CSB Approves Urgent Recommendations to OSHA, NFPA, Others to Prevent Deadly Explosions and Fires during Pipe Cleaning and Purging Operations

On June 28, 2010, U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) board members voted on a series of 18 urgent recommendations aimed at preventing fires and explosions caused when fuel gas is used to clean or purge gas pipes of debris, air, or other substances, typically during facility construction and maintenance. 

The recommendations were directed to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and others, result from extensive CSB investigations into the February 7, 2010, explosion at the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown that caused six deaths and multiple injuries, and the June 9, 2009, explosion at the ConAgra Foods Slim Jim plant in Garner, North Carolina, that killed four workers and injured 67.  

In the CSB recommendations, OSHA is urged to pass regulations that would prohibit the use of natural gas for pipe cleaning, the cause of the explosion at Kleen Energy, and would prohibit the venting or purging of fuel gas indoors, the cause of the explosion at the ConAgra Slim Jim plant. Both explosions resulted from releases of natural gas during the installation and commissioning of new piping that led to gas-fired appliances. 

An urgent recommendation directed at the NFPA recommends the code-development organization to enact a tentative interim amendment as well as permanent changes to the National Fuel Gas Code that addresses the safe conduct of fuel gas piping cleaning operations.  Under the draft recommendation, NFPA would be asked to remove key exemptions in the code for natural gas power plants and for high-pressure gas piping and to require the use of inherently safer alternatives to natural gas blows. CSB investigators determined that compressed air is a feasible and economical alternative to using natural gas for pipe cleaning and is already used by many companies.

For further information on CSB’s findings and recommendations please go to: http://www.csb.gov/newsroom/detail.aspx?nid=330.