Tuesday, February 18, 2025

No increase in dust explosion incidents last year, decrease in injuries in US

Purdue University

Grain-dust explosion scenarios — image:
Grain dust suspended in the air or accumulated on surfaces creates the perfect scenario for explosions across the U.S. last year.
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Credit: Purdue Agricultural Communications photo/Tom Campbell

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Nine U.S. grain dust explosions in 2024 caused two injuries and no fatalities, according to a nationwide annual summary.

These numbers are similar to last year’s (nine explosions, 12 injuries and no fatalities) and on-par with the 10-year national average of 8.6 explosions.

“Considering the reduced number of injuries, the grain dust explosions are of low magnitude. But look at the damage it can cause to the facility in terms of downtime, repair costs and litigations,” said Kingsly Ambrose, Purdue University professor of agricultural and biological engineering and the report’s author.

The explosions occurred in four feed mills, three grain elevators, one ethanol plant and one corn processing plant.

The probable ignition sources were identified in two cases as smoldering grain, two as equipment malfunction, one as welding work and one as cutting work. Three ignition sources were unknown.

Grain dust, which caused six explosions, was the most common fuel source. Other fuel sources included smoldering grain and smoldering feed.

Nine states had one explosion each: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Ambrose said work to prevent explosions can start before harvest.

“Keep your equipment in good, working condition, and do preventative maintenance before the start of harvest or handling season,” Ambrose said. “Check for repairs so you don't have any accidents. For example, belt misalignment in a bucket elevator can lead to friction, heat generation and an increased risk of dust explosion.”

In 2024, two explosions originated from smoldering grain. Once grain is harvested, Ambrose urges people to pay close attention to the conditions the grain is kept in. Improper aeration leads to fungal growth, which causes grain and feed to smolder, increasing the risk of igniting dust in the grain bins.

“Dust is no good, both for dust explosions and for human health,” Ambrose said. “Housekeeping is very important. Keep the place clean. Make sure there is no visible settled dust or suspended dust in the air.”

About Purdue Agriculture

Purdue University’s College of Agriculture is one of the world’s leading colleges of agricultural, food, life and natural resource sciences. The college is committed to preparing students to make a difference in whatever careers they pursue; stretching the frontiers of science to discover solutions to some of our most pressing global, regional and local challenges; and, through Purdue Extension and other engagement programs, educating the people of Indiana, the nation and the world to improve their lives and livelihoods. To learn more about Purdue Agriculture, visit this site.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Writer: Olivia De Young, odeyoung@purdue.edu

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Agricultural Dust Explosions

Article Publication Date

18-Feb-2025

Coffee grounds and Reishi mushroom spores can be 3D printed into a compostable alternative to plastics

University of Washington

Packaging — image:
The packing material around this small glass was 3D printed from used coffee grounds. A white mycelium (sort of a root system for mushrooms) grows on the outside, which turns the grounds into a compostable alternative to Styrofoam.
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Credit: Luo et al./3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing

Only 30% of a coffee bean is soluble in water, and many brewing methods aim to extract significantly less than that. So of the 1.6 billion pounds of coffee Americans consume in a year, more than 1.1 billion pounds of grounds are knocked from filters into compost bins and garbage cans.

While watching the grounds from her own espresso machine accumulate, Danli Luo, a University of Washington doctoral student in human centered design and engineering, saw an opportunity. Coffee is nutrient-rich and sterilized during brewing, so it’s ideal for growing fungus, which, before it sprouts into mushrooms, forms a “mycelial skin.” This skin, a sort of white root system, can bind loose substances together and create a tough, water-resistant, lightweight material.

Luo and a UW team developed a new system for turning those coffee grounds into a paste, which they use to 3D print objects: packing materials, pieces of a vase, a small statue. They inoculate the paste with Reishi mushroom spores, which grow on the objects to form that mycelial skin. The skin turns the coffee grounds — even when formed into complex shapes — into a resilient, fully compostable alternative to plastics. For intricate designs, the mycelium fuses separately printed pieces together to form a single object.

The team published its findings Jan. 23 in 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing.

“We’re especially interested in creating systems for people like small businesses owners producing small-batch products — for example, small, delicate glassware that needs resilient packaging to ship,” said lead author Luo. “So we’ve been working on new material recipes that can replace things like Styrofoam with something more sustainable and that can be easily customized for small-scale production.”

To create the “Mycofluid” paste, Luo mixed used coffee grounds with brown rice flour, Reishi mushroom spores, xanthan gum (a common food binder found in ice creams and salad dressings) and water. Luo also built a new 3D printer head for the Jubilee 3D printer that the UW’s Machine Agency lab designed. The new printer system can hold up to a liter of the paste.

The team printed various objects with the Mycofluid: packaging for a small glass, three pieces of a vase, two halves of a Moai statue and a two-piece coffin the size of a butterfly. The objects then sat covered in a plastic tub for 10 days, during which the mycelium formed a sort of shell around the Mycofluid. In the case of the statue and vase, the separate pieces also fused together.

The process is the same as that of homegrown mushroom kits: Keep the mycelium moist as it grows from a nutrient rich material. If the pieces stayed in the tub longer, actual mushrooms would sprout from the objects, but instead they’re removed after the white mycelial skin has formed. Researchers then dried the pieces for 24 hours, which halts the fruiting of the mushrooms.

The finished material is heavier than Styrofoam — closer to the density of cardboard or charcoal. After an hour in contact with water, it absorbed only 7% more weight in water and dried to close its initial weight while keeping its shape. It was as strong and tough as polystyrene and expanded polystyrene foam, the substance used to make Styrofoam.

Though the team didn’t specifically test the material’s compostability, all its components are compostable (and, in fact, edible, though less than appetizing).

Because the Mycofluid requires relatively homogeneous used coffee grounds, working with it at significant scale would prove difficult, but the team is interested in other forms of recycled materials that might form similar biopastes.

“We’re interested in expanding this to other bio-derived materials, such as other forms of food waste,” Luo said. “We want to broadly support this kind of flexible development, not just to provide one solution to this major problem of plastic waste.”

Junchao Yang, a UW master’s student in human centered design and engineering when completing this research, is a co-author, and Nadya Peek, UW associate professor of human centered design and engineering, is the senior author. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Luo at danlil@uw.edu.

From the upper left to bottom right: the 3D printer creates a design; three printed pieces of a vase; the partially set vase pieces are put together; the mycelium grows on the coffee paste; the vase grows together; the finished vase holds flowers and water.

Credit

Luo et al./3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing

Journal

3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing

DOI

10.1089/3dp.2023.0342

Article Title

3D-Printed Mycelium Biocomposites: Method for 3D Printing and Growing Fungi-Based Composites

We are no longer living longer, UEA study shows

Peer reviewed - Observational study - humans

University of East Anglia

The rise in human life expectancy has slowed down across Europe since 2011, according to research from the University of East Anglia and partners.

A new study, published today in The Lancet Public Health, reveals that the food we eat, physical inactivity and obesity are largely to blame, as well as the Covid pandemic.

Of all the countries studied, England experienced the biggest slowdown in life expectancy.

It means that rather than looking forward to living longer than our parents or grandparents, we may find that we are dying sooner.

The team says that in order to extend our old age, we need to prioritise healthier lifestyles in our younger years – with governments urged to invest in bold public health initiatives.

Lead researcher Prof Nick Steel, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Advances in public health and medicine in the 20th Century meant that life expectancy in Europe improved year after year. But this is no longer the case.

“From 1990 to 2011, reductions in deaths from cardiovascular diseases and cancers continued to lead to substantial improvements in life expectancy.

“But decades of steady improvements finally slowed around 2011, with marked international differences.

“We found that deaths from cardiovascular diseases were the primary driver of the reduction in life expectancy improvements between 2011–19. Unsurprisingly, the Covid pandemic was responsible for decreases in life expectancy seen between 2019–21.

“After 2011, major risks such as obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol either increased or stopped improving in almost all countries.

“Better cholesterol and blood pressure treatments have not been enough to offset the harms from obesity and poor diets,” he added.

The research team studied data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)’s Global Burden of Disease 2021 – the largest and most comprehensive research to quantify health loss across places and over time, drawing on the work of nearly 12,000 collaborators across more than 160 countries and territories.

They compared changes in life expectancy, causes of death, and population exposure to risk factors across Europe between 1990–2011, 2011–19, and 2019–21.

Countries studied included Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

The team say that despite the downturn, we still haven’t reached a biological ceiling for longevity.

Prof Steel explained: “Life expectancy for older people in many countries is still improving, showing that we have not yet reached a natural longevity ceiling.

“Life expectancy mainly reflects mortality at younger ages, where we have lots of scope for reducing harmful risks and preventing early deaths.

“Comparing countries, national policies that improved population health were linked to better resilience to future shocks.”

“Countries like Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium held onto better life expectancy after 2011, and saw reduced harms from major risks for heart disease, helped by government policies.

“In contrast, England and the other UK nations fared worst after 2011 and also during the Covid pandemic, and experienced some of the highest risks for heart disease and cancer, including poor diets.

“This suggests that stronger government policies are needed to reduce major health risks including obesity, poor diet, and low physical activity - to improve population health over the long term.”

Prof John Newton, from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter, said: “These results are a cause for concern especially here in the UK, but also some hope. We should be concerned because many European countries including the UK are showing such poor progress but hopeful because addressing the underlying causes of major illnesses appears to be effective if only improvements in the key risks can be sustained.”

Sarah Price, NHS England, National Director of Public Health, said: “This important study reinforces that prevention is the cornerstone of a healthier society, and is exactly why it will be such a key part of the 10 Year Health Plan which we are working with Government on.

“The slowdown in life expectancy improvements, particularly due to cardiovascular disease and cancer, highlights the urgent need for stronger action on the root causes — poor diet, physical inactivity, and obesity.

“The NHS is playing its part and has already helped hundreds of thousands of people to lose weight through our 12-week digital Weight Management Programme, while more than a million people a year receive a blood pressure check in NHS pharmacies which are key to identifying cardiovascular issues and significantly improving people’s overall health.

“However, more can action is need across society because we cannot treat our way out of the obesity crisis, and we need to stem it at source.”

This study was led by UEA in collaboration with the Global Burden of Disease Project at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, the University of Exeter and the Department of Health and Social Care, among others. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the UK Department of Health and Social Care.

This publication is based on research funded in part by the Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Gates Foundation.‘Changing life expectancy in European countries 1990–2021: a sub analysis of causes and risk factors from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021’ is published in The Lancet Public Health.

Peer reviewed - Observational study - humans

Journal

The Lancet Public Health

DOI

10.1016/S2468-2667(25)00009-X