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something which is now well established. There was a bad dust explosion in an aluminum factory near Massena in the northern tier. Everybody had always known - at least people who knew about the industry knew - that you could have explosions in starch mills, but they didn't know why. It's just as you can have terrible explosions in grain elevators, but they didn't know why.

Then we had this explosion in an aluminum mill. If anything is non-inflammable, it's aluminum. This was a very great shock to us. We also had a gunpowder explosion in the Atlas Corporation, but that was different because you always knew that there was a hazard in that. But these dust explosions were something new.

We got a committee of the National Safety Council and the National Fire Protection Association to help us with a study. It became a major study because they went all over the country. As soon as you began studying it you found there had been other unexplained explosions. They worked with the help of our factory inspectors, our industrial hygiene people, our laboratory - we did the major work. I got the Columbia University Laboratory to help us too. Professor Ira Woolson taught in Columbia's engineering school and was an expert in all kinds of fire explosions. We got him to help. That meant that we got the use of all their