BKC3533

OSH IN
CHEMICAL
INDUSTRIES
Chapter 1
Introduction
 Proper
Selection

Proper
Attitude

Reporting
unsafe
condition

Safe work
Domino Theory

practices
PREVENTION

Use of PPE
PHILOSOPHY OF ACCIDENT

H.W Heinrich

First aid
PHILOSOPHY OF ACCIDENT
PREVENTION
Loss Causation Theory

Permit the Permit the Permit the Permit the

existence of existence of existence of existence of

Prof. F.E Bird & Loftus

Topic Outline
Introduction

Importance of safety & health in Chemical

industries

Definitions

Accidents & loss statistics

Responsible Care

Case Studies
At the end of this topic, it is expected that students will be
able to:

 Identify the importance of safety programs

 Explain the terms used in OSH e.g. hazards, accident, risk etc.

 Explain the importance of accident and loss statistics and calculate

the number of accidents and/or fatalities using OSHA incidence rate,
FAR and fatality rate.

 Explain the definition and importance of responsible care

 Describe the four most cited disasters and identify its impact to the
standard in the practice of safety

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 REMINDER !!!....
Fundamental principles

 Using knowledge & skill for enhancement of human welfare

 Honest and impartial and serving with fidelity the public, their employers and clients
 Striving to increase the competence and prestige of the engineering profession

Fundamental canons (for engineer)

 Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the
performance of their professional duties
 Engineers shall perform services only in areas of their competence
 Engineer shall issues public statement only in an objective and truthful manner
 Engineers shall act in professional matters for each employer or client as faithful agents
or trustees, and shall avoid conflict of interest
 Engineer shall build their professional reputations on the merits of their services
 Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and
dignity of the engineering profession
 Engineers shall continue their professional development throughout their careers and
shall provide opportunities for the professional development of those engineers under
their supervision.
 Introduction-general

 Economic growth = technological advance

 Change the molecular structure or create new products from chemicals, the
possibility exists for fires, explosions or releases of flammable or toxic liquids,
vapors, gases or process chemicals.
 Today, safety = technological advances; becoming a scientific discipline

 Chemical industry is entering an era of more complex processes thus more

complex safety and health technology
 Example of technology of safety:
 Hydrodynamic models representing two-phase flow through a vessel relief.
 Dispersion models representing the spread of toxic vapor through a plant
after a release.
 Mathematical techniques to determine the various ways that processes can
fail and the probability of failure.
 Introduction-general

THEN…
Accident prevention
Emphasis on worker’s safety – hard
hats, safety shoes, rules and
regulations.
NOW…
= Loss prevention
Includes hazard identification, technical
evaluation & design of new engineering
features to prevent loss
Introduction-general
 Safety & health program

The importance of safety & health are:

 Prevents the valuable equipments from totally damaged and
losing a large amount of investment.
 Assures the prolonged human resource contribution to profit the
chemical plant.
 To avoid other indirect cost

 Safety deals with acute effects of hazards, whereas health deals

with chronic effects of hazards.
 Safety & health program
It is a measure of effectiveness of safety programs

System

YOU Attitude
Successful Safety
Program

Time Fundamentals

Experience
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 Safety & health program
 Good safety & health program identifies and eliminates existing hazards.
Excellent one has management system to prevent existence of hazards

Safety
Safety knowledge
management
support

Safety
experience
commitment

Technical
competence

Ingredient of successful
safety & health program
 inherent safety

Inherent safety is to select a process or equipment which is by

nature a safer process by applying;-

Minimize (intensification) Substitution

-reduce inventories of hazardous - avoid using hazardous materials,
materials in process and storage but instead, use a safer one

INHEREN
T SAFETY
Simplification and error Moderate (attenuation and
tolerance limitation of effects)
- Provide process or condition that - use of hazardous material under
has fewer opportunities for error the least hazardous condition

“The essence of the inherently safer approach to plant design is the avoidance of hazards rather than their control by added-on
protective equipment” [T. A. Kletz, Plant Design for Safety: A User-Friendly Approach, 1991]
 Definitions

• the prevention of accidents through the use of appropriate

Safety & loss prevention technologies to identify the hazards of a chemical plant and
eliminate them before an accident occurs.

• a chemical or physical condition that has the potential to

Hazard cause damage to people, property, or the environment

• An undesirable event which has a potential to cause a serious

Near misses accident.

• a measure of human injury, environmental damage, or economic

Risk loss in terms of both the incident likelihood and the magnitude
of the loss or injury.

• unexpected and unplanned incident or sequential incident that

Accident causes injury and illness, material damage or process loss.

• is arisen when one is exposed with the hazard.

Danger
Nature of Accident Process

- Most of accident follow a three-step-sequence

Initiation
[the event that starts the accident]

Propagation
[the event that maintain or expand the accident]

Termination
[the event that stop the accident or diminish it in size]

An effective approach is to ensure that accident, once initiated, do not

propagate and will terminate as quickly as possible…
Nature of Accident Process
Nature of Accident Process

Probability of Potential of Potential for

occurence fatalities economic loss

•Fire • HIGH • Low • Intermediate

•Explosions • Intermediate • Intermediate • HIGH
•Toxic release • Low • HIGH • Low

Three type of chemical plants accident

Chemical plant accidents follow typical pattern. Fires are the most common, followed
by explosion and toxic release

With respect to fatalities, the order reverses, with toxic release having the greatest
potential of fatalities

Economic loss is consistently high for accident involving explosions

Nature of Accident Process

Type of loss [Hydrocarbon Chemical Plant Accidents]

Piping system failure represents the

bulk of accident, followed by storage
tank and reactor

Most complicated mechanical

components are minimally
responsible for large losses

Vapor cloud explosion account for

the largest percentage of these large
losses

Toxic release typically result in little

damage to equipment
Hardware associated with largest losses
 Accidents & Loss Statistics

Accidents & Loss Statistics

 There are 3 systems considered:
 Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) incidence rate
 Fatal accident rate (FAR)
 Fatality rate or deaths per person per year

 These methods report the number of accidents and/or

fatalities for a fixed number of workers during a specific
period
 Accidents & Loss Statistics
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) incidence rate

• Based on cases per 100 worker per year

• A worker year is assumed to contain 2,000 hours
• The OSHA incidence rate is therefore based on 200,000 hours of
worker exposure to a hazard
• Two types of calculations (1) based on injuries and illness (2) based
on lost workdays

(Fatal Accident Rate) FAR

• Based on 1000 employees working their lifetime
• The employees are assumed to work a total of 50 years
• Used mostly by British chemical industry

Fatality Rate
• Independent of the number of hours.
• Based on the number of fatalities per year and total number of
people in applicable population

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 Responsible Care

Responsible Care
 It is an initiative of the chemical industry and adopted by chemical
companies to improve continuous HSE performance of their
operations and products in manner responsible to the concern of the
public

 Started in Canada in 1985, and 1994 in Malaysia by Chemical

Industries Council of Malaysia (CICM)
 Responsible Care

Responsible Care
 Why RC?
 To respond to public concerns about
manufacture, transport, use and disposal of
chemicals
 Community awareness and involvement are key
features to initiative
 Aim of RC;
 Improve chemical industry performance in HSE
 Improve public perception in the chemical
industry
 What does it mean?
 Responsible Care
Codes of Management Practices

Product Pollution
Stewardship Prevention
Code Code

Community
Process Safety Awareness and
Code Emergency
Response Code

Security code
Distribution
code [adopted in
2002]

Employee
Health and
Safety Code
 Responsible Care
Codes of Management Practices;

 Distribution Code [adopted in 1995]

 Focuses on reducing the potential for harm posed by the distribution of
chemicals to the general public, employees and environment.
 Community Awareness and Emergency Response Code [adopted in 1996]
 Promotes emergency response planning and encourages dialogues with
nearby communities to understand their concerns.
 Pollution Prevention Code [adopted in 1997]
 Commits industry to the save management and reduction in the amount of
all pollutants released into the environment.
 Process Safety Code [adopted in 1999]
 To prevent fires, explosion and accidental chemical releases at the plant
sites.
 Responsible Care
Codes of Management Practices;

 Employee Health and Safety Code [adopted in 1999]

 Protects and promotes the health and safety of employees and visitors at
plant site.
 Product Stewardship Code [adopted in 1999]
 To make health, safety and environment protection a priority in all stages
of a chemical product’s life, from design to disposal.
 Security Code [adopted in 2002 by ACC]
 which addresses facility, cyber and transportation security - requires
companies to conduct comprehensive security vulnerability assessments
(SVAs) of their facilities, and implement security enhancements
 The Code also requires companies to create security management
systems, which are documented to provide quality control and
assurances.
Q&A
For the next class (tutorial)..
 Below are some of the most cited industrial disasters to be read ahead and discussed in
the group.;
 Flixborough, England, 1974 [caprolactam, raw material for the production of nylon]
 Bhopal, India, 1984 [ production of pesticides- methyl isocyanate or MIC]
 Seveso, Italy, 1976 [production of hexachlorophene, a bactericide]
 Pasadena, Texas, 1989 [polyethylene plant]
 PEMEX LPG Terminal explosion and fire, Mexico City, Mexico, 1984
 BP Texas City Refinery explosion and fire, 2005
 Bright Sparkler Fireworks explosion and fire, Sg. Buloh, Malaysia,1991 [explosion]

 Prepare a presentation of any of above chemical plant disasters. [MAX: 6 presentation

slides inclusive of presentation title]

 The presentation should include

 How did it happened? (story-telling time)
 Why did it happened? (errors/mistakes)
 What were the consequences? (fatalities/injuries)
 What can be done to avoid the same disaster from happening? (recommendations)

A series of questions will be asked and points will be awarded accordingly.

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