In this chapter: what you lose when an accident happens in a wood pellet plant or feed mill, what the industry numbers say, why safety doesn't come included with the machine, and how to use this book.
A plant that runs every day
A wood pellet plant or feed mill has a routine: raw material arrives, and it is ground, mixed, pelletized, cooled, stored and shipped. When everything runs well, nobody thinks about accidents. The focus is on tons per hour, energy use, pellet quality and keeping customers happy.
But that same routine hides hazards you don't see every day. The dust that builds up on the beams. The silo someone enters "for a minute" to break up a bridge of material. The mixer that gets cleaned without shutting off the power. The cooler that now and then lets out an ember. None of these hazards gives a warning. Months or years can go by without anything happening, and that is why it is easy to get used to them.
This book starts from a simple idea: safety is not an expense separate from production. It is a condition for production to exist. A plant that loses a person, catches fire or gets shut down produces nothing. And a plant that is orderly, clean and has clear procedures is usually also a plant that stops less.
What you lose when an accident happens
When people talk about accidents, the first thing that comes up is the cost of medical care or compensation. That is only one part. A serious accident hits in at least five places:
- People. This is the loss that cannot be repaired. A worker killed or permanently injured changes a family's life forever. It also affects the coworkers who saw what happened and who come back the next day to the same workstation.
- The plant. An explosion or fire can destroy equipment, ducts, buildings and stored goods. In the cases in Chapter 3, the damage did not stay in the machine where it started: it traveled through the building.
- Production. After an accident, the plant stops. Sometimes because of the damage, sometimes because of the investigation or by order of the authorities. Every day of downtime is a day without sales, while wages and fixed costs keep running.
- Customers. Whoever buys pellets for heating, or feed for their farm, needs regular deliveries. If the supplier stops delivering, the customer looks for another one. Winning them back later costs much more than keeping them would have.
- Legal liability. In almost every country, the employer is responsible for working conditions. An accident can bring fines, lawsuits, shutdowns and, in serious cases, criminal consequences for those responsible. On top of that comes the relationship with the insurer: coverage, premiums and conditions.
None of these losses appears in the year's budget. That is why it pays to think about safety the same way as maintenance: what you don't invest beforehand, you pay for afterward, and almost always at a higher price.
The industry numbers
The data below come from published, verifiable studies. They don't describe every plant, but they show where the danger is.
Combustible dust: the CSB study
In 2006, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) studied the combustible dust accidents that occurred in that country between 1980 and 2005. It found 281 incidents, which caused 119 deaths and 718 injuries1. The study did not include grain handling facilities, which have their own history of accidents.
Two cases we look at in detail in Chapter 3 show the reach of this hazard. In 2008, the sugar dust explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Georgia killed 14 workers. The CSB concluded that the company probably would have prevented it with routine housekeeping2. In 2025, an explosion at the Horizon Biofuels plant in Nebraska killed a worker and his two daughters. In its investigation update, the CSB called it a completely preventable hazard3.
Silos and confined spaces: the Purdue reports
Purdue University, in the United States, publishes a yearly summary of accidents in agricultural confined spaces: silos, hoppers, bins and other enclosed places where a person can become trapped or run out of air. Its report on 2024 documented 51 cases, 22 of which were fatal. Of that total, 34 were grain entrapments, 25% more than the year before4.
The same report makes two important points. First, historically about 58% of documented cases ended in death. Second, an estimated 30% or so of cases are never recorded or reported4. In other words, the real numbers are higher than the published ones.
The report on 2025, published in July 2026, recorded at least 48 cases, with 22 deaths, and 21 grain entrapments5. The number of entrapments went down, but the number of deaths stayed the same. We come back to these hazards in Chapter 7.
The global picture
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that in 2019 about 2.93 million people died worldwide from work-related causes. Most of them, about 2.6 million, from occupational diseases, and about 330,000 from occupational accidents. In addition, more than 395 million workers suffered non-fatal injuries6.
These figures cover all activities, not just agribusiness. But they are a reminder of something that is easy to forget in a plant: harm doesn't come only from the accidents you can see. It also comes from what people breathe and hear for years, such as dust and noise. We cover this in chapters 6 and 10.
What accidents have in common
If you read the investigation reports, a pattern appears. Serious accidents are rarely bad luck. They almost always combine three things:
- A known hazard. Sugar, wood and grain dust are combustible, and that has been known for decades. Flowing grain can bury a person in seconds, and that is known too.
- A condition that was tolerated. Accumulated dust that nobody cleaned, a silo people entered without a permit, a guard that was removed to work faster and never put back.
- A missing barrier. There was no spark detection, no harness or attendant at the silo, the energy was not locked out before someone reached in.
The good news is that this can be worked on. None of the three points depends on luck: they depend on design decisions, procedures and controls.
Safety doesn't come with the machine
It is common to think that if you buy good equipment, safety comes included. A well-designed machine helps a lot: fixed guards, interlocks, emergency stops, points for locking out energy. But the machine is only one part. A plant's safety is built in three stages:
It is designed
The layout of the equipment, dust collection, the location of filters and cyclones, access to silos and hoppers, the electrical installation and the escape routes are defined in the project. Correcting those decisions later costs much more than getting them right from the start. That is why you should talk about safety from the first meeting with the supplier, not after commissioning.
It is trained
A safe machine in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to use it is no longer safe. Every worker has to know the hazards of their workstation, how to stop the equipment, how to lock it out before working on it and what to do in an emergency. The supervisor also has to know when to stop a task. We develop this in Chapter 11.
It is checked
What isn't recorded eventually stops being done. Scheduled cleaning, preventive maintenance, permits to enter a silo or to weld, training: everything needs a simple record and someone who reviews it. Chapter 12 proposes how to set up that system without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Safety and productivity go together
There is a belief that is hard to dismantle: that safety slows down production. In practice, many of the measures that reduce accidents also reduce downtime:
- Order and cleanliness lower the risk of explosion and fire, and also product contamination and equipment wear.
- Preventive maintenance prevents overheated bearings, which are an ignition source, and also unexpected breakdowns.
- Written procedures for working on a machine prevent accidents and also mistakes that damage the equipment.
- Training reduces injuries and also dependence on a single person who "knows how it's done."
A plant where everything has its place, where everyone knows who does what and where records are up to date is usually a more predictable plant. And predictability is what customers, insurers and banks look for.
How to use this book
This book is meant for owners, managers and supervisors of wood pellet, biomass and feed plants, and for those who are about to build one. It is not a technical manual for the machines: it does not explain how to adjust, calibrate or repair equipment. It explains what hazards exist, what the regulations require and what measures are available.
It is organized as follows:
- Chapter 2: the map of international regulations, and those of the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries.
- Chapters 3 to 8: the main hazards in a plant: combustible dust, machines, electricity, noise, silos and confined spaces, fires.
- Chapter 9: animal feed hygiene, which reaches people's tables.
- Chapters 10 and 11: loads, postures, personal protective equipment, training and safety culture.
- Chapter 12: how to bring it all together into a safety plan for the plant.
Each chapter ends with a checklist: concrete questions for walking through the plant and seeing where it stands. You don't need to read the book in order. If your concern today is dust, start with Chapter 3. If you have silos, with Chapter 7. What matters is answering the checklists honestly and writing down what is missing.
Each chapter also has a section on what to leave to a professional. Some decisions can't be made by reading a book: they require a licensed specialist who sees the plant, the material and the equipment.
Every regulation, study and case we cite is identified by its number, its year and a link to the source, so you can look it up directly.
Chapter checklist
- Do we know the three or four most serious hazards in our plant?
- Have we had accidents or near misses in recent years? Are they recorded, and did we analyze why they happened?
- Is there a person responsible for safety, with the time and authority to do that job?
- Do we know which safety regulations apply to our plant in our country?
- Is safety discussed in management meetings, just like production and sales?
- Do expansion projects and equipment purchases include safety from the start?
- Does every worker know how to stop their equipment and what to do in an emergency?
- Have we reviewed with our insurer which safety measures it requires or recommends?
What to leave to a professional
Before moving ahead with specific measures, you should have an overall assessment of the plant: a risk survey carried out by an occupational safety and health professional licensed in your country. That survey sets priorities and keeps you from spending on what is urgent while what is important goes unresolved. If the plant is still a project, the assessment is done on the drawings, and that is the best time to do it.
At Meelko, we think about safety from the start of the line project, together with capacity and equipment layout. If you want to review your project or your plant, tell us about your project.
Chapter sources
- U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). Investigation Report: Combustible Dust Hazard Study, Report No. 2006-H-1, November 2006. News release: https://www.csb.gov/assets/1/17/Public_Meeting_News_Release_FINAL_11-7-06.pdf ↑
- CSB. Investigation Report: Sugar Dust Explosion and Fire, Imperial Sugar Company, Port Wentworth, Georgia, Report No. 2008-05-I-GA, September 2009. https://www.csb.gov/imperial-sugar-company-dust-explosion-and-fire/ ↑
- CSB. Investigation Update: Horizon Biofuels, September 17, 2025. https://www.csb.gov/assets/1/6/Horizon_Biofuels_Investigation_Update_2025-09-17_Final_Public.pdf — Case page: https://www.csb.gov/horizon-biofuels-explosions/ — As of November 13, 2026, the CSB states that the investigation is still open and it has not published a final report. ↑
- Purdue University, Agricultural Confined Spaces. 2024 Summary of U.S. Agricultural Confined Space-related Injuries and Fatalities, 2025. https://www.purdue.edu/engineering/abe/agconfinespaces/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2024-Summary-of-U.S.-Agricultural-Confined-Space-related-Injuries-and-Fatalities-Report.pdf — Reports page: https://www.purdue.edu/engineering/abe/agconfinespaces/injury-fatality-reports — Report text reproduced in Grain Journal: https://www.grainjournal.com/article/1094480/2024-summary-of-u-s-agricultural-confined-space-related-injuries-and-fatalities ↑
- Cheng, Y.-H.; Field, B. et al. (Purdue Agricultural Safety and Health Program, Purdue University). 2025 Summary of U.S. Agricultural Confined Space-related Injuries and Fatalities, July 2026. https://www.purdue.edu/engineering/abe/agconfinespaces/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2025-Summary-of-Confined-Spaces.pdf — Figures from pages 1 and 3: no fewer than 48 cases (22 fatal and 26 non-fatal; each case is one person) and no fewer than 21 grain entrapments, 38% fewer than in 2024. ↑
- International Labour Organization (ILO). Nearly 3 million people die of work-related accidents and diseases, November 2023 (2019 estimates). https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/nearly-3-million-people-die-work-related-accidents-and-diseases — Breakdown by cause: ILOSTAT, The right to occupational safety and health: still unrealized. https://ilostat.ilo.org/blog/the-right-to-occupational-safety-and-health-still-unrealized/ ↑
