Year in Review: Safety takes center stage after tragic accidents

There were plenty of reminders why safety should always be emphasized in manufacturing.

Oregon Rubber Mills was fined $3,600 by the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration stemming from an August 2018 fatal accident at its facility in Corvallis, Ore., that claimed the life of Trenton Howe. The 23-year-old was operating a cutter machine at the site when another employee asked him to assist with a batch of rubber running through one of the plant's festoon machines.

Howe was asked to help the employee get a strip of rubber onto the conveyor belt so the rubber could be placed on a pallet, according to Oregon OSHA's report. When no rubber came out, the employee went to the other side and found Howe caught in the festoon machine. He was pronounced dead on the scene of a broken neck.

Oregon Rubber Mills did not appeal the citation and has erected a barrier to prevent workers from stepping into the machine, according to a company spokesman.

Goodyear had its own issues with safety in the past few years, with four fatalities at its plant in Danville, Va. The firm said it began an in-depth review of its safety processes and culture in early 2017 and renewed its focus on improving. The tire maker paid $1.75 million to the Virginia Department of Occupational Safety and Health in a settlement regarding 150 proposed citations connected with the four deaths at the facility.

On May 9, a man lost part of his right arm at Liberty Tire Recycling L.L.C.'s Des Moines, Iowa, facility. The firm did not release his name, but he was identified as an employee.

And in June, OSHA fined Kumho Tire $507,299 for a total of 22 alleged violations—12 serious, nine repeat and one other-than-serious—at its plant in Macon, Ga. Two other companies working for Kumho at Macon were fined a combined $16,596.

Custom Rubber Products L.L.C. also was fined a total of $530,592 for four alleged willful violations at its plant in Houston.

Decision overturned

It was another busy year for the U.S. International Trade Commission on many fronts.

The body reversed its original opinion on truck and bus tire imports from China, voting 3-2 to find material injury against the domestic tire industry. The original negative determination came down in February 2017, but the United Steelworkers union filed a complaint with the Court of International Trade in April of that year, seeking judicial review. The USW said it was pleased with the ITC's revised decision.

The ITC also made a final ruling on rubber band imports from Thailand, voting 5-0 to make a final determination of material injury to the domestic rubber band industry. The vote means that the 5.87 percent antidumping duty order the U.S. Department of Commerce issued previously became permanent.

Game changer

The University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering made a breakthrough that could potentially lead to self-healing products, such as shoes, toys and possibly tires.

The school developed polymers that heal themselves through the application of heat using a 3D printing method that uses photopolymerization.

The result, according to the researchers, is a 3D-printed material that expands functionality for a variety of uses, including flexible electronics and sound control. The school said a 17.5-millimeter square can be printed in about five seconds and can complete whole objects in about 20 minutes.

Gaining popularity

On the recycling front, a patented technology from NorthStar Elastomers L.L.C. is gaining attention from European-based manufacturing companies.

The company said firms, mostly based in Europe, tout its Tirecycle technology as a superior technology that enhances the performance of rubber products when blended with virgin rubber.

The technology is a fully reactive crumb rubber compound derived from high-specification cured tread rubber that blends into NR, SBR and BR masterbatches with identical cure. The firm said Tirecycle can be blended into virgin rubbers at levels ranging from 25 to 87.5 percent with benefits including a 15 percent increase or greater in tread life when used at a 50-50 ratio, a reduction in rolling resistance, improved safety and no rejects from blisters, among others.

Scientists honored

The ACS Rubber Division honored Roderic Quirk as the 2019 Charles Goodyear Medalist at its spring technical meeting for being one of the most relevant authorities in the field of anionic polymerization.

The division also revealed at its recently held fall expo in Cleveland that Nissim Calderon will be the 2020 Charles Goodyear Medalist. Calderon was chosen because of his work related to the science of olefin metathesis.