BKC3533

OSH in Chemical Industries

Chapter 1:
Introduction
By:
Mior Ahmad Khushairi Bin Mohd Zahari, PhD
Lecturer, FKKSA, UMP
09-5492837/0148290960
ahmadkhushairi@ump.edu.my; ahmadkhushairi@gmail.com
Contents
 Safety, Hazards and Risk
 Importance of Safety and Health
 Accident and Loss Statistics
 Nature of Accident Process
 Inherent Safety
 Responsible Care
 Case Studies
 Safety, Hazards and Risk?
 Safety – prevention of accidents through the use of appropriate
technologies to identify hazards and eliminate them before an
accident occurs
 Definition: Whenever there are processes that use temperature
and pressure to 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.
 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.
 Safety, Hazards and Risk?
 Hazards – chemical/physical condition that has the potential to cause
damage to people, property or the environment
 Eg. Chemical plant hazards:
1) Mechanical hazards:
 tripping,
 falling or moving equipment
2) Chemical hazards:
 Fire,
 Explosion,
 Reactivity
 Toxic ….etc
 Danger is arisen when one exposed with the hazard.
 Risk – measure of human injury, environmental damage or economic loss
in term of both incident likelihood and the magnitude of the loss or injury.
Definitions: Hazard
Hazard means anything that has the potential to harm the health
or safety of a person or plant.

Identify the hazard in the picture below:

Definitions: Risk
Hazard means anything that has the potential
to harm the health or safety of a person or
plant.
What is Risk?
“Risk... reflects both the likelihood that harm
will occur and its severity”
Risk = Probability × Consequence
Hazard Vs. Risk

Which is the higher

risk?

Which is the control

in place to reduce
the risk?
 Safety Programme
 S - system
 A - attitude
 F - fundamentals
 E - experience
 T - time
 Y -YOU!
Safety Programme
 Good – identify and eliminate existing safety hazards
 Outstanding – management system that prevent the
existence of safety hazards
Importance of Safety and Health
 Chemical industry is entering an era of more complex
processes. This lead to more complex safety and health
technology ~ earlier became constraint to
industrialists.
 The importance is:
* Prevents the valuable equipments from totally damaged and losing
a large amount of investment.
* Assures the long human resource contribution to profit the
chemical plant.
* To avoid other indirect cost like the Iceberg theory.
 Safety deals with acute effects of hazards, whereas health
deals with chronic effects of hazards.
Safety & Iceberg theory
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]

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
1.OSHA incidence rate is based on cases:
 100 worker per year, 2000hrs (50 work weeks/year x
40 hours/week) = 200,000 hours of worker exposure
to hazard.

 OSHA incidence rate (based on injuries & illness) =

numbers of injuries & illness x 200,000/Total hours
worked by all employees during period covered.

 OSHA incidence rate (based on lost workdays) =

Number of lost workdays x 200,000/ Total hours
worked by all employees during period covered.
Cont..
2. FAR is based on 1000 employees to work 50 years (108
hours)

 FAR = Number of fatalities x 108 / Total hours worked by

all employees during period covered.

3. Fatality rate = Number of facilities per year / total number

of people applicable population
Example
A process has a reported FAR of 2. If an employee works a
standard 8 hr shift 300 days per year, compute the death per
person per year
Deaths per person per year =

(8hr/day) x (300 days/yr) x (2 deaths/108 hr)

= 4.8 x 10-5
Exercise 1
An employee works in a plant with a FAR of 4. If this
employee works a 4 hrs shift, 200 days per year, what is the
expected deaths per person per year?
 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 the
has fewer opportunities for error least hazardous condition
Inherent Safety
Inherent Safety
 Responsible Care
 Responsible Care is the chemical industry’s global voluntary initiative under which
companies, through their national associations, work together to continuously
improve their health, safety and environmental performance, and to communicate
with stakeholders about their products and processes
 Responsible Care is a well organized, pro-active approach to managing health,
safety and environmental aspect of our plants and business as that goes beyond
legislative requirements
 Responsible Care is about Dialogue, Action, Performance of total life cycle of
chemicals from initial research to final disposal
 It is a voluntary initiative that commits CICM members to continuous
improvement in health, safety and environmental performance and encourages
sensitivity and responsiveness to public concerns
 CICM is the Malaysian steward for the Responsible Care Programme (RCP), which
is a global initiative adopted by chemical companies to continuously improve all
aspects of safety, health and environment (SHE) protection of their operations and
products in manner responsible to the concerns of the public.

Source: www.cicm.org.my
 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.
 Case Studies
 Flixborough, England
 Bhopal, India
 Saveso, Italy
 Pasadena, Texas