(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A federal safety agency says an explosion that killed four workers and seriously injured another worker at a Waukegan chemical manufacturing plant last spring could have been prevented.Chemical Safety Board officials say workers had been producing a water repellant known as EM 652 in early May when one of the tanks began making strange sounds and foam began spilling to the floor at AB Specialty Silicones. Lead investigator Tamara Qureshi says it was a build-up of hydrogen gas that caused the explosion.
"The shift supervisor directed workers to take action to ventilate the heated vapor from the building by turning on exhaust fans and opening garage doors. But, before an operator was able to turn on the fans, the building exploded."Officials say there were no detectors or alarms to warn workers about high gas levels and no system in place to funnel flammable gas away from the area.Qureshi also says the building's ventilation system caused the hydrogen to disperse throughout.Chemical Safety Board Executive Dr. Kristen Kulinowski said the accident could have been prevented.
"Like so many of the other incidents we investigate, it was preventable."By the end of next year, Kulinowski says the Chemical Safety Board plans to come up with new safety recommendations to try to prevent similar tragedies from happening."At the conclusion of our investigations, we issue safety recommendations that are intended to address the gaps identified and prevent these types of catastrophic failures from reoccurring."Kulinowski says the CSB now knows how the explosion happened. Next focus is to determine why: "This could include investigating safety management systems that could have prevented the incident. Such systems include a robust hazard analysis that should have allowed workers and the company to more fully understand the hazards that were present during the manufacturing process."The CSB is not a regulatory agency.
