I was perturbed by
this:
A woman threw flour at front-running French presidential candidate Francois Hollande as he made a campaign stop Wednesday, in what she said was a protest against his Socialist Party.
Hollande was giving a speech on housing in La Porte de Versailles, in Paris, at the time of the flour-bomb attack.
Video footage showed Hollande, who is the main challenger to incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy in the election in the spring, looking surprised but not panicked as flour showered down on him at the podium.
People don't seem to realize that suspended dust, like flour, is highly-combustible, and can explode with just a bit of static discharge. That's why grain silos
explode, after all:
Many materials which are commonly known to oxidise can generate a dust explosion, such as coal, sawdust, and magnesium. However, many otherwise mundane materials can also lead to a dangerous dust cloud such as grain, flour, sugar, powdered milk and pollen. Many powdered metals (such as aluminium and titanium) can form explosive suspensions in air.
The dust can arise from activities such as transporting grain and indeed grain silos do regularly have explosions.
No comments:
Post a Comment