Dogwood Field

I work for a company that has a paint production line that paints propane cylinders. The cylinders run through an automated system that uses an industrial design (large) paint booth with a very large air flow and filtration capacity. For environmental purposes the system uses a water born/ suspended paint. One of the supposed good points of this paint was that it would not spontaneously combust. Well, now we know better. This so called safe paint spontaneously combusted. At the end of a shift the filters were changed and the used filters were stacked on a pallet and set in a secluded area away from the main work area. The next morning the filters and the pallet were completely consumed, nothing remained but ashes. The remains were cleaned up with a industrial dustpan and broom. Had the supervisor not been cautious about the storage of the waste filters this could have been a very bad situation. Afterwords we were told by a paint specialist who works for another company that there is no such thing as a paint that will not spontaneously combust. Given the right temp and humidity a stack of paint laden material will ignite. As soon as I heard this I went to my shop disposed of (removed) several items that would have fallen into that category from my shop trash can which is an old laundry cart that holds a 55 gal trash can liner perfectly. I realize this is sort of a long post but when you see first hand what could happen it really makes you think about what you throw into the old trash can.[]