When handling and processing flammable powders and dusts, the exclusion of effective ignition sources is often the only basis of safety. So identifying the true ignition source in the event of an explosion or fire is of utmost importance to prevent future incidents. Nevertheless, static electricity is often identified as the cause of a fire or explosion, simply because there is no evidence of any other ignition source. This bad practice is due to poor knowledge and to the fact that it is really sometimes difficult to prove the contrary. A systematic methodology is presented in this paper and used to analyse two explosions that recently occurred in the process industry. This methodology is designed to identify the most probable ignition source. Clearly, it will never be possible to really 'prove' that static electricity or any other ignition source is responsible for a given incident-but the methodology should help to identify the most probable ignition source based on circumstantial evidence applied to different types of ignition source hypotheses.
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