Strategies for addressing grain bin safety

Hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop Podcast. My name is Kathryn Seebruck, and I'm a Commercial Agriculture educator with University of Illinois Extension serving Jo Daviess, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties. Talking Crop is a row crop production podcast with episodes occurring every other week during the growing season between May and September. In each episode, I bring on a guest speaker to discuss topics related to their areas of expertise. In today's episode, which is the final episode of this season, I'm joined by Dr.

Salah Issa, an assistant professor with the University of Illinois Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department and an Agricultural Safety Extension Specialist. Salah provides us with his expertise on grain bin safety and details the research he's done to assess the efficacy of using compressed air as a method to handle out of condition grain. With harvest already here for some producers and quickly approaching for others, grain bin safety should be at the top of everyone's minds and Salah provides pertinent information that producers should be aware of. I want to thank you for joining me for season two of Talking Crop, whether you've joined me just for today's episode or for others. I also want to thank all of the episode guests that have joined me to offer their time and expertise.

My hope is that listeners who are producers have been able to use some of this information on their operations. And for listeners who are students of agriculture or are just curious, I hope you got some questions answered and learned something new. The third season of Talking Crop will return next growing season in May 2026. And now please enjoy this episode of Strategies for Addressing Grain Bin Safety with Dr. Salah Issa. Salah, hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop Podcast.

Thank you for being here today. I am really excited to talk to you today about ag safety.

Thank you for inviting me here.

Salah, your area of focus again is agricultural safety. My first question for you is currently in today's landscape, what are the most pressing agricultural safety issues out there?

Thank you, Kathryn, for that question. Agriculture as a whole, it's more like a job of all trades where a farmer is doing so many different tasks from harvesting, maintaining their equipment, storing their grain. There's a lot of different hazards associated with agriculture in particular. Some of the more pressing ones tend to focus on machinery. For example, tractor safety or, as my specialty is, grain safety as well.

Can you talk about what makes grain bin work so dangerous? There's a lot of stats out there about the dangers of this and how there's a significant amount of fatalities when it comes to grain bin accidents. What makes this work so inherently dangerous?

Just to preface this, from Purdue University, Purdue does a great job at collecting these incidents. What they document is that every year, there's between 20 to 40 grain bin entrapments. When we say entrapments, that means a person is stuck in the grain mass itself and cannot extricate themselves. Around half of these end up being fatalities. Ten to twenty fatalities does not sound like a lot, but just keep in mind, this is happening for something that is for the most part, 100% preventable.

We don't need to see grain entrapments at all. Going through that preface, what makes grain so hazardous is that it's a granular material. A granular material sometimes behaves like a solid. You can walk on it. Sometimes behave like a liquid, you can drown in it. A lot of times it's either not knowing how grain behaves or the familiarity with how grain behaves that tend to lead people to get entrapped in grain.

With that, the research and the literature talks about, with grain safety, it talks about this concept of out of condition grain. Can you describe what that is and how that leads to a worker maybe not understanding how that's going to respond to the physical aspects of walking on it or walking within a grain bin that might have that out of condition grain?

Out of condition grain, it's based, in other words, the grain is going bad to some degree, there's mold, there's rodents, there's insect damage. In a sense, what is happening is that it starts to form these clumps. This could be very broad, it could form like a huge crusted layer on top of the whole grain bin. That crusted layer can be thick enough that actually acts like a bridge. So when you're emptying the grain underneath it, it will empty to a certain degree and then you have this bridge. We had cases where, for example, a father and his child walked over it, the child walked first, nothing happened, and he walked right across the grain bin and then the father followed suit and he ended up breaking the bridge, collapsing and drowning.

That's one way. Sometimes these clumps tend to form towers, could be due to water leak, could be due to fines build up in the center of the grain mass. There's just different ways that these out of condition happen. What you see most frequently is that the grain, there's some part of these clumps have formed somewhere in the grain mass, a farmer's emptying the grain, and they're in a hurry. Then basically one of these clumps goes and blocks off the outlet where he's emptying his grain bin. Then the farmer responds by going inside the grain bin and trying to break that clump. And then, he's successful, but he left his machinery running and it basically pulls him straight in. That's one of the more common types that we see a person getting entrapped in grain, but not the only way. There's a lot of different ways a person can end up inside a grain mass.

Is it true that when someone does end up unfortunately being, entrapped in a grain bin, when rescue workers come in to extricate that person, it's also dangerous for them as well, where they can also become entrapped. Right?

It is possible. I haven't heard any recent stories on that, but it is possible that a rescue worker, if they're not following the right recommendations, they could technically get entrapped. The most important thing is that if there's machinery running, you turn it off and and you have to remember if the grain was being emptied and the victim is probably near the center and the slope of grain will all be pointing downwards at him, it is possible to disrupt the grain that you actually cause a small avalanche and you further entrap a person in the grain. That is also a possibility as well.

With these rescue workers, obviously, a lot of these accidents are gonna be happening maybe commercially, but also on farm. And either/or really can be in very rural areas where first responders might take a little bit of time for them to get there. Our first responders, are they especially trained for these extrication practices?

There's been a lot of training efforts that occurred over the last ten years to train rescue personnel on how to rescue individuals interacting grain. That training involves a lot of aspects, how to drain the grain, for example, from a grain bin, which that includes cutting along the sides of the grain bin, so the grain kind of drains outwards. It includes using some sort of device where a tube that you pull around a person that basically allows you to drain the grain from the tube and then you rescue the person. There's quite a lot of training that has been happening or has happened in the past for firefighters. A lot of rural firefighters nowadays, I've heard quite a few of them already have the tubes necessary to rescue a person.

That's great. Yeah. I'm sure those individuals are very knowledgeable about the areas that they live in and what kinds of accidents typically occur. It's a good thing that they get trained in that and then have the equipment on-site to be able to handle those emergencies when they unfortunately happen. What kind of strategies can be used for a worker, whether it be a farmer or someone in a commercial operation?

What kind of strategies exist that can be used to remove this out of condition grain that can cause these kinds of accidents? Ovioulsy we know they happen, I'm sure there are tools around and available in order to break up, like you said, these clumps to make sure that getting into the grain bin isn't something that's completely necessary?

I like this question and I'll tell you why, because first of all, even if you're taking really well good care of your grain, things happen and it's possible that you still will have clumps forming that will clog your grain bin. The best thing that you could do is prepare for that. There's a lot of solutions, either simple solutions or solutions on the market already that you can implement to protect your grain. For example, you can buy something called a plug buster that you put it right on top of the auger outlet that can then be used and it's attached, this plug buster attaches directly to the sweep auger system in the bin, and it will break up any clumps that are right above it. And that will take care of the problem.

You could build in simple rodding devices, either you can put rods right on top of the gate, so as you open and close the gate, it can break those clumps, or you can build a rod that extends to outside the grain bin that you can control in either X or Y direction. You could alter your sump, make it larger. You could also purchase or get some robotics. For example, Grain Weevil, they have this small robot that you put in a grain bin, and it can basically even out the grain as you're filling it and make sure that even outs all the fines, which kind of reduces the chance the grain goes bad, or it can help before you unload it, you put it in and it can basically go over the surface and break any clumps that there is as well. There's a lot of things that you could do to prepare in advance.

Unfortunately, we all end up in the circumstances where we're not ready for it. If you end up in a circumstance where your grain bin is clogged and you need to access your grain, there's a couple of solutions you could do. If you have towers there and you know that you have time, you could try turning on the aeration fans for a long time and through heat and constant supply of air, it can reduce the moisture and break up the clumps. You could use grain if the grain is on the side and not directly on top of your sump, it's just possible to use the grain itself, use the force and the pressure of the grain itself as you're pouring it down to break those clumps down, that's possible. In addition, you could use rotting devices but from outside the green vent that you have to be really careful if there's any power lines there as well.

You could also use some force based solutions. For example, you could use compressed air, you could remove your auger system, put a pipe down in there and with compressed air, you can try to push air through and break those clumps that are right at the gate. Or lastly, but not least, there are companies that as a service will bring what they call a bin whip, which is basically it looks like, it operates similar to when you're clearing a sewage pipe, and it just rotates all around. You could use that to break up any large towers or other structures in the Great Bend.

It sounds like there's a lot of options out there available to workers and farmers to be able to handle these situations as they arise, which is fantastic. I really like what you mentioned about how you want to prepare for these things ahead of time. You don't want to be caught in a situation where you have out of condition grain and you have a clump or a clog and you need to get it fixed and you either don't have the tool available to you, or maybe on the worst side of things, you don't even know where to start to get that taken care of, especially externally. As you're talking about these different strategies, I noticed most, if not all of them had to do with either the robot that's not a person inside the bin, it's machine or everything else, the person is doing some sort of work outside of the bin. Having a good understanding of all these strategies that are available, that education is must be really, really important as a preventative measure to prevent these types of accidents from occurring. You mentioned there's a lot of strategies, and I'm sure that there's a lot of training from like OSHA or other Cooperative Extension services outside of Illinois, there's Extension in every state. Even with all these strategies and even with all this training and this education, why do you think that these accidents still occur?

I have to point out that a lot of the trainings that at least I've seen or participated in tend to focus on here's the problem and here's how to avoid it, but they're not really addressing, okay, you're stuck. And now you have a clump that is inside your of your grain bin, you can't get out your grain with you next. A lot of times the answer tends to be either hire somebody else or don't enter the bin. Those two solutions are not necessarily solutions that farmers will pick immediately, right? Not entering a bin, when the bin is clogged. Sometimes the easiest way is to enter the bin to see what the problem is. Hiring external services, that's expensive. That's probably one of the last steps to do. And it's only in extreme cases when the grain is really bad. Usually there's not necessarily a lot of training, I would say a lot of these solutions tend to be word-of-mouth on what to do.

What I did in this case is I sat down a group of experts together and farmers, and we just brainstormed to see any solutions that they've heard that actually succeeded. That's where I generated this list. I would say a lot of reason why is because it's expedient. Your grain is clogged. You need, you have your, grain wagon right there.

You want to fill it up right now. The fastest solution is going inside the grain bin, leaving it running so that you can tell that you broke the clump and just tried to break the clump. It is the fastest solution, but definitely not a safe solution.

With new grain bins, as they're being constructed, do they come equipped with tools to handle this out of condition grain to prevent people from having to get in the first place at all or buy any extra tools or undergo any other extra methods to be able to handle out of condition grain?

It really depends. There are solutions, there are ideas. Some ideas as to how the floor is structured. There's a lot of different solutions in place. Are they default solutions if you're purchasing a new green bin? I'm not certain and I don't believe so.

It really depends. If you're going into industry wise, sometimes, there's a lot of times there's tunnels inside the grain silos or the grain bins, and you can access the outlet from that tunnel. Then that becomes a quick and easy solution to make sure you empty the grain. I have not personally seen that, frequently in farms or, at farms. It's usually really up to the farmer to decide what solutions they're going to implement and build.

Looking at the stats of this grain bin safety issue, back in 2022, there were 42 fatal and nonfatal documented, at least, grain entrapment cases, which was a huge increase from the previous year. It was almost a 45% increase from 2021. Many of those accidents were traced or could be traced to out of condition grain. And like we've talked about, that is what results in workers going into the grain bin in the first place to be able to get that alleviated. You've already mentioned all these different strategies that exist that a producer or someone commercially can utilize to be able to prevent them from going into the grain bin in the first place. Despite all of this, there have been limited efforts to study the strategies that address this issue. There's been limited strategies to address the efficacy of these different strategies like rotting or compressed air or, other things that you mentioned. So why is that?

What's interesting is if you look at it historically and we had our first major peak in 2010, when you had about 60 some incidents involving grain intractments. Since then it dropped initially, but then it has held steady between 20 to 40. You gave an example of 2022, we had 42 cases, in 2023, had 27 cases and in 2024 was 34 cases. I believe what happened is that when we had that peak in 2010, there's been a lot of new efforts focusing on training and knowledge. A lot of the knowledge was focused on what would happen if you go inside the grain bin, how many deaths there are, and most of it has been focused on preventative.

There just hasn't been a lot of efforts focusing on you're stuck in the grain, you have grain that's stuck in the grain bin, what do you do next? I can't tell you exactly why we have not focused more on that. I think it depends on the researchers and their interest areas. But that definitely has been an interest of mine. I think it's really important to look at, to go down to the level of the farmer to understand, okay, what is the farmer going to do to be able to give feedback and support them in a way that keeps them safe? That's what I have been trying to do here for the last few years at the University of Illinois.

You brought up a great point. That kind of does answer the question in that once these accidents peaked back in 2010, folks were looking at more preventative measures. That's the first thing that anybody does in these types of situations where a significant increase in something occurs and you want to look at preventing that from happening. So it makes sense that that's kind of the angle that society kind of went down. Right?

I find it really interesting that you're looking at it from a completely different angle of, okay, maybe preventative actions aren't, they're not always going to work, right? And so what do we do then when we're in those situations? What do we do and how can we do it safely? Looking at the efficacy first and foremost can be a really great start. You mentioned that's what you're working on now at the University of Illinois, and you shared with me some studies that you've done on using compressed air as a method to prevent grain entrapment. Can you talk about how this method works, first of all? And then from there, can you describe how you conducted this research?

The method is that you're using an air compressor, 450 CFM or something similar, you take this compressed air and you remove the auger completely outside of the grain bin and you take basically half an inch to an inch black steel pipe and you thread it inside the hole where the auger is and then you basically pump out air. The idea is that the air with such force, it can break up the clumps, free up that space, and then you can remove it and put the auger back in and continue to empty your brain. This is something that is done and has been heard of. What was interesting to me, when I started at the University of Illinois, there was an article written by one farmer, his name was Guy Mills, that tested this as a solution and found it really successful. I was in a meeting with other grain safety experts and I remember they're all basically talking about how this is a bad idea. In my mind, I was thinking, this is where the farmer is looking for the solution. Instead of saying this is a bad idea, why not test it out and understand how it works and understand what are the safety implications or safety requirements you need to take to test this idea. That's really how this project was born.

That's really fascinating that you are meeting that farmer where they're at instead of dictating what should be done. You're looking at, okay, what are they doing? And let's test to see if it's effective and maybe how we can potentially make it safer. How did you conduct this research? I looked at your paper a little bit and it looks like you had first some pilot studies and then more of a large scale study. Can you talk about the difference between those two and why you start with a pilot study before you go into a large scale?

The first thing that we wanted to test, we had a lot of different questions. Does the pressure matter? How much air you're going to push it? Is a shop vac enough? Does it provide enough pressure or you need to get, air compressor?

We were interested in saying, okay, the farmer in this case just used an open pipe. He also recommended, crimping the pipe at one end and using that as well. Is there a difference? Is there other nozzles that would be more superior to that? We had that question as well. The third question is does it matter how hard that grain is or that clump is? We had all these sets of questions that we were asking about it. That's why we started with a pilot. We put a call, asking, hey, if anybody has green clumps, to send this to us, and we received quite a few. We put them in this makeshift box, and then basically we tried the shop vac or the shop compressor did not make any impact at all.

Then we tried the air compressor and we tried five different nozzles. Three of them are just simple solutions. One is an open pipe and the second solution where we crimped it like what the farmer did. The third one, we basically brought a cover, we covered it and we drilled a very tiny hole inside that cover to see if that more targeted approach works better. Then we also bought two different nozzles that are used commercially as well. We found out that either the crimped or the open pipe tends to work the best. That's what we found out from our pilots. And we found out they have somewhat of a linear relationship with the hardness. The softer the clump, the easier it is for them to break it. Then beyond that we took and did a larger scale experiment where we went into some small grain bins that we had on-site. We basically created these columns four foot by about, one and a half to two feet, wide, where we filled it with grain. We set it, we wet the grain and let it sit for basically about six months so that it forms these clumps. Then we started using the remaining nozzles to test out which one's effective. And again, we found out just as regular pipe works well enough.

That's interesting that you could start from square one, say, okay, let's look at these clumps. How hard are they? How difficult is it for these different nozzles to break them apart? Then you took it a step further and introduced that in a grain bin setting. The final stage, at least how I viewed it in the research was doing this on a large scale. It looked like that was in Nebraska where you guys were contacted by a farmer that had an issue. So how did that come about? I was curious, that farmer, was he familiar with your guys' research? How did that come about?

It takes us back to the beginning. As I remember, I mentioned the farmer, Guy Mills, who who had an article written about him about approaching air compressors as the solution. I had been in contact with him and he has been part of this research team since then, and he knew the farmer. When the farmer had the grain been clogged and in our lucky circumstance, that the farmer could wait. He did not need his immediately. I was able to, I think within two weeks time period, book a flight, go there, and then we set it in motion, we tested it. What we found was, in general, we found that air compressor is a solution that could work. It's not a magical solution. It will take multiple attempts to get that grain broken up. And the thing that you realize is that we're thinking, if you think about this from a 3-D perspective it will only break up a certain amount of grain, a certain depth of grain.

And beyond that, you have to just keep iterating. You empty a bit, you use the air compressor to break another portion of grain and you iterate again and again, that's what we noticed.

Were there any secondary results of this research? The fact that you're blowing air into a grain bin, I'm sure results in a pretty messy situation. Did you guys find that there were any secondary effects that need to be considered when someone is utilizing this method?

Yes, and as you remember, I started with, I wanted to study the safety aspects for this.

Yes.

We looked at spore content and dust content inside the grain itself and outside the grain. We measured the sound that's being produced. After measuring sound, we looked at the heat that is being produced and we looked at it as a cohesive structure. It's important to note that this is high pressure air and it's not, it's highly unrecommended for you to point it to your body, you could severely injure yourself. That is an important thing that farmers need to take. As you're emptying or clearing the auger tube from grain, it does fly directly at you and it will, it's not too painful, but if it gets in your eyes or so on, it could injure you. There's a strong recommendation of wearing a face shield when using compressed air. We found out that there is very high concentrations of spores and dust in the grain mass. When it comes to dust inside the grain bin itself, it tends to settle fairly quickly. It settled within five minutes.

Outdoors it will produce a dust cloud which will settle really rapidly, especially if there's any wind movement. However, it's important that you stay safe, wear proper masks, some sort of respirator at N95 is what we recommended. In addition, there are spores that are going to be flying around. This is really recommended to stay safe and stay healthy as well. The pipe itself that's pushing out the air will heat up eventually, and it's important to wear heat resistant gloves as you're operating that pipe. The sound will exceed 100 dBa. It's important to wear hearing protection. We notice the sound exceeds more often when you're trying to clear the grain using compressed air than necessarily when you're trying to break it up. That's all important safety considerations. The last thing I would note that since a dust cloud does form as you're clearing it out, that dust can get on fire. It's important that the air compressor be grounded and keep it away from this operation.

It's really fascinating to consider that there's all these secondary aspects that should be considered. You want these practices, these alternative practices to entering the grain bin to be safe, to be sure. But it's very important to understand that there are those secondary aspects of it. I was at an event just a couple days ago where there were some drone operators, and they had, a couple generators that they were talking about how it's really annoying because after a while, just the sound really gets to you. And I thought, oh man, that must be kind of a safety issue in terms of their hearing. Listening to you talk about those aspects with this, this compressed air method is really interesting. I think something important to highlight for people that might think that you don't stop at that new method. You have to consider those, those extra effects that might have a safety aspect to be considered as well.

Absolutely.

I wondered Salah, what are some future research endeavors that you're looking at here? Are you going to do more work with this compressed air or are you going to be looking at some other alternative strategies and identifying their effectiveness and those secondary aspects? What else are you guys thinking of looking at going forward?

With this project, we ended up buying an air compressor for our own university. We have one here and we're definitely willing to go and test it out this solution further and hone it in more and when and where and how it's effective. In addition, we're very interested to know that some of the solutions had I talked about, for example, that rodding where you set up the rod and you're outside of the bin, press it and you can push the grain. Our thought is could we actually take a pipe directly all the way to the outlet? And this way, as you're emptying, you're pushing in compressed air so that it can break up any clumps as it's going down. That is just another area to explore as well. Lastly, there's a lot of different solutions that, like I pointed out, that have been practiced by farmers or other industry. It'd be interesting to explore these options as well and see how effective they are.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to hear what you guys come up with and the results that you generate going forward. Salah, I have one final question for you before we end today. As an Ag Safety Expert and specialist, what is your biggest piece of advice to farmers when it comes to on the farm safety?

I would say don't take shortcuts. A lot of the grain safety issues, you could easily say that grain entrapment is 100% preventable. Nobody needs to drown in grain. A lot of times as we're bound by time, we want to save a few minutes and that's usually what happens. Then you end up causing yourself a much more severe injury. Don't take shortcuts. Safety is important. Nobody should care about your own safety more than yourself. If you get injured, it's not just you are the one impacted, you're impacting your family, you're impacting your farm, you're impacting your community. It's really important to try to stay safe always.

That is really great advice and hopefully advice that is very heavily heeded by those listening and beyond. Salah, thank you again so much for joining me today. I appreciate you taking the time to share your expertise on this issue. And as I said before, really excited to hear about what your group does going forward.

Thank you. I appreciate your time.