GAWDA Edge Blog 
  

The big news this week is the unfortunate series of explosions at GAWDA member Scully Welding Supply in Collingdale, PA. A small fire broke out in the yard, which triggered a series of explosions for more than 20 minutes. From the videos I’ve seen, it was a scary sight.

It’s almost hard to believe the fact that it could have been much, much worse. Luckily, fire crews kept two larger propane tanks in check, one a18,000-gallon tank at 20 percent capacity and another a 30,000-gallon tank at 30 percent capacity. And thankfully, from what I’ve heard, those involved in the accident are doing OK. The latest news is that crews were called back to the scene a day later to extinguish hot spot fires among the rubble. Needless to say, it’s a bad situation, and we’re all hoping for the best.

For all gases and welding distributors, I’m sure it is a scary thought to think this can happen to your business. Whether or not you sell propane, there are plenty of potentially hazardous products in the gases and welding industry. Are you doing everything possible to prevent a disaster? We pray that it never happens, but does your company have a disaster plan if an accident occurs?

You can’t be everywhere at once, but keeping tabs on safety is a critical, even burdensome task. Does your company have a full-time safety and compliance officer? If it’s only a part-time responsibility, does your compliance officer have enough time to do their job well? See what others in the industry are doing in Welding & Gases Today.

 Let’s hope we can learn from this disaster and hopefully make sure it never happens again.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t know what to make of the controversy between Airgas and Air Products. Air Products has been trying to acquire Airgas for about 10 months, and everything seems like a carefully played chess match leading up to Airgas’ annual meeting on September 15. As it approaches, I’ve been trying to get a grasp on everything that has taken place.

The feud has now made its way into a New York Times blog from UConn Law Professor Steven M. Davidoff, which dissects the latest moves by each party involved and their potential implications. Why did Airgas send a letter to the Delaware court? Why exactly is Air Product proposing a bylaw amendment to move Airgas’ next annual meeting all the way up to January 2011? Davidoff puts it in terms you can wrap your head around. NB – It’s infused with Davidoff’s opinion, so don’t take it all as fact.

Last week, Airgas sent a letter to its shareholders stating, among many other things, “If Air Products truly wants to acquire Airgas, it knows what to do. It must offer a price that fairly compensates you—our stockholders—or terminate its efforts.”

The NYT blog brings up an important point that seems to draw on this statement: “Whether Airgas intended it, the events of this week tell the market that it certainly is for sale at the right price.”

Is a takeover imminent? What impact do you think it will have on other distributors if it happens?

In today’s GAWDAwiki headlines, you will see that a staff member at the University of Iowa, Dale Stille, was injured in transporting hydrogen-filled balloons to give a science demonstration. The demonstration involved exploding the balloons under safe conditions, but unfortunately, this time they exploded too soon. Stille attempted to fill the balloons at the college before transporting them to the school, and the result was disastrous.

Before the accident, Stille was doing a great service by getting students interested in gases through his demonstrations. Anytime someone promotes the industry in schools, they are doing a great thing. While Stille probably learned his lesson from the explosion, there’s a lesson here that distributors can take away from this: you can never stress safety enough. You can say he should have known better, but there is a responsibility for the school’s distributor to make sure he does know better.

The unfortunate side-effect is that the event creates a negative image of gases as being unsafe. How many parents do you think will be happy and willing to let Stille demonstrate to children now? The best case scenario, at this point, is that Stille takes the mishap and uses it to teach others about safety.

It’s easy to preach safety, but it’s more important to practice it. Just because there are no accidents, it’s no excuse to become lax about safety. When many work hard to educate about the usefulness of gases and welding, it’s a shame for an incident like this to undo all of that work.

Photo: Pslawinski

The world is running out of helium.

At 2008 usage rates, it’s estimated that the world’s helium supply would only last for another 25 years. Take a minute to digest that.

I came across a memorable quote from Robert C. Richardson, 1996 Nobel Prize winner in physics and Cornell physics professor, a credible source who has devoted much of his life’s research to helium. “That which God has taken 4.7 billion years to create will be dissipated in a little more than 100 years,” Richardson stressed.

The question is: what can be done? To address the anticipated shortage, should the price of helium be regulated to control usage? Richardson says a 20-fold increase in the price of helium would be about right. The idea may not be easy to swallow, but in the best case scenario, higher costs would fuel innovation—finding ways to recycle helium and finding alternative gases to replace helium, like using argon in welding. It goes back to the famous quip, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Higher costs for helium may not be an attractive solution, but it is better than the alternative of completely depleting the world’s helium supply. But hey, in another 4.7 billion years, everything will be back to normal.

Do you think it’s a good/bad idea? Is there a better solution than raising the cost? Tell me what you think.