• 13
  • February
    2012

A well-liked 26-year old, male worker at the Texas City port facility of Dallas Group of America Inc. was killed late Saturday, February 11th, in an industrial accident. Details of the incident were not immediately available; but, the Texas City Homeland Security Coordinator reported that the tragedy occurred at about 10:00 p.m., when the man was working on unspecified machinery used to package products the company sells, at its plant located at 301 Dock Road. The man was rushed to the Texas City Clear Lake Regional Medical Center; but was pronounced dead. The Galveston County Medical Examiner's office reported that an autopsy is scheduled, to determine the precise cause of death.

The killed worker was a 2003 graduate of Texas City High School, where he played varsity football for the Stingarees. Former teammates and school friends are visiting surviving family members. He was also a member of A Few Good Men, a Texas City social services organization active in area youth and charitable causes.

Dallas Group of America Inc. was organized in 1989. The company, whose headquarters are in Whitehouse, New Jersey, uses its Texas City facility to package, sell and ship primarily foodservice chemical products, worldwide. Company specialties include the filtration and purification of oils, spirits and polyol, to remove trace metals, colors and odors; as well as the leading North American manufacture of ammonium chloride, absorbent synthetic magnesium silicate and lignin, all of which being primarily used in the food industry, including industrial frying, edible oil manufacture, beer and spirits production, and biodiesel production. Such chemicals have wide-spread application for multi-site restaurants and food makers, to enhance efficiency, improve processing and product quality, and meet environmental controls.

Thus far, the company's response to the tragedy has been encouraging. Although neither its corporate nor local offices issued any official statement, the Texas City plant manager reported that the facility is currently closed to allow the company to conduct an internal investigation of the cause of the death. Also, he indicated the company's willingness to cooperate with a pending OSHA investigation, as well.

OSHA has recently been so concerned with the abysmal worker safety record at Texas City petroleum refiners, that in June, 2010, it initiated its National Emphasis Program, (NEP), with the goal of inspecting process safety management programs, in virtually all of the nation's refineries; declaring that standard inspections and safe-guards are inadequate to prevent common-place fires, explosions, and other catastrophic events. Use of inadequately trained contactor personnel, significant lack of compliance during inspections, and inadequate safety training and awareness were cited as major, and aggravatingly persistent, problems. While the Dallas Group plant is not among the initiative's target group, there is no question that the entire Texas City chemical industry remains a source of safety concern, as Saturday's tragedy underscores.

Of course, it remains to be determined exactly what caused this young man's death. But, even in the relatively benign food service industry, the machinery in operation is just as dangerous as that used in massive heavy industrial complexes. If a machine has a power source, rapidly moving parts and the requirement of human interaction to serve its function, the potential for injury or death is constantly present. Whether the machine makes cotton balls or cheese puffs, giant steel ingots or jet fuel, is beside the point. Any machine is, in the final analysis, tougher than the human hands, feet, eyes and ears that make it work. When the human and the machine contact in a non-design context, the human loses- always. That's why 3.1 million workers were injured, nationwide, in 2010, and 4,547 more lost their lives on the job. Worker safety and health should be the primary focus of every workplace in America, every moment of every work day of the year. Whenever that focus is lost sight of, a worker pays for it with an injury or a death.

Continue reading: http://www.khou.com/news/local/Worker-killed-in-industrial-accident-139218369.html

http://galvestondailynews.com/story/292694