Dr. Carol Jones:
I have to say I got it.
Jim Lenz:
All right. Our guest has dedicated much of her career in production, agriculture and materials handling design. She is retired from her full-time professorship at Oklahoma. She is retired from her full-time professorship at Oklahoma State University and now works as an instructor with OSU’s Fire Service Training Grain and Tratman Rescue Program. If you’ve attended the biggest investment show in the grain handling and processing industry Jeeps Exchange then you’ll recognize our guest for today. Today’s guest, along with a former whole grain podcast guest, butch Hendricks, lead the grain and Tratman Rescue demonstration on the trade show floor at Jeeps Exchange. That’s why I’m excited to welcome Dr Carol Jones to the show. Thank you for your participation in whole grain, carol.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Thank you, Jim. It’s an honor to be invited to just talk with you today.
Jim Lenz:
Now to allow our listeners to get to know you and start the show with a bit of sort of a positive spirit. I guess Could you share with our listeners a mantra or success quote that you’ve lived by professionally.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Well, I was fortunate enough to hit the jackpot when it came to parents, and my dad told me at a very early age that no matter what my job was whether it was sleeping floor or running the company to give it my best and do the very best I could. And if I had some downtime during the day to find a broom or a dust rack and you know that work ethic has gone so far in my life. It’s just directed me in all the right directions, and whenever I find myself bored, I wonder what job or what broom I need to be using to fill in that time and be an asset to whatever organization that I’m a part of.
Jim Lenz:
Wow, that is so well stated and that goes a long way. That’s great for our younger members to hear something like that, and so great that you actually cited your parents for that work.
Dr. Carol Jones:
They were very special people.
Jim Lenz:
Oh, wonderful Now to provide some context for our whole grain listeners who are joining us for today from really all around the world already have listeners from 60 different countries since our start about a year or so ago. Carol, could you provide a brief overview of the great work of the Fire Service Training Grain Attractment Rescue Program that you’re part of and also your consultation business? I know it’s a special program. It’s a special program. I’m sure listeners may want to know more.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Okay, fire Service Training at Oklahoma State University has a long, rich history of providing training to emergency responders and it’s a very old reputation. We’ve done that for many years. It’s been about 15 years ago that we had an incident in Oklahoma and the incident was a it was an atmospheric, an atmosphere problem in a grain bin and we lost a fire chief. He died in the bottom of that bin and it injured four others simply because they didn’t have the training to know what was going on, because they didn’t have the training to know when it was right to go into a bin, what they could actually do in the bin, what to monitor. It was just purely a lack of training. It didn’t have to happen and it really pulled all of Oklahoma agriculture up short and that we had great training, but not in the area of ag response, and we needed to address that. So the wheat commission, the tech system, the university fire departments, all came together for a meeting to address the question of what can we do to keep this from happening again. So that was the early days of this. Of course, the next question is where do we get the funding? So it’s gonna cost something, what does it look like, and when you’ve got the best minds in agriculture in Oklahoma, working on the same problem. You come up with some really cool ideas and our first attempt was to make a video. And then we had a bin on Oklahoma State campus that people could come and we could do entrapment trainings. I don’t know about other states, but in our states people don’t come to the campus for training Once you get your degree. You come back for the football games and that’s it. So we had to come up with some way to deliver our training off campus, go to where the training’s needed. So we looked around the country. There were two mobile trailers well, demonstration trailers that do entrapment training. We talked to. It was in Missouri and Kansas, I believe. We talked to them and found out what they would do if they were to do theirs differently or add to it what they liked about it, what they didn’t like, put all that together and that was the birth of our trailer. Osha has been very good to us. That through the Susan Hayward grant. Let’s say that again. Osha’s been very good to us through the Susan Hayward grant system and they have supported us for about eight or nine years now. We get re-upped every now and then simply because we keep good documents and we believe we do good work and apparently they do too. Also, the assistance to firefighters. Grants have helped us with putting together training material and buying equipment. The trailer is about half million dollars worth of equipment and every year we do some changing to it to make it more current, to respond to the things that our students say that they need. Every year, osha asks us to do a little bit of change to our program so we stay current with the needs of the industry. This year will be confined space. Well, grants and funds are confined spaces, so we can take the training that we’ve been doing and highlight some confined space topics to go along with it and continue training in the same way we have been. So that’s the story. Our instructors have years and years of emergency response experience. Most of the time. We’ve got over 100 years of experience on the trailer with us. They’re fire chiefs, they’re firefighters, they’re instructors in other ways. These are the best of the best, so I really enjoy working with them. It’s a top-much crew.
Jim Lenz:
Well, I know the background, the depth and experience. It’s really incredible and documentation is important. Just make sure you can help to get that support and funding because it is so critical and it’s interesting to hear the origin of that. What makes, just in case folks may not know, I did a little bit of reading about that. But Oklahoma State University and fire safety what is the history? What there’s, you know, outside of what you’re doing, there’s about the education offerings and that what makes it kind of unique.
Dr. Carol Jones:
I think, unique in how comprehensive they are, and we also have a publication section that sends training material and many different languages all over the world. That has been in place for many, many years. It comes from the land grant system, where we have a mission for extension work and as well as research and teaching, and we take that extension work very seriously and we needed to fill a gap in training material and in training at all levels for emergency response, and so the state decided to invest in that many, many years ago and it’s grown through the years and apparently is successful. We’re still here.
Jim Lenz:
So exciting, very good and well needed. It’s such a well respected program it’s can’t get enough of it, and so that’s nice that you’re gonna be at Jeep’s Exchange again this 2024 in February. We’ll talk about more details of that and how they may contact you and about the program at the end of the conversation. But our focus today is on a grain dust management. I mean, you have such an array of experiences in production, agriculture and materials handling design. Your dedication to safety is clear and in the work that you do, such as grain and tram and rescue training, like you just discussed, there are numerous other risks that surround grain facilities. Of course, housekeeping and maintenance are critical in facilities. Today, our focus for this conversation on the on grain dust management. Let’s begin the conversation with an overview of grain dust management, as we have listeners joining us from different parts of the world that vary in their experience level within the grain handling and processing industry. So with that, could you please provide our listeners with a general overview of the significance of grain dust in the context of grain elevators.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Sure, this issue of handling grain and keeping it in good condition is a holistic approach. We have risks that are entrapment and engulfment, we have risks with explosion, we have risk with moles and air quality. It’s all a piece of how we handle grain. You can’t really pull one without the other. So when we talk about grain dust, it is a housekeeping issue, it’s also a monitoring issue and a grain quality issue. There are certain things that have to be in place for a grain dust explosion to happen, or an explosion of any kind. So we have to have a certain level of dust and it can’t just be dust on a rail, it has to be in suspension. Generally we say if you cannot see a light bulb from 10 feet away, then you’ve reached the level that an explosion can happen. But the dust does have to be suspended, it has to be contained. There has to be oxygen, of course, which there always is, and there has to be an ignition source. That can be a hot bearing, it can be a welding torch bearing, rubbing someplace. We can have all kinds of hot surfaces that can cause an explosion. What generally happens is the vibration or the pressure difference that the explosion causes. Daisy chains In the next bin from where the explosion happens. It kicks up the dust and of course we’ve already got the heat from the explosion and it just daisy chains on down through the house. We see this a lot in a concrete cycle house, where the first explosion was certainly damaging, but that last one was even worse. It just gets worse as we go because we have more fuel for the fire as it goes. So grain is so susceptible to this because the fact that it gives our body’s calories when we eat it, it has that same caloric availability for fire or an explosion. So that’s when we see the explosions and why they seem so much more in food products than in any other material.
Jim Lenz:
We’re good to a broad overview here. What are the potential hazards associated with grain dust, including safety, environmental concerns that you haven’t touched on yet?
Dr. Carol Jones:
Well, atmospheric conditions as far as noxious gases, co2, air quality within bins or within, say, dump pits or boot pits are always a concern. We have to have the oxygen to breathe, but there are certain chemicals also that, even though you’ve got the oxygen, the chemical can kill you anyway. Phosphine’s one of those. So air monitoring, both for dust and for these different chemicals, is so important. We’re getting better at that as the years go by, because technology’s better and that’s really important for us to have a cheap technology that anybody can do. You don’t have to have specialized training to do it, and so I think in the future we’re gonna see more of that. We’re not there yet, but we do have some good products available to us, and I’m starting to see more of those used all the time.
Jim Lenz:
That’s great. Now let’s talk about that change over time when it comes to dust management practices. How have dust management practices evolved over your career, for example?
Dr. Carol Jones:
The recognition of how it happens. First of all. I think the first dust explosion we have on record is back in the late 1700s and it was in a flour mill. And as we look at history, our explosions have traditionally been in flour mills and that’s because of the way flour is made it starts at the top of building and uses gravity, going down through the different stages and to the bottom. We didn’t have any standards for that. We didn’t know a lot about how it happens. I think there was a spark from the heater or something that started that very first one we have record on. But if you fast forward to gosh, it was in early, about 19,. What was it? 1950, nfpa and the federal government established some guidelines and some training funds for explosions, and so we really started making some progress then on developing standards policy. I also picked it up in the 80s and 90s for regulations on commercial facilities. Most of our explosions happen in commercial facilities, unlike entrapments and golfments, we see those primarily on the farms, but dust explosions happen primarily in our commercial facilities because of the size. Anytime there’s a collection of dust and the ocean standards give you one eighth of dust. I hope they never come into my house. An eighth of an inch of dust is not very much in the grain facility, but that’s enough in a small enough space. If it were to become airborne it could potentially cause an explosion. So we’ve developed the policies. We have the laws. The Obama administration decided they were gonna enforce more of those laws from OSHA and I think that has helped us a lot. We still have a long ways to go, particularly on air quality and justice. One of those air quality things A company needs to be sure they have housekeeping plans and train their people on those plans. It’s one thing to have a written plan. Nobody knows about it doesn’t do us much good. So that is a process that our companies are getting better at. Whether OSHA is a good guy or bad guy, they are the ones that hold the laws and some of those laws are really pretty good. So those two things married together. I think we’re making progress. We’re seeing fewer explosions per bushel that we handle Now. The bushels that we handle are going up every year, so when it doesn’t look like we’ve made good progress on reducing our number of explosions, you have to look at it in context with how much material we move now.
Jim Lenz:
It’s actually a really good point that you made there. Yeah, Because there’s record keeping that’s associated with that. But if you’re producing more grain, it’s a lot more management that’s taking place. But what do you see, Kira, are some of those technological advancements or changes in equipment designed aimed at improving dust management?
Dr. Carol Jones:
I’m monitoring Hands down. It’s our ability to monitor, to monitor bearing temperatures and to have that digitally wirelessly sent to an office. I mean, the equipment that’s available to us now is just phenomenal. So the monitoring of bearing temperatures, rub blocks and a monitor on that air quality monitors all of the monitoring technology that’s available to us now. It’s just a real godsstand for our programs. We got to employ it and the prices are coming down, so that’s all good, but there is a training curve that goes with it. That’s our challenge at this point.
Jim Lenz:
Safety is top of mind. Having regular conversations about safety with your team is so important. Let’s dig a little further regarding safety considerations. Is there anything you want to add in terms of safety with regards to grain dust and elevators?
Dr. Carol Jones:
It’s everybody’s job. Just like earlier I talked about the broom and the dust drag I don’t know of anything more applicable in our jobs now and a grain facility. If you see something that you think is collecting dust or is a little bit dirty, clean it up. Whether it’s your job or not, clean it up because that just might be the point that gets disturbed. When there’s a hot bearing and all of a sudden you have a kaboom, that’s always a tragedy. It’s never a good thing. It’s always a terrible tragedy when it happens. Just the mindset of our employees to see something, say something or do something. We need to be proactive and they need to feel like they can go to their boss and identify a problem, whether it’s dust or any other hazard. Excuse me, but particularly with dust, we all know what dust looks like and we all know it’s not supposed to be there. Do something about it.
Jim Lenz:
That’s a good point. It’s having that culture and the organization that everybody has a voice and everybody’s voice important. This can’t be ignored, and so it’s important that everybody recognize some of the signs and that they’re preventative measures to continue to eliminate or reduce the dust and manage the dust. This may be repeating here. What are the potential risks of combustible dust and how the industry addresses and mitigate these risks?
Dr. Carol Jones:
Well, potential of course, is explosion, and then the quality for your employees to work with, things that we do now. Mineral oil at some point and some of our grain is allowed, we can use a certain level of mineral oil to keep the dust bound so that it doesn’t become airborne. Of course, dust collectors and the maintenance of those dust collectors are so important. Steel bins and the legs that exist around the steel bin structure should have explosion vents. If we do have an explosion, it exits. That vent doesn’t keep the explosion for happening, but it keeps it from taking out the rest of your equipment down line. Those are important. Then just this training and the knowledge that if you handle dirty grain, there’s going to be a lot of dust. If you handle grain at all, there’s going to be some dust. It’s just inherent to the work we do. We need to be aware of that. The people coming into our industry don’t have the knowledge that sometimes we saw in the past. We don’t have ag workers coming in that grew up on farms or grew up around the industry. Letting them know what to expect and what to look for is vital. We have to educate them. It’s a dusty environment, there’s just no way around it. But through our air collectors, dust collectors and with our monitoring we can stay on top of that. It’s not a sideline, it has to be something that we do as a part of everyday work. I’ve been in elevators that you could have eaten your Sunday dinner in their facility, but when I asked them how they kept it so clean it’s an everyday activity One manager said if we miss a week we’ll never get caught up. They clean a little bit every day. I had another manager suggest that with his people they can come there. Friday was their cleanup day. If they got all the cleanup done and it passed inspection that day, they didn’t have to come in on Saturday morning. There was incentive to them that way, but it is. If an elbow grease thing, you’ve got to put the elbow grease in it to keep it clean. The dust collectors can do a certain amount of work but ultimately we just have to clean it up.
Jim Lenz:
Do you have any personal experiences with safety incidents regarding green dust?
Dr. Carol Jones:
So far I’ve not been in an explosion. I’m sure glad I wouldn’t be sitting here today. Now I’ve seen them happen. I’ve seen several different kinds of environmental things happen in green bins. Fortunately we’ve had very few of them. In Oklahoma We’ve had a couple of explosions in the Enid area in the past, but the fact that it was one of the biggest terminals in United States it goes back to how much grain you handle. Of course your risk goes up the more bushels you handle. I do know the cases that I’ve worked through my consulting company. It always comes back to housekeeping. Always, always it comes back to housekeeping. Sometimes it’s in an area that maybe we couldn’t do anything about it but we’ve got to talk to engineers and we’ve got to figure out a way to mitigate that when you do have a problem area. But walking through your facility with your local fire department or with a safety consultant is vital. Sometimes we get barn blind, so to speak, at the facilities that we work in. We see it day in and day out and we don’t notice these things. But to bring in somebody from the outside to do a walk through with your facility could help you to identify some of those areas that need your attention.
Jim Lenz:
Now have you, sorry a previous? You mentioned a little bit about the regulatory framework surrounding green dust management. Could you discuss how regulations have changed over time and the impact it had on green elevator operations?
Dr. Carol Jones:
NFPA and the National Feed and Grane Association, grane and Feed Association. So I get that the National Grane and Feed Association and NFPA have worked hand in hand to establish better regulations and better standards on how to address regulations, how to meet the need. Geaps has been in line with that also. So our organizations are working closely with our federal government to come up with good regulations. The enforcement of those regulations has become stricter. Right now we have a big push on environmental air quality in green elevators. That includes dust. We’ve gone from some regulations saying that dust is something we need a safety data sheet for. You buy grain. It doesn’t say you’re buying dust. All of a sudden you’re either disposing of or selling dust to the feed industry. Where did that dust come from? So, out the way the government sees it, we manufactured the dust, so that makes us manufacture, so it needs an SDS sheet. So there’s some things technicalities like that when we look at regulation enforcement that we’re still in conversations with the government and the regulators about. I’m just glad we’ve got good people with the NGFA and GEAPS to do that for us. Ngfa helps our responders to know how to address the problems when they come around, and that’s important to us. They have their regulations and procedures they have to follow and NGFA really helps us with that.
Jim Lenz:
Nice. Thank you for sharing. Now let’s discuss the importance of education and training in green dust management. Can you describe any educational initiatives you’ve been part of, or maybe any recommendations for industry professionals in general?
Dr. Carol Jones:
Just conversations about what causes an explosion is important. Knowing what those five things are that go together to make an explosion, particularly the graphic presentation of that, is very important for employees and it needs to be in the language that they can understand. We do a lot of training in this country, but we don’t always speak the language of our workers, and so we’ll see more and more of that requirement as we move forward, I’m sure, just so that our employees know, understand what causes an explosion. Perhaps given statistics about some of the recent explosions they’re all over the web and the coverage of it is quite impactful because an explosion is quite impactful. The whole scenario behind an explosion is just Manit grabs the headlines because it’s a big deal in a small town. So to make workers understand what causes it and what they can do, what part they can have in a facility to keep it from happening, it’s just vital. It takes a lot of conversation. It takes a lot of safety mindedness in the culture and in an organization to make this work. I don’t think you can talk about one safety topic without talking about explosion. You can’t talk about entrapment without the air quality and without the grain quality and you can’t talk about grain quality, without talking about insect invasion and moisture. And this is a whole big system and you can’t talk about one topic without at least touching on some of the others. And just explosions part of that.
Jim Lenz:
Yeah, you’re right, but, as you said, communication is key, creating awareness among workers and the risk associated. That isn’t so important in a language that makes sense to the worker. Now let’s kind of speculate a little bit about the future of grain dust management and grain elevators. Can you discuss any emerging technologies or trends that may impact how the industry manages grain dust in the future?
Dr. Carol Jones:
I think wireless technology is really where we’re going and we’re there in many of our larger facilities. This is such a low margin for profit in this industry that many times it’s hard to go in a direction that’s new and cutting edge. But I really firmly believe that wireless technology connecting our sensing technology together so that we get an earlier warning about conditions, so we can do some prevention. We don’t have to respond, we can actually prevent. And I think wireless technology and the ability to get information quickly and just in time is really where we’re going. The technology is there. It’s a matter of taking that technology and adapting it to an environment, which is absolutely the worst in the world for electronics. Our dust, our situations in grain bins just do does not take care of electronics well, and so I think with time we’ll see that happening with things like monitors down in the grain itself. I see that as coming into play more and more as we move forward. Again, to make that wireless is hard. It’s hard to get a signal out of a steel grain bin. It’s not really easy out of a concrete grain silo. So that kind of technology will develop as we look forward. I think the next 10 years is really exciting in this area.
Jim Lenz:
Great, good, positive outlook. Thank you for sharing, carol, carol. Sorry, carol. You’ve played such a critical role in the grain handling and processing industry. Today you shared insights into grain dust management at grain facilities. Perhaps listeners may want to know more about your consultation services. And let’s not forget about the work you do with Oklahoma State University’s Fire Service Training Grain and Trampment Rescue Program. You’ll be at Jeep’s Exchange providing grain and treatment rescue services. At last year’s Jeep’s Exchange 2023, one of the simulated rescues involved the spouse of a man who lost his life and a real life grain bin and treatment scenario. I’m talking about Don Chisholm and some of you know about that. Maybe you were there, maybe you’ve heard or speak, but Don was a very kind, generous person. To tell her story, which is just that itself is difficult, but she was one of the volunteers who would get in trap there at the middle of the trade show floor. I encourage every listener, after this episode with Dr Carol Jones, to immediately listen to episode 13 of the whole Green Podcast. The episode is called Bring them Home Safe the Don Chisholm story. Carol, don Chisholm was up there with you on top of the grain bin, right in the middle of the Jeep’s Exchange trade show floor. It was an emotional episode, whole green for sure, and it certainly was an emotional experience for Don At that time. She was very brave to put herself through that. I know that was challenging for her and that she really wanted to do it, but you were right there by her side supporting her. What was that like? I mean, I know I asked you several questions there, but I’m curious of the work of the OSU Fire Service Training Grain and Tratman Rescue Program, your consultation services and whatnot. But what can people expect from the rescue demo at Jeep’s Exchange? And finally, what was the experience like working and supporting Don Chisholm?
Dr. Carol Jones:
But we’ll talk about that first because it’s close to my heart. That was truly a unique experience for me too. I just think the world of Don and the work that she’s doing and so glad that she shares her story it’s very impactful. It’s one thing for us to tell someone what they should and shouldn’t do in a grain bin, but to have someone who’s been impacted in such a huge way come and talk to us and share their thoughts is so impactful. Yeah, that was. I don’t think Don I either one of us expected that to be as emotional as it was that I could just see the terror on her face reliving what her husband might have gone through, and I don’t think our simulation is nearly as intense. Obviously it’s what a full entrapment and ultimately a loss of life would be. What the demonstrator does is allow people to feel what it’s like being entrapped in material that is like no other material in the world. Grain has physical properties to it that can’t be simulated any other way. We even have trouble computer simulating it because it’s so complex, and so it’s kind of like running water, it’s kind of like quick sand, it’s kind of like a lot of things, but not all in one place, and so the trailer and the entrapment demo allows people to understand the difficulty of working in that environment. Granted, it’s small, the trailer is small and we’ve got people two foot from you handing you equipment, which is not realistic, but the steps that we show rescuers and then the people entrapped in the grain. What did you do wrong to get entrapped in the first place? Why are you in there? What could you have done differently so you didn’t have to get in this position in the first place? But once you are in that position, what can you do to help yourself and what can those around you who are trying to rescue? What’s their environment like? What should they expect? What’s it gonna be like in the real world? So, where we can’t exactly stimulate what every instance is gonna be, because they are. Everyone is different. No two rescues are the same. No two grain bins in this country are the same. We’re an industry that did not standardize on anything, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because material, we handle changes by the minute too. So the industry is what it is. So our responders need to know how to work within that environment and if you’re the victim in there, it’s a little scary. It tests you. We have found several firefighters that didn’t know they were claustrophobic until we put them in that demonstrator. And they’re up to their waist in our simulation grain. If you’re up to your knees you cannot get yourself out of grain without help. Can’t be done. I didn’t believe it until I tried it, but it’s true you can’t, and I don’t know very many other substances that act that way. So the simulation trailer helps us to go through the steps of rescuing somebody, but also let people know what it’s gonna feel like to be in that position and what you can do to keep yourself out of it.
Jim Lenz:
Thank you for sharing that detail there. Also, if you could add, if people want to connect with you about consultation services, what do you consult about, how can they contact you, and about the program at OSU.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Best way is to email me. Jcarol Jones only JCarol J-C-A-R-O-L at okaystateedu. I can connect you with our scheduler or our program director. This year we’ve got the funding. We can do the training for free. It’s free training. How can you go wrong with that? As far as my consulting, I work with elevators about all kinds of grain quality issues. I can work on safety issues. I can also consult on aeration management, managing your equipment. I do a lot of litigation, forensic engineering. I’m not really on either side, although obviously one side will pay me more than the other does, and I will tell an attorney things they don’t want to hear. For me it’s the facts of the case and those facts are the same regardless of which side you’re on. I do take cases with OSHA and I enjoy working with OSHA because it’s an educational mission for me. They are not grain people and they realize that they hire people like me to come in and give them information about what our business is really all about. Which of their regulations are better than others? Which ones have some fallacies? Which ones do they need to work on? I’ve been privileged enough to have that input into their industry. As far as regulations, also Contact me and we’ll talk about it. If it’s something I don’t know about, I’ll help you find someone that does know.
Jim Lenz:
Well, we are very excited to have you, of course, at Jeep’s Exchange, coming up here with the simulation Before we conclude the show. Carol, I’d like to start a sentence and I’d love for you to conclude the sentence here. It is, being part of the Jeep’s family means.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Networking opportunity and a whole bunch of really good brands.
Jim Lenz:
That’s so great to hear. Carol. Thank you for serving as guest in whole grain and, on behalf of the entire Jeep’s team, we thank you for your commitment to Jeep’s and the greater green handling and processing industry. I had the pleasure of meeting you and having a conversation with you at my first Jeep’s Exchange shortly after joining not too long after joining Jeep’s last year and it’s been an honor and pleasure to connect with you here today on the whole grain podcast. Thank you for spending some time with whole grain listeners.
Dr. Carol Jones:
Thank you for being entirely my privilege.
Jim Lenz:
All right, thank you so much All right. That was your one hit wonder, boy.
Dr. Carol Jones:
That’s awesome.
