Manual de protección contra explosiones

An essential document for those professionals whose work includes explosive atmospheres in any of the facilities they manage.

This dissemination material is presented by the Galician Institute for Occupational Safety and Health through Emeritus Núñez Amado, a recognized Spanish professional who facilitates the process of making effective the protection of the health and safety of workers.

The risks of explosions are more common situations than desired.

There are many activities in which the concept of explosion is present.

From the point of view of risk prevention, it would perhaps not be the most worrying situation, in the sense that, being aware of those responsible for the facilities, logically they take precautions so that this eventuality does not occur (prevention) or if occurs, its effects are minimized (protection).

On the contrary, there are many occasions in which, sometimes due to ignorance and other times due to lack of information, accidents occur that result in the loss of human life or damage to the facilities.

Indeed, there are many activities in which the person responsible is not aware of the danger of the substances he handles, or simply does not assimilate that the term explosion, according to the definition of the dictionary of the Spanish language, "the violent rupture of a body by the action of an explosive or due to excess internal pressure, which causes a loud noise", will never occur in that room, ignoring that the difference between fire and explosion, from the point of view of the combustion of a chemical substance , It's void.

This means that in many places the appropriate measures are not adopted to avoid this risk or if they are adopted at first, their maintenance is deficient.

The explosion protection document

The order in the elaboration of this document on the protection of workers exposed to the presence of explosive atmospheres, is firstly the determination of the type of zone (risk) and later its evaluation that it represents a risk.

It consists of an inventory of substances that can generate an explosive atmosphere, both due to the presence of gases and vapors and dust with links to
databases that can be accessed and obtain information on the
characteristics of different types of substances, mainly based on their granulometry.

In the same way, all situations that can generate an explosive atmosphere formation are identified and that will later serve to
determine the type of zone that occurs in each case.

This classification will be the one that determines the existence or not of the risk, in order to be able to guarantee a correct evaluation, since it is concluded that, indeed, such a risk situation really exists, not proceeding with an evaluation of something that will not give rise in the presence of an explosive atmosphere.

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