Safety Conflicts

Ken Price
Expert Panel Member – Safex International

As a member of both the chemicals and explosives industries, it is interesting to observe the various parallels and conflicting issues in the industry.

Some 20 years ago the chemicals industry was under severe threat from consumer and environmental groups. This was prompted by a series of serious accidents, spillages and misuse of chemicals.

The industry responded by setting up the Responsible Care program, an initiative led by concerned CEOs, and it resulted in a series of principles, Codes of Practice and guidelines, and a commitment to improve. At a later stage the Australian chemicals industry association initiated an audit program for members.

One example is the tension between chemicals manufacturers and the packaging industry. Costs are a major driver for many of the industry’s actions. The chemicals manufacturers put pressure on their packaging suppliers to supply cheaper packagings. So the packaging industry makes lighter and lighter packages to reduce costs. Packaging standards are set internationally at UN level and the standards are performance based. In other words, to transport liquids, drums must pass a vibration test and a drop test and a pressure test and so on.

Unfortunately, it has happened that the package manufacturers can supply a drum that passes all the relevant tests, however, it can’t reliably survive a 900 km journey from Melbourne to Sydney. No chance of crossing the country (4000 km by road and rail). And if you want to transport goods to anywhere beyond the bituminized road system…Dreamin’!

Then we have the issue of managing logistics and inventory. Chemicals companies aren’t logistics companies. They want to concentrate on what they know best: making chemicals. Nor do they want big stocks of inventory at their plants. Along comes a big transport company who offers to do all the deliveries for them. And store stocks as well. “You make it, we’ll take it from there. Just tell us what has to go where and we’ll do it for you…”

My observation of this process is that the chemicals companies are happy to avoid their downstream responsibilities. They will probably do some audits of the transporters to salve their conscience but, really, the transporters have no clues about chemistry. The chemical safety knowledge resides with the manufacturers.

So much for Responsible Care in the chemicals industry.

Over the past 20 years I have observed parallel tensions in the explosives industry. In our industry it is the big users (miners) demanding lower costs from the producers, and the explosives industry being pushed to meet those demands.

In olden days, when explosives were much less forgiving (NG based gelignite and safety fuse) the safety imperative ran all through the industry from the manufacturer to the shotfirer.

My observation is that explosives manufacturers are still very aware of the inherent dangers associated with their products, but safety expertise diminishes as we move towards the blast hole.

On-site manufacture in mobile units was a significant safety improvement, taking enormous quantities of explosives off the roads and replacing it with much safer ammonium nitrate or ammonium nitrate emulsion.

While much of the explosives safety knowledge resides in the explosives industry, numerous mining companies don’t want to pay the safety premium, preferring instead to utilise their mining experience to buy the raw materials and use (and sometimes service) their own mixing vehicles. This lends itself to the same divestment of responsibility as described above for the chemicals industry.

Fortunately this divestment of responsibility is not so rampant in the explosives industry as has occurred in the chemicals industry. We retain manufacturing within a relatively few global companies, and storage requirements continue to be based on secure magazines located according to consequence distances, not statistically modulated distances based on probability. But there is never the same level of awareness of the properties of explosives in a mining company as there is in an explosives company.

Maybe that is why we continue to have so many repeat accidents.

In 2025 we had 7 reported incidents. Two of these involved behaviours that were old news fifty years ago when I started to learn about explosives. The third was a learning of at least 30 years standing.
1. Don’t use hollow tubing with ammonium nitrate,
2. Don’t bend detonators.
3. Auger bearings are located outside the auger tube so they can be easily inspected and kept clean.

So What ?

So nothing for me. I’m just an interested bystander. It’s over to you who are active in the industry to monitor and try to ride this beast. Safely.

Musings on explosives testing and classification.

We wise women and men who meet in Geneva to set the tests and criteria for classifying explosives and precursors are reconsidering the tests applicable to ammonium nitrate emulsion, suspensions and gels.

Twenty seven or so years ago, France proposed a new entry in the UN Model Regulations for ANE. This was in response to the wide variety of classifications being applied to Ammonium nitrate emulsions, Suspensions and Gels. Some jurisdictions put them in class 1, others class 5 and others non-Dangerous Goods.

Having had time to contemplate what we want or need to know to classify anything for safe transport, it helps to revert to first principles. How will the material behave when subjected to the big four threats:
Friction, Heat/fire, Impact, Static Electricity.

Then, as now, a Competent Authority may set any test they like to determine a level of safety for their constituents. Through 2000 – 2005, a series of tests were agreed to try to make the classification standardised.

It’s worth having a look at the current set of tests and considering their effectiveness.

Note 1

Two companies have advised me of positive test results. On closer examination neither product met the criteria to be called an ANE.
1 the material tested was a chemically sensitized ANE; it was outside the definition of ANE and should have been class1 by analogy.
2 Various ANE formulations were tested with different levels of gassing agent (GMB). The test was used to determine the critical point for detonation. Again, product is outside the criteria to be ANE.

Note 2

In drafting this paper I was reminded of the excellent work of David Kennedy in 2003. UN/SCETDG/24/INF.45 A review of the modified vented pipe test
Some of his key points are reproduced below and I have highlighted two salient points.

Unfortunately, the occurrence or non-occurrence of an explosion terminating an MVPT trial does not necessarily imply that an accidental fire engulfing a tanker of the ANE would or would not terminate with an explosion respectively.
For example, the majority of the Australian and Spanish suspension trials ended with the vessel intact. However, this was a consequence of the contents of the vessels having largely emptied onto the pad prior to the attainment of high temperatures, with little material remaining to participate in any final deflagration once they had been heated to high temperature. A vessel design which inhibited the overflow of its contents may well have led to more frequent explosions during suspension trials. In a tanker fire, any overflow is more likely to intensify the fire and increase the heat flux into the remaining inventory than to drain away harmlessly as in the MVPT. Such increased heat flux would accelerate subsequent decomposition.
[KP: consider the two detonations we have had in Australia. Neither could have involved a detonation caused by confinement. Both were aluminium tanks. Both would have lost structural integrity within tens of minutes. By the time they detonated (120 or 240 minutes or so) we would be well into the scenario described by David of piles of emulsion feeding tyre or diesel fuel fires.]

Furthermore, there have been several occasions where substances that have not led to explosions during MVPT trialling have led to explosions during accidental fires during storage or transport. For example, there have been a number of accidental fires during which straight AN and its mixtures with combustible materials have exploded. [In several tests] pure AN decomposed without venting or explosion in the MVPT

One erroneous assumption made in the paper is based on some contract work performed by J E S Venart for Orica in 2002 that a vehicle fire is unlikely to continue for more than 30 minutes.

Sitting on the sidelines, about to leave the industry for a life of rowing and restaurants, it is easy for me to ask questions for which I have no answers. A couple of them below.

Why do we bother with these tests? Is the safety benefit (value of the information obtained) commensurate with the costs of the tests?
Is your local Competent Authority really thinking through the behaviour of this material and the risks it presents or are they just blindly relying on the tests?

We have some seriously dangerous goods on our roads, explosives probably being the most noteworthy. But explosives, like ammonium nitrate and ANE don’t normally traverse densely populated areas, so, while the hazard is significant, the risk to society is relatively low. Low enough that the benefits that accrue to society outweigh the costs. Just like gasoline and LPG and many other dangerous goods.