chlorinated brake cleaners
@@1SunScope Tipical answer huhhh. Lets wait till there is at least a dozen then we will look into it. I work with hazmat and it always stuns me when its ohhh do we really need it. Down right pisses me off.
@Clark Gable my wife's dad was stationed in ft. Knox Kentucky. His company had guard duty on a metal building surrounded by double 8 ft fencing with double barbed wire. No one ever went in, no one ever came out. With the exception of two, ALL members including my wife's dad died years later with different types of cancer.
@Kartsand Cameras lol you don't know shit about anything so no one cares whatever you decide to post. I'm sure your employment and salary correlate pretty well to how stupid you sound.
@@truenews8357 no but rich men will at least behave like life is worth something if they know there is a significant dollar amount for it. If a company has no risk of being sued or facing other costs for losing a worker's life or seriously injuring a worker, it'll likely start risking life and limb in the interest of maximizing profit. Lack of fear of losing money gets a lot of people killed on the job. A lot of the videos on this USCSB channel are for accidents that would have been prevented if the company wasn't being extremely cheap and underestimating the value of health and safety for its workers.
I was the contractor that built the storage shed for the cylinders as well as the Bridge crane that carried the cylinders from the storage racks across the road to the unloading scales. I was told previous to our work DuPont used a forklift to unload the cylinders from a flat bed tractor trailer. Only one problem. They kept dropping them. The cylinders are are designed to withstand some abuse but they felt that there luck would eventually run out. With the installation of the storage shed and bridge crane they were able to eliminate using the fork lift. There was also a road between the two buildings that a tractor trailer could use to pull in between the buildings and be unloaded by the bridge crane.The cylinders were stored in the storage building. When a cylinder was needed the bridge crane moved the cylinder from the storage building to the unloading scales rack. At that time they weren’t using a braided hose but instead a small copper line to unload the cylinder. We were very careful around the area but a fallen wrench during construction could have easily severed the line as the unit was in production during the construction process. I will have say that despite this tragedy conditions were even more unsafe previous to our construction. I also saw a figure of 2 million for a complete enclosed building. I can assure you that our work did not cost anywhere near those kinds of numbers. The storage building that we constructed had a roof and walls extending I believe vertically 4’ from the eaves. The costs to enclose both structures would have been well south of $250,000. Thats in late 1980’s dollars.
As a former chemical operator I have witnessed "accidents" that were due to saving money. The only thing that makes management do anything safely is the fear of a lost time incident. Unfortunately the managers are more concerned with saving money on production costs rather than worker safety, especially in smaller plants.
I worked at a mine where 5 people were killed at work over 10 months. The local police chief put a stop to it. He said, "One more death and I'm jailing the whole upper management. You can then get your city slicker lawyers out here and we'll call up a circuit judge to see if they can get you out". The result was immediate. If you did a single thing that was against safety you were suspended without pay. Sit on a desk, thats a days wages. Desks aren't made for sitting on. The fear of just a single day in our local jail made those guys get serious. We only had 4 deaths in the following 4 years. That is 4 too many.
Its when the cost of insurance payouts outweigh the cost of fixes. Its in sooooo many different occupations and they do it to customers as well. Car recalls being an example. They wont recall cars until the costs of paying to victims outweighs the costs of recalling and replacing the cars. This happens everywhere in different degrees.
I haven't worked in a very dangerous dangerous industry. In fact I've worked in very safe industries. But I have seen too many shortcuts taken which I've felt uncomfortable with. To me, you follow the directions, regardless of whether you think they are necessary. If the bottle says do not mix with x or y, just don't mix it. And yet supervisors and managers try to tell me to do it anyway.
Darksepheroth Same. I'm binge watching. Check out WorkSafeBC on RU-vid, they have the best ones in my opinion. If you find a better one please let me know!!
These are just as strangely interesting as those shows about air crashes. And the analysis of the decision making problems that lead to these situations is useful for many different lines of work.
I like them because it's pretty unadulterated infomation. Like it's not all jazzed up and annoyingly edited like lots of infotainment these days. It's just the facts laid out logically and calmly. Also everyone has morbid curiousity about accidents, so the combination is addictive.
I watched this about 2 years ago, and never really thought much of it again, but then I had a weird dream a couple weeks ago where Lucy Tyler the CSB Investigator turned up at my house to condemn our Soda Stream for being dangerous because the plastic is all cracked, and it took me this long to remember where I had seen her before and then look up random safety organizations and accident videos till I found this one again. yeah I probably have plenty of other things to spend my time doing, but this was driving me up the wall. If Lucy ever reads this, I'm sorry I called you a Fizz Thief.
I worked this job at the Belle plant in the nineties. I knew the man who died. The people who have commented here and mused over his death I feel very sorry for you. As far as I know he did nothing wrong and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We all had been told how dangerous phosgene was. We occasionally smelled gas leaks which would get your attention quickly. But it was the liquid we were told that was the killer if you got it on your skin. However it took the death of one of my friends to prove what we had been told was right.
It did seem like it was one of those rules that end up getting written in blood. Like in aviation, some problems only got discovered through tragedy, like how square windows on pressured aircraft create a time bomb. Was only discover after it had taken lives sadly.
Companies get negligent with routine check ups of equipment after everything has been going well for a while, people lack to communicate and properly maintain older equipment, and it unfortunately costs the lives of workers. I'm really sorry for your loss, this is an awful tragedy that could have been avoided had the higher ups done a better job.
@@trouty7947 It wasn't a square window, it was a di-electric ILS/localiser antenna that started the crack propagation. However these tragedies DID kick start forensic aircraft accident investigation.
My husband recently retired after almost 30 years in the "powerhouse" at a paper mill. The last few years he was a boiler operator. He and I were both glad to finally have him home after such dangerous jobs.
I delivered to mills and my brother, an engineer, says that some of that stuff is highly toxic, so much that pipes have to be replaced every few months.
I worked in a paper mill for about a year. Lot of shit around there made me kinda uneasy. One time something went wrong in the boiler and they had to vent it. Sounded like the end of the world.
@@TomFromRU-vid I used to rent a duplex across the road from a paper mill and I remember them venting a few times. It's like having a fighter jet fly over but 10x louder and it goes on for half an hour lol.
@@SmethwickCouncilmanBint yup...happiness n fortunate both are different terms.. Used for different situation... Right! For example-i was fortunate enough tht got rescued on time els situation would have been different. Second example-i am so happy tht I cracked this exam. here I CNT use term like lucky or fortunate... On tht context I had shared my thought to tht gentleman. How someone can use term like "Happy " where someone els died on ur place... If he would have not been moved by contractor from tht blast location then just imagine...
@@SmethwickCouncilmanBint I ll consider ..i was lucky and fortunate enough tht am saved...as am saved on tht my family friends will be happy...to know am alive
@@SmethwickCouncilmanBint u got me wrong..I did not instruct him to use those words ol I said instead of being happy u should feel lucky or fortunate tht u are not one of those victim who lost their life in tht incident. Thts it bro
"Where do you want this highly toxic Phosgene?" "Oh yeah just put it in the Phosgene shed." "Um....this is just a sun roof." "See the sign?" There is a sign labeling the carport as a Phosgene shed......
@@maxcarren112 if it was enclosed properly it would be inside a room with venting and employees handling the phosgene would be required to wear hazmat suits. Venting and suits would prevent death in case of a leak.
It's amazing that the hoses needed to be replaced so often, yet the workers who REPLACED AND INSPECTED the cylinders in operation didn't know they weren't being replaced. For your own safety it really helps to know what you are working on, even if you don't know the entire process.
They modified the software to ignore change hose reminders, which would of saved that guy from dying. If you think safety is expensive, try an accident.
@volvo09: There would be hundreds of people in the plant. Each worker might know they had not replaced the hose, but would have had no way of knowing that *no one* had replaced it. @mattlogue1300: Er, it sounded to me more like the software got updated and the new version didn't remind them the way the old one had. I didn't get the impression it was deliberately disabled.
I agree worker should know the how, why, and when in regards to what they are doing. However it's management's responsibility to ensure they are educated and competent.
This video got me pissed. As a chemical engineer and manager working in an industrial environment in Hungary, I find both the statement and the established process unacceptable and basically a stewardship failure from the stakeholders at DuPont. You should be ashamed of yourself! Even here in this small European country with a lot smaller GDP we have every phosgene operations enclosed and entry is only possible with positive pressure oxygen supplied hazmat suit. Even the control rooms are ventilated and the surrounding town has emergency procedures in case of a leak in Kazincbarcika, BorsodChem plant which is owned by a Chinese firm. Let that sink in…
@John Smith I saw that with my own eyes. And I am in no way a fan of the Chinese nation or their people or their communist government in any stretch of the imagination. However, to tell the truth the plant was built far back in the past long before they took their feet in.
I worked at a place - for 1 day - in the late '80's. My 'safety briefing' on chlorine delivery was, "If you see a cloud around that truck, hold your breath and RUN! 'Cause it'll kill you!" I asked about respirators and got a blank look. I didn't go back for day 2.
@@unintentionallydramatic that must be an oversimplification, it must cost either more time or more money, otherwise it'd be what the business was doing to maximise profits anyway
@@trif55 In an idealised scenario, yes, but people don't have this level of foresight, especially when many decisions need to be made using quarterly earnings reports as the organisational pacemaker and many on the ground workers match their bosses organisational incompetence with a poorly adhered to safety culture. There's no such thing as a perfectly rational actor. That's arguably the real point of laws; To account for flaws in individual human foresight.
Its not wisdom that is missing, these decisions were made by psychopath managers who for their life can't feel empathy but at the same time know that these kind of things will affect some workers eventually. The thing thats missing is humanity.
If you pay taxes in the US, then in some small part, you are helping to make these videos Though I believe most of it would come from corporate/business taxes and non-compliance fines. Fines usually go directly to investigation and prevention
@@nadapenny8592 The financial system is extremely complicated, but companies only pay taxes because they make money off workers. Wealth is created by the labor of the workers, not the investors. It all comes from the workers in the end.
As i currently work at a plant with Multiple HHC's inclcuding AcryloNitrile. These specific videos encourage me to be even more vigiliant when working with them. Im glad this information isnt classified to only organizational use. And is free to the public, Operators and Civilians.
I often bitch and complain about the outside intervention of the government and other regulatory commissions. Being a 40 year Commercial Electrician, those very organizations have no doubt saved my life and fellow coworkers. And to that I owe them all a massive Thank You.
How do you hold those two incompatible thoughts in your mind at the same time. I hate government/regulatory interventions. They've saved my life. I don't understand it at all.
I've worked at a chemical plant in Appalachia. They frowned upon proper PPE (Chemical Suits/Respirators) They thought it would make them look bad or something. This is just stupid. I would refuse setting foot in that phosgene room. That man would be alive today if he were geared up.
+fla playa Yeah I can see that happening. people like to follow the crowd for some reason. if someone goes by the book and wears ppe they could be teased for it. most adults are still kids in that sense.
+fla playa PPE has saved my skin (and eyes) multiple times over my years spent in the lab. Coworkers can tease me all they want but my chemical apron, face shield and goggles are a lot better than a missing eye. In other words, I couldn't agree more.
Wow glad to hear from like minded individuals that think their eyes, skin, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, brain etc are more important than corporate profit... Never let anyone tell you that you are a pansy or a sissy because you request PPE.. Glad to see this... Did me good seeing real stories instead of shillery. Thank you!
+noturbinesinhell Car Dealership, 1940-1965: "Oh, look at that. Dummy wants seat belts installed in his car, lololololol! I want my face implanted in the windshield instead of thinking for myself and suffering ridicule for taking care!"
Austin Lucas Strange as fu^ck you mention that.. I had a car with defective seat belts and put my head through a windshield when I was 18. Could have sued but was led away from that.. Permanently disfigured over horrible engineering.
I knew a guy in Texas who worked at DuPont. He broke his leg on the job, they took him to a hospital, set his leg, and sent him back to work, to sit in a chair for 2 months, with pay, so they wouldn't have to file an accident-related time-off case.
@@bargauze9599 unbelievable. You hear an employer hid an accident after a guy broke his friggen leg, then paid him regular wages and no recovery time or comp for breaking his friggen leg and your first thought is "why can I have that"? Truly cucked mentality.
I feel that this channel is one of the best of its kind! The narrative explains some of the complex and technical procedures, in an easy to understand manner. This channel is of great benefit to not only the United States, but the whole world. 👍🏻
@@yegmtb8377 Why bullshit? SOMEONE took that guy to the hospital, and if that guy worked around chemicals he doubtless knew that he was in for a very bad day at best. Why might it not have been this guy's friend?
@@57Strudel because anyone could say that id couldve said i was the EMT thats why i call bullshit you see unless he had a date, time etc etc id believe but im gonna need alittle more than this to make me convinced. Great story though
@@yegmtb8377 Yeah I get that. It's just the "why bother" factor that made me curious ;) Because as you said, anyone can say anything in a RU-vid comment.
10:00 "It may be that in the present circumstances the business can afford $2 MM for an enclosure; however, in the long run can we afford to take such action which has such a small impact on safety and yet sets a precedent for all highly toxic material activities?" How's that working out for you?
Well unfortunately. Working out pretty well for companies. The fines they receive are laughably small, in fact they calculate potential fines & damages vs the cost of building safety measures. And as we know, Safety measures are often circumvented. Truly sad
The bullet point above that on the form, calculated that the assumed cost for loss of life and public outrage would be in the range of $143 million. Seems like the $2 mil shed should have been a bit more of a priority
I love the Chemical Safety Board, thank you guys for going thru the effort to make these videos. It's incredible the lengths even safety forward companies will go to to avoid spending an extra dollar
Yeah, I used to respect them because I believed their public relations statements and whatnot... But after hearing their inside responses and actions to known deadly and hazardous worker and civilian conditions I lost all respect. They have knowingly poisoned people and communities while pushing statements and advertisements saying things like no safety issue is too small.
I watched a doco about duponts push in the 60s to have hemp wiped out by demonising marijuana and eventually criminalising it, just so it could monopolise it’s new product, polyester, for rope manufacture, which it would go on to make billions from
@@bullwinkle69 watch The Devil We Know. I dont want to spoil it but itll piss you off more than their fuckery with marijuana. They knowingly poisoned the entire human population with a cancer causing chemical. Also the heir to the dupont fortune raped his 4yr old daughter but got off with house arrest because he "wouldn't do well in prison"
For the record: Phosgene can be fatal in concentrations as low as 2 ppm. By contrast, carbon monoxide can be fatal over 1200 ppm. Let those numbers sink in the next time you see 1076 on a shipping placard.
You should never see that number unless you work in the industry, because of how dangerous it is. If you do see it, you're probably not allowed to be where you are.
Most phosgene is made at the plant that uses it. I'm a little surprised DuPont, who has the capability to make chemicals, doesn't have a phosgene reactor on the premises.
I was working at another Dupont plant when this happened and remember getting emails afterwards to not speak to anyone and to save all emails in case of a legal battle
Spent a few years as a contractor at DuPont in Old Hickory TN. The safety procedures were insane. I regularly tore down, Turner gauged, and rebuilt 16 dow therm a vaporizers. That was just one job I did there I worked in 4 different trades back then. It was great experience for a 21 year old kid.
“It may be that in the present circumstances, the business can afford $2M for an enclosure; however, in the long run can we afford to take such action which has such a small impact on safety, and yet sets a precedent for all highly toxic material activities.” That's Dupont's entire attitude in a nutshell, miserly callousness at its finest.
My father became an executive at Union Carbide. He was told to leave when he introduced safety and antipollution measures in his division. He, and most of his colleagues who had joined the company in Charleston West Virginia, died of terrible cancers and other illnesss
That "blue man:" "Carl Daniel "Danny" Fish, 58, of Gallagher passed away Sunday January 24, 2010. He was a 32 year employee of DuPont, Belle Plant He was a graduate of East Bank High School. He was past State Coordinator of West Virginia K-9 Search and Rescue, Inc. He was one of the Charter Members of WVK9SAR, Inc. He was on the Fire Squad at the DuPont Plant. He was a member of the King's Way Christian Church of Nitro, WV and a Veteran of the Vietnam War. He is survived by his wife of 25 years Donna Lytle Fish, his son Kyle Eugene Holmes Fish, Uncle and Aunt Jack and Jeanine Hornsby and cousin Jeffrey Hornsby of Michigan, Mother and Father in Law Carl E. and Wanda M. Lytle of Charleston."
At least in this video they admit that saving money (profits) is behind two of three the errors/decisions. When it's the NTSB they say clear of anything that points to the company profits and capitalist greed.
about 25 years agoi worked at a small firm that produced specialist fabrics, there were only 16 guys worked there but what we did was very advanced for the time. DuPoint were the big boys in the industry but everything they did we had been doing for about 18 months before they even thought of it . on 2 occasions we caught and had arrested guys going through our waste in the yard at night . both times when the police turned up they sang like canneries , both were privat investigators hired by DuPoint to try and get samples of what we were making
Some pencil neck says "more safety will take money out of my multi-million dollar armani suit pockets... screw it." And someone making minimum wage or barely over it dies.
What caught my attention was the change in procedure without notification of and update of the procedure. This did occur at the plant I worked at before I transferred to another. That incident occurred because an electrical panel had been rewired without notification to upper management of the change which rendered the breaker inoperable for lock out tag out. When equipment was taken off line to repair and inspect the panel was used for lock out tag out per operating procedure but the step of testing was not performed until several workers had entered the confined space tunnel. Only after a 2nd shift worker arrived, locked out and actually tested the equipment prior to entering was the danger found. A massive investigation was carried out since this was a violation of the Lock out Tag out program which discovered the root cause of the violation, the modified breaker panel. Several workers were disciplined as a result of the incident for violating the lock out tag out program.
I went to un-wire a large extruder motor and the millwrights that were already removing the mechanical parts had a large group of locks on the disconnect for the motor cooling fan, not on the actual motor. I pointed it out but they shrugged it off. It looked just wrong when I pulled that disconnect, with their locks, and tossed it under the nearby oven.
@@ThePzrLdr Yes, although they would need the operators to perform that part. Should have waited for electrician to bring it all together before starting to work.
10:00 they actually try to calculate the risk and how many people will die and determine that spending 2 million dollars for a proper storage facility wasn't worth it because they could afford to lose a few lives once in awhile.
Auriam but they were meant to change the steel hoses every 30 days meaning that the risk would be extremely low anyway, the fault was with the workers not replacing the hoses
I think the language they used was more towards, "If one manufacturing plant gets to work without risking their lives to deadly chemical exposure, then they will ALL want to."
The fault was with the plant, because it stated that there was a change in the procedure software and the changing of the hoses was left out, so the workers had no idea of when to replace the hoses.
Yes but ALL decisions revolve around reasonable cost/benefit analysis. Do we wrap our kids in an extra protective layer of bubble wrap while driving?...no.... that would look silly. It would also slow us down. Cost is measured not only in dollars but also time. Another lesson is that computer software is always dependent on the code writer and those doing implementation. It gets complicated fast. They can call it AI if they want but it is still code that humans must tweak. In medicine we have gained nothing from electronic health records other that giving insurance companies a better way to decline payment.
Im a former Dupont employee, the Dupont Bell plant has had a long saftey violation problem. I feel they are an embarrassment to the rest of are Dupont plants. Washington Works plant went 30 yrs. without a ACCIDENT. Bell seems to have leaks or safety problems and even deaths do to equipment failure and lack of proper maintenance.
Marlene Norman You can and SHOULD file an anonymous complaint with OSHA and/or the CSB. I know OSHA has the anonymous complaint forms right on their website and you even get to choose if you want to allow them to contact you for more info or not. You'll be saving lives man, I urge you to do it!!
Going into Charleston on foggy mornings from Huntington id notice the blue bridge that they could never finish painting....also noticed all the dead trees along the south side of the river along the road ...the air when cooled off forms dew, this must saturate organic materials. wonder what the ph of the dew is around there.and what chemicals are in it I remember when it flooded how the chem ops ponds would fail and head downstream...always a corporation ooops!. I still wont drink city water anywhere in the u.s..
One of the few enes that I missed exposure to, but benzene, toluene, atrazine, zylene, etc. were a part of my everyday fare. A chemical called "colene" or "coalene" was the first poison to almost kill me in the work place. I've witnessed 3 deaths in the workplace because of unsafe practices and have been poisoned by chemicals to the point that I suffer a disorder known as arsenoneuropathy. It is encumbent on the worker to know what he is dealing with and it's effects, because most companies do not inform their workforce as well as Dupont did at the plant in question. People do die because of poor/infrequent maintainance as was the case in one of the deaths I witnessed. Employee error caused another--he ignored safety regs. The other perished in a fall doing maintenance on the machine that killed him. Learn the regs. Don't do anything in haste. Maintain your equipment. Stay safe workers. You are what make the USA great.
If a chemical is so toxic that it will destroy your lungs and kill you if you inhale it, then obviously it should be MANDATORY that you wear a mask whenever you're working around it! That's common sense! Also, companies shouldn't just be given "recommendations" for better safety practices after an accident, they should be FORCED to do it. As in, either they immediately make improvements or they get permanently shut down, period.
ct92404 Well don't look for any new safety regulations while Trumpty Dumpty is on the throne. He's already rolled back safeguards and pollution control. Repugnican morons are drooling at the prospect of huge profits to be gained and nothing is in their way. The next Bhopal is gonna be right here in 'murica. It's inevitable. Government regulations put in place to protect the workers are being gutted. He's promised to do it and he will. The adulation and money is how Trumpty measures success.
Considering that process safety didn't have any significant improvements under the last president either I don't see how your argument stands. You make a point of how under the current administration that huge profits are to be made from the rolling back of safeguards and environmental protections. None of the accidents here happened after the election. Safety has not changed at my plant, nor has the environmental regulations. As far as profits are concerned, share holders drive that. It has nothing to do with the particular political party in office, only economics.
The CSB does not seem to make or enforce regulations. They make recommendations to organizations that already have the authority to make or enforce regulations.
For anyone who doesn't think safety as a priority has never worked around chemicals or been exposed due to the negligence of their employer. I worked for a castings company that was part of a well know gun manufacturer. In the pickling room ( cleans the casting with moltan salts and HCL) the reset button for the ventilater on the acid bath was directly over the tank. One night the vent cut out. Resetting it mean walking into a cloud of HCL. I couldn't hold my breath long enough to get to the reset, the cloud built up quickly. The operator ran, the foundry was evacuated. Maintenance was furious because I didn’t run in there ( me being leadman on the crew) and restart the vent. I asked for 2 hazmat suits with SCBA. DENIED. I should have called OSHA and reported it. We had some shady practices at that facility. Great product, poor safety compliance. Walked away after that, not worth the money!
I worked in a foundry in NY that had two plants on either side of us that used phosgene. One plant had a bad track record and would have releases too often. They eventually went out of business, the other plant would have releases just not as often. They had alarms around their perimeter. If the gas was bad enough you would see the green cloud. We had emergency action plans in place, sadly we used them about twice a year. We didn't mess around. When the alarm sounded we cocooned in the break room until it was safe.
I googled this to learn more about the worker who was killed, and above the stories about this incident were several news items about other workers killed on the job more recently - before Christmas 2022. Heart breaking.
Again my thanks to CSB for making this material available to the public. That we may make informed decisions concerning possible employment. DuPont does not have a great track record. Risking employee and public safety just to save money is unacceptable. Thanks CSB. We will be sure to do our part that you are fully funded to do yours.
How do employees who changed hoses once per month suddenly forget to change the hoses because software stop reminding them? This went on for 7 months. At 2 months I’d be like hey what about these damn hoses we keep reusing?
Angelo You are so right. Is it corporate politics? Are frontline employees afraid to speak up when they know something's wrong? And time passes to the point where it's too late and someone unfortunately loses their life
It's likely that no one realized they hadn't been changed. If the notification from the computer was set to X day of the month, then it would be changed on a different day of the week each month. This could mean different people changing the hoses each month with no one person doing it regularly. Without any prompt of "this hose is bad", each employee probably assumed that someone else had already changed it. This is why documentation is so important. There should have been a book for the hoses with inspections/change out forms that was frequently reviewed. Additionally, the hoses should have been tagged with their install date (and probably color coded for season as well). This way, anyone could easily find out if there is a problem. Especially given the extreme lethality of Phosgene, checking the hose tags should be part of the procedure of switching cylinders.
This is what happens when profit becomes more important than worker safety. I've seen 2 deaths at 2 different mills since I became a Millwright 7 years ago and 1 of them was 100% because upper management didn't want to take the time to do things the safe way. 2 hours of production was more important than a man's life. From that day on it didn't matter to me how high up the person was, if they told me to cut corners (and be unsafe) while I was fixing something I'd explain to them why I was doing it that way and if they didn't back off after that I'd stop what I was doing and tell them they could get someone else to do it that my life is more important than any paycheck or job. 90% of the time in my experience it's people in management that do that the most, because they have no idea how dangerous something is.
amazing institution and investigation thank you for yuor tremendous contribution. btw dupont has been an amazing company so far and the way they approach things very concrete and scientific
7:54 She looks absolutely disgusted at the fact they didn't do an investigation. She doesn't just work with safety standards, she IS the safety standard.
The chemical safety board (CSB) conducts the extremely (emphasis added) thorough investigations of these events. therefore they have all the facts to be able to make these accurate videos.
Being an safety professional i am really enjoying, learning so much from this CSB. Thank you so much for these resources, keep doing it, it will keep educate, motivate, develop skills, of safety professional and also employees,,, Thanks
The main dangerous thing about Phosgene is how difficult it is to detect. It's invisible, doesn't show immediate symptoms and the only way it can be sensed is that it smells vaguely of "moldy hay".
These are excellent videos and they really do bring to light things that otherwise may go as unimportant or trifle. Especially the "near miss" examples that should have been regarded as being early warnings. I just retired from a manufacturing plant after twenty five years and can attest to how things get "swept under the rug" like nuisance alarms and things of that nature. They are unintended and not purposely done in negligence, but they DO happen. Luckily, we didn't have very hazardous materials or chemicals like phosgene, but we did have ammonia and kathon for a time, and those were bad enough to deal with. At least in my area.
The irony is DuPont invented the Teflon that lined those metal braided hoses and failed over a few months time. I use those same hoses with AN fittings for oil and coolant on my hot rod (almost everyone does).
The stainless steel braid on the hose (which should never have been specified) failed due to permeation of the Teflon. Permeation of Teflon is a natural phenomena, and not a product defect. When the permeant vapors attacked the stainless steel braid, causing it to fail, the hose ruptured because the braid is the pressure-retaining component. Current industry standard for these hoses is now a PTFE lined hose with a braid made of either Monel or Kynar PVDF.
I was nervous working at Meineke auto because they hired gangbangers (no joke) and had caustic cleaning chemicals unsecured in huuge tanks. Get some of those in your face or mix the wrong ones and you have a Bad Day. I can't imagine working with freaking PHOSGENE around idiots.
Jon Carey I know how you feel, we deal with caustic and acid. There was a DuPont plan a mile down the road from us until it shut down a couple of years ago.
@@JCarey1988 I wonder which branch. My local Meineke branch isn't sketch at all, but I still am seriously worried about some of the workers back there with the chemicals they use. Automotive compounds are no joke.
Know that there are stand up companies out there. We had a fleet a few years back that converted a handful of trucks to natural gas. When I refused to work on their trucks due to a completely ill equipped facility, I was threatened with my job. To this day I have no idea other than someone overhearing the conversation, but the next day my boss was fired with extreme prejudice. To that end, he had a half dozen mechanics walk out on him several days before. So it mightve just been the straw.
I read that since this accident, DuPont discontinued using phosgene at their plant-probably a wise choice. I agree with others about PPE use, especially when working near chemicals that can kill in milligram amounts.
That plant got spun off to Chemours and then they sold it. I read an article where the new owner said that section of the plant had not been used since the fatality. I don't know if the new owner still uses phosgene.
he didn't have to die this was entirely preventable but it costs more money so it was overlooked so some shitloard can make 40 million dollars insted of 39 million
My dad worked for a cigarette factory for a couple of years (in Mexico) until he developed severe headaches and strange skin rashes. A couple of years after he moved jobs he developed “medication” induced diabetes... he was 27 at the time. I’m strangely fascinated by these type of videos. My dad told me that he was exposed to cigarette sludge fumes day in and day out. 🤔
Du Pont in Antioch CA 1975 a worker was walking by a door used to put giant 600 pound blocks of lead in a furnace. The door was 6 feet high because of the melting process to make lead additive for gas. As he walked by a melting block of lead slid against the door, and fell out crushing him.
It serves as a non-descript truck that does not favor any American manufacturer in particular so as to not show any form of inferred favoritism. The joys of litigious corporate entities...
I saw once a student pouring Oleum and Chloroform together at the end of a practical course, in order to get rid of the chemicals. In the evening, her lung collapsed.
@@vanlendl1 I studied environmental science, I even had to work out such an introduction in organic chemistry for tenth graders. I am not sure which strange school / university you are attending, but here in Germany, we would never allow a student to handle such dangerous chemicals without proper knowledge. Hell even I would have a little fear, to work with oleum. But my personal nightmare are hydrofluoric acid, Hydrogen fluoride or organomercurials. One little splash on unprotected skin goes straight through your skin, it's incredible toxic stuff.
It doesn't surprise me that when they looked into it, they found repeated instances of negligence by management, or protocols not being followed. Almost every company I've worked for, in service and manufacturing, has cut corners in some areas - some more critical than not. There are things that I've brought to my supervisor's attention that should've warranted a second pair of eyes, only to be met with a shrug and being told not to worry about it. Some companies will do anything to skirt corners and only follow processes that allow as little work as possible for as high of a return as possible - even if the processes they decide not to follow can potentially put people at risk.
At the very least, they should have had a copy of the old maintenance/checklist to go over the plant until the computer system had successfully checked over everything. This would have at least caught the hose being bad after 30 days, instead of the hose exploding after 7 months. With that problem spotted, the computer program would have been subject to more scrutiny.
I will never wrap my head around how humans can treat each other as disposable and replaceable. It's very clear that someone or several people at a minimum were well aware of the dangers due to a lack of maintenance and proper investigation.
The fault was not with the PTFE liner. The industry standard today for hoses carrying chlorine and chlorinated compounds like phosgene Is PTFE lined hoses with an outer braid made of either Monel or Kynar PVDF. The PTFE lined hose with a stainless steel braid was doomed to failure from the moment it was installed. PTFE does permeate, which is not a product defect, and therefore the permeant vapors will come in contact with whatever the braid material is, and Phosgene attacks stainless steel quickly.
