Safex Newsletter No.80 May 2024

Welcome to the 80th SAFEX Newsletter. A third of the year has already sped past and SAFEX has been very busy serving the industry.

  • GPG 12 has been completed and posted on our website : English version - Spanish version
  • Webinar 6 – Management of Change – was successfully hosted by EPC Groupe and an article by Thierry Rousse explains the outcome of the Webinar in this Newsletter.
  • A new eLearning Module in Conjunction with ENAEX in Chile, ‘Why we need to do Periodic Hazard Studies on existing plants’ has been developed and now been launched on the SAFEX website.
  • The date and place for the SAFEX Congress XXI was pinned down: Please note this important event, hosted by ORICA, in your calendar.
  • A new GPG on Management of Change is under preparation. The development of an ESP eLearning Module is well advanced, which will also result in the update of the current ESP GPG on the Website. Work has also been initiated on an Explosives Security GPG.

The global explosives industry plays a crucial role in various sectors, including mining, construction, and military operations. However, working with explosives also carries significant risks, which is why safety measures are of utmost importance. SAFEX International is a leading organization dedicated to promoting safety within the explosives industry. With our expertise and resources, we provide training programs, guidelines, and support to ensure that companies and individuals adhere to best practices when handling explosives. By partnering with SAFEX International, businesses can enhance their safety protocols and minimize the risk of accidents or mishaps. So, whether you're a seasoned professional or new to the field, SAFEX International is there to assist you in maintaining a safe work environment while maximizing efficiency and productivity.

I hope with this Newsletter that SAFEX manages to assist you to improve your safety offering to our industry !

Tyre Fires on Vehicles

By Ken Price

Western Australia has had three such fires on ammonium nitrate or Ammonium Nitrate Emulsion vehicles in the past two years. One fire transitioned to detonation. In working through the analysis of these events, it occurred to me:

  • All the deliveries were to mining operations;
  • Ammonium nitrate is not the only dangerous goods being delivered to mines. Indeed, there are many other goods also delivered on the same routes.

This then begs the question: What other dangerous goods (or non-dangerous goods) are being lost to tyre fires that spread to the load on those delivery routes ? Truck fires of non-dangerous goods don’t normally make the news unless they are on a major arterial route. However, a dangerous goods vehicle going on fire, even on a remote mine delivery route is usually newsworthy. However, there is rarely news of diesel fuel tankers going up. Or LPG tankers. Or corrosives. Or cyanide. Or explosives.
They are all using the same delivery routes, same axle loadings, usually the same transporter.

Some questions for which I don’t have any answers:

  • Are carriers losing trucks to fires at the same rate across all cargoes ?
  • What is different about ammonium nitrate and ANE vehicles compared to other dangerous goods vehicles and compared to general cargo vehicles?
  • Are drivers of LPG tankers for example checking their running gear (brakes, tyres) more frequently than other drivers ?

Transporting Cyanide – Could our industry learn from cyanide?

The 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill was a leak of cyanide from a gold mine near Baia Mare, Romania. On the night of 30 January 2000, a dam holding contaminated waters burst and 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide-contaminated water (containing an estimated 100 tonnes of cyanide) spilled over some farmland and then into the Someș river. The polluted waters eventually reached the Tisza River and then the Danube, killing large numbers of fish in Hungary, Serbia, and Romania. The spill has been called the worst environmental disaster in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster.

That accident in Romania prompted the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the former International Council on Metals and the Environment (then headquartered in Ottawa) to convene an international workshop in Paris to discuss ways to improve the management of cyanide in gold mining. The workshop, involving nearly 40 individuals from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, including a number of Canadians, led to the development of the Cyanide Code: the “International Cyanide Management Code For the Manufacture, Transport, and Use of Cyanide In the Production of Gold”.

The Cyanide Code is a voluntary, performance driven, certification program of best practices for the management of cyanide in gold and silver mining. It was one of the earliest standards and certification programs developed for the minerals sector, and today it is amongst the most established certification programs in the mining industry. It has been successfully adopted around the world at mining operations in widely diverse conditions and climates, in developing and developed countries.

To obtain cyanide from accredited manufacturers, mines must use accredited carriers for delivery and must adhere to and be certified compliant with the ICMI storage code. Manufacturers may only use certified compliant carriers to deliver and must ensure the mines they supply are compliant with the Code. Not a government regulator in sight.

So What?

There is no shortage of regulations, Codes of Practice, company policies etc applicable to the transport of explosives, ammonium nitrate and Ammonium Nitrate Emulsion. And if there are transport regulations in place, with a reasonable set of inspectors in place to administer those regulations, your carriers may be inspected once a year or two. The inspector will check that, at the time of inspection, each truck has wheels on each corner, the placards are in place, the wiring looks good, fire extinguishers are current and so on. The best ones will also review your systems for training, licence currency, vehicle maintenance etc, however these are rare. For most countries, inspections are routine and look at a snapshot on one day.

What about the other 364 days of the year?

Some questions for you:

  • How often do you check that your transporters are compliant with the regulations?
  • Forget the regulations! Are your transporters operating safely?
  • If the answer to that is “yes”, can you prove it if necessary?
  • Are the regulations adequate? Does your company have more stringent requirements?
  • Do you check your contractors yourself or get the transporter to self-certify compliance?

Magazine Standards

Australia is currently reviewing the national standard for storage of explosives which was last reviewed nearly 30 years ago. Just think of the technology around in the mid-1990s. Mobile phones were worn on your belt, portable computers weighed a ton, we used cables to connect to modems to access the internet. And as I try to think of other examples very few come to mind. So many of the things we take for granted didn’t exist then. Bluetooth? Wi-Fi? Smartphones? The word “phone” doesn’t even appear in the current Australian Standard. If you wanted to call someone you went back to the office or found a phone box.

What dangers to these technologies present to explosives in storage?

When your hearing aid probably has Bluetooth to allow you to answer your smartwatch, which uses Wi-Fi to minimise internet costs, do you need to remove all those devices before entering a magazine?

What if your magazine is storing only boosters or water based explosives? Or your detonators are all shocktube or electronic? If the detonators are electric, in their boxes, with wires coiled and shunted, is there really any risk of premature explosion from a mobile phone?

You can significantly improve security by having scanners on your magazine doors that read chips in your packaging, so you know exactly what explosives are in your magazine and who has removed what and when they did it. Can this be balanced against the (miniscule) risk of premature explosion? Then you can do your periodic stock reconciliation with a scanner and tablet.

And having asked all these questions, the kicker is: is the regulatory framework that you are working in flexible enough to allow you to do a comprehensive, competent risk assessment and legally adopt changes to your operations that balance the hazards and the desired safety outcome?