CTA Report, Draft 1, ISP Review - US Chemical Safety and Hazard ...

that the phenolic resin could explode. Following the Jahn Foundry explosion in 1999, which involved a
phenolic resin manufactured by Borden Chemical (Section 8.8.1), OSHA requested additional
information from Borden on the explosibility of phenolic resins. In response, Borden faxed to OSHA a
copy of the 1988 Factory Mutual test results plus the following references, which further demonstrate that
Borden was aware of the explosive hazards:
• A copy of a British research report entitled Explosibility tests for industrial dusts (Raftery,
1975) that lists the explosion parameters for phenolic resins in its appendix.
• Subchapter 5.5, entitled “Dust Explosions,” plus references from the book Phenolic Resins
(Knop and Pilato, 1985).
CSB compared the hazard warnings on the Borden’s phenolic resin MSDSs to hazard warnings on
MSDSs from seven other manufacturers of phenolic resins having the same Chemical Abstracts Service
(CAS) number. The results of this comparison are presented in Table 4. As CSB was only interested in
comparing MSDS hazard warnings for this particular type of phenolic resin, hazards warnings on MSDSs
for other types of phenolic resins were not examined. Therefore, the hazard warnings shown in the
column entitled “Other Manufacturers” do not necessarily represent hazard warnings found on MSDSs
for all types of phenolic resins. Also, CSB limited its comparison to publicly available MSDSs contained
in database compilations and/or available on the Internet. CSB did not obtain MSDSs from all
manufacturers of this particular type of phenolic resin. Based on an evaluation of the MSDSs collected
by CSB, there were notable differences between Borden’s hazard warnings and those of other
manufacturers.
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