Yet another Hydrogen Sulfide accident!

After the recent Total facility gas leak case, this is another one in Texas. A gas supected to contain Hydrogen Sulfide has affected workers at the Tyco plant in North Lubbock. It is not clear if they were wearing any personal protective equipment or not. It is also unclear if they were carrying any portable toxic gas detectors that could detect the presence of Hydrogen Sulfide. These clamp on type personal gas monitors are very useful lifesavers when working in an area that may contain Hydrogen Sulfide. This gas is also referred to simply as H2S (after its chemical formula) and smells like rotten eggs in lower levels of concentration. If one ignores this smell however, the human nose gets desensitized and higher levels do not smell bad at all-they simply knock you down dead-stone dead-you’ll never know what hit you!

It is therefore all the more important that the authorities, especially OSHA insist on workers carrying these little clamp on meters that give off alarms in the presence of H2S gas. These gas monitors may cost just a few hundred dollars each, but they can save hundreds of human lives.

Lightning effects cause industrial accident

We have often been warned to stay away from tall metal structures, trees and other kinds of lightning attractors during a thunderstorm, but many of us do not think about it seriously enough. If you are amongst these non believers in such warnings- be warned.  An industrial accident was reported on 26th June 2009, when a man who was working near a tower crane during a thunderstorm, caught fire!  Apparently,  the lightning charged the entire tower crane with a high enough voltage and electrified the surroundings through the air (air is a dielectric only at low voltages, but at high enough voltage levels it breaks down and conducts electricity).  This effect set him on fire, but luckily he was rescued by co-workers and is reportedly still alive but burned and battling for his life in a hospital.

The incident happened in East Greebush, Vermont and was reported in CBS06 of Albany here

So what does actually happen in a thunderstorm? AS lightning and other high voltage static electrical phenomena happen, they induce large currents in metal and other conducting structures in the area. As per the Faraday effect these induced electromagnetic fields are strong enough that they can cause a lot of destruction like blowing up electronic circuitry and causing fires. Remember, this is still one of the suspected causes of the recent Air France disaster.

So take lightning, static electricity and induced currents seriously enough or you’ll get into trouble. Ensure that lightning and surge protection is operating everywhere in your industrial plant to avoid the large damages that can be caused by these hard to predict events.