Benjamin Ament, Inside Sales Specialist at Brady, suggests alternative granulars to silica for cleaning up leaks, drips, and spills in your workplace.
Leaks, drips and spills in your facility—or liquid transfer of any kind—odds are you’ve used some type of absorbent for those types of situations already. Absorbents are a great way to comply with OSHA regulations, they keep the workplace clean, dry and safe around all leaking equipment. So, granular is the most common in the workplace given its low cost. Diatomaceous earth and clay composition are typically the most popular of the granular sorts, and the most prevalent material in diatomaceous earth is actually silica, which is the dangerous material that we’ve talked about within granular. It’s a very messy, hard to clean-up product, and on top of that, it’s not very absorbent. So, if you’re looking to stick with granular, some alternatives would be Corn Cob, or Cellulose-based Granular like SPC’s DC-100, or RF-Granular. They’re just as absorbent without containing any silicas. Better yet, if you’re considering a better option, melt-blown polypropylene absorbents absorb more than 20x there weight. They’re easy to deploy and easy to discard.