Lethal molasses, from Boston to Kiri Afghana : The Tribune India

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Lethal molasses, from Boston to Kiri Afghana

MOLASSES, a byproduct of the sugar manufacturing process, is used to make alcohol in distilleries. Sugar factories often store huge stocks of this syrup-like fluid.

Lethal molasses, from Boston to Kiri Afghana

DISASTER: Thousands of fish in the Beas river had died in May last year after a molasses spill from a sugar mill in Gurdaspur district.



JV Yakhmi
Fellow, National Academy of Sciences

MOLASSES, a byproduct of the sugar manufacturing process, is used to make alcohol in distilleries. Sugar factories often store huge stocks of this syrup-like fluid. In May last year, about 10,000 quintals of molasses spilled over from the storage lagoons of a sugar mill at Kiri Afghana in Gurdaspur district into a drain leading to the Beas river. Thousands of fish died as oxygen levels in the water depleted due to the pollution caused by molasses. The Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) sealed the mill for months as a deterrent and imposed a fine of Rs 5 crore on it as ‘environmental compensation’ for the rejuvenation of aquatic life and quality of drinking water drawn from the Beas. To avoid further spillage, the PPCB instructed the mill to store molasses in steel tanks with cooling arrangements, recirculation and proper venting, and to follow all industrial safety norms.

On the centenary of the Boston molasses disaster, the first major industrial accident of its kind, it is pertinent to highlight that any disregard of safety in the handling of molasses in large steel tanks at sugar mills and distilleries can lead to disastrous consequences, even fatalities. That is what happened on January 15, 1919, in Boston when an iron storage tank with 90-ft diameter and 50-ft height, filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses ready to be distilled into industrial alcohol, split open and exploded at the Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of the United States Industrial Alcohol (USIA). The blast released huge amounts of molasses like a tidal wave of syrup 40-ft high and 160-ft wide at its peak, travelling through the neighbouring streets at 35 mph. This flood of molasses demolished buildings and a nearby fire station, buckled an elevated railway track and crushed vehicles. People, horses and dogs on the streets got engulfed in the molasses, and any attempt by them to escape only sank them further, drowning them in the viscous fluid that stretched chest-deep even 90 metres from the tank and carried floating debris. The accident killed 21 persons and injured 150.

Why did the storage tank at the Boston distillery explode? The tank had shown frequent leaks earlier due to a weakened structure, a fact ignored by the owners. A combination of factors led to its bursting: structural defects, rise in ambient temperatures, and fermentation in the tank kept filled with molasses for several days, producing carbon dioxide that built excessive pressure inside it.

Why was the wave of molasses so deadly? Unlike water, molasses is what physicists call a non-Newtonian fluid, the velocity of which depends on the force applied to it. Swimming in molasses is nearly impossible because of a low value of its Reynolds number, which is related to its viscosity and density, and the size of the object trying to swim. The Reynolds number for an adult man in water is about one million, but in molasses it is just 130.

Since 1919, there have been several fatal accidents due to the bursting of storage tanks of molasses at sugar mills. Two men were killed and eight injured in Karachi in April 2018; three workers were killed and 16 injured at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra in April 2016; a woman and her two children died in Orissa’s Ganjam district in 2012; seven persons were killed and 14 injured in Hyderabad region of Pakistan in 2008. Besides, several accidents related to suffocation while cleaning a molasses tank have led to the loss of lives, such as the death of two men in Sarina (Australia) in January 2018.

Unsafe handling of large quantities of other fluids, too, has led to industrial disasters. The most cited among them is the London Beer flood incident, when a large wooden vat of beer, 21-ft high and 60-ft across, holding about one million pints of hot fermenting ale, exploded at Meux’s Horse Shoe Brewery in London on October 17, 1814. A tsunami of beer inundated the streets and houses nearby, drowning eight persons, all women or children. At Kolantar in the Hungarian countryside, a caustic waste reservoir collapsed at Ajka Alumina Plant on October 4, 2010, spilling over one million cubic metres of highly alkaline red sludge which flooded several villages, killing 10 persons and injuring 120. The Hungarian Government had to declare a state of emergency, evacuating 8,000 people. It also imposed a fine of $647 million on MAL Hungarian Co. for damaging environment.

But it was the 1919 Boston molasses disaster which underlined industrial safety as a matter of serious concern for the first time. Promulgation of restrictions governing the quality of concrete/steel used in industry, observing safety margins in the construction of large tanks, employing trained supervisory staff to handle safety operations, holding periodic safety inspections by regulatory agencies, and seeking approvals of the state before setting up a large factory handling unsafe and toxic materials became the norm thereafter. The Boston blast caused the loss of so many lives because the huge tank that could hold 2.3 million gallons of molasses was set up in a congested neighbourhood of the Commercial Street in North End, without taking permissions. 

Safety hazards related to transport and storage of inflammable fluids such as petroleum products and petrochemicals are often discussed. However, toxic effluents are discharged into Indian rivers and canals recklessly by leather tanneries, textile dyeing units, etc., often without treating the effluents, as required by the safety norms. Regulations against damage to life and ecology are only as strong as their enforcement, which can be done only by upright officials. To oversee the lawsuit that followed the Boston molasses disaster, the Massachusetts Superior Court had appointed an auditor, Col Hugh W Ogden. In 1925, Ogden declared the company USIA fully at fault for the disaster, forcing it to pay out $7 million in settlements, a lesson to big industries to follow safety norms.

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