Recent Posts Tagged With chemical accidents

• Near-Miss(es)!!!

  Posted on Friday January 22nd, 2010 at 11:14 pm in human factors near miss risk analysis double jeopardy accident investigation

  A friend of mine, Dr. Ben Thomas, recently forwarded me a video showing a man escaping incident in matter of seconds. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rapvHU3aoCw Note: The video is probably not real as indicated by comments below it but if it is the person i...

• History Repeats Itself: Buncefield, Puerto Rico, Jaipur

  Posted on Wednesday November 4th, 2009 at 11:51 pm in buncefield iocl chemical accidents incident investigation fires and explosions

  In December 2005, fire and explosion at Buncefield oil storage depot injured 40 people. Overfilling of a fuel storage tank (Tank 912) led to release of unleaded gasoline (petrol) which formed a cloud of flammable vapor that subsequently ignited.  P...

• A Proposed Classification for Reactive Chemicals

  Posted on Friday October 23rd, 2009 at 02:18 pm in explosion process safety chemical accidents reactive chemicals incompatible chemicals

  The reactivity of a chemical or a mixture is normally assessed by thermal analysis. Thus the thermal analysis data forms the basis of risk mitigation decisions. What does the thermal analysis data tell us and how to base risk mitigation decisions? Ho...

• Industrial Safety in Slumdog Millionaire Nation

  Posted on Monday October 19th, 2009 at 09:39 am in india regulations developing nations industrial safety process safety

  According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), there were 11 deaths every 100,000 workers in India in 2005. This number was two in the US and 0.01 in Japan. What is scary is that the number of fatalities may be significantly underestimated ...

• Group Additivity Approach for Estimating Reactive Hazards

  Posted on Friday October 16th, 2009 at 02:06 pm in explosion process safety chemical accidents reactive chemicals incompatible chemicals

  During process development or plant operation it is often necessary to estimate energy of reaction based on chemical formulae representation alone. This heat of decomposition represents the potential energy that can be released and is therefore a mea...

• Is the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) Positively Impacting Process Safety?

  Posted on Wednesday October 7th, 2009 at 08:02 am in regulations lessons learned process safety chemical safety board accident investigation

  CSB’s approach to chemical accident investigation is a step further than OSHA’s. CSB gathers background information about the accidents, performs a detailed root cause study, and makes recommendations to appropriate stakeholders. Great approach t...

• CSB: To Investigate Or Not To Investigate

  Posted on Wednesday September 16th, 2009 at 08:47 am in regulations lessons learned process safety chemical safety board accident investigation

  Last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is not meeting its statutory mandate by investigating major chemical accidents. CSB’s Statutory Mandate The Clean Air Amendment Act (CAAA) of 1990 d...

• Refinery Fire Raises Questions About HF Usage

  Posted on Friday July 31st, 2009 at 10:59 am in toxicity hf sulfuric acid chemical accidents h2so4

  On the morning of July 19, a fire in CITGO’s Corpus Christi refinery injured a worker. The incident occurred in the alkylation unit of the refinery. The refinery used Hydrogen Fluoride (HF) as a catalyst for alklyation .  Typically in the alky...

• GAO: CSB Not Meeting Its Statutory Mandates

  Posted on Monday June 22nd, 2009 at 04:11 pm in regulations fatalities gao government accountability office csb

  According to a recent report (Aug. 2008) from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is not in compliance with its statutory mandates.  The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industri...

• Using Thermal Analysis to Identify Reactive Chemicals

  Posted on Sunday March 15th, 2009 at 10:41 am in explosion process safety chemical accidents reactive chemicals incompatible chemicals

  Reactivity hazards involve conversion of stored chemical energy of the components into mechanical or heat energy, andit is the uncontrolled release of this stored energy that causes the damage in a reactive chemical incident. The reactivity of a subs...

• Functional Groups Indicative of Reactive Hazards

  Posted on Monday February 16th, 2009 at 06:53 pm in explosion process safety chemical accidents reactive chemicals incompatible chemicals

  The presence of certain functional groups is considered an indicator of reactivity. This is the simplest possible reactivity screening method and serves as a guideline for further analysis. For example, chemicals containing the following functional g...

• Reactive Chemical Hazards

  Posted on Sunday January 25th, 2009 at 10:37 pm in explosion process safety chemical accidents reactive chemicals incompatible chemicals

  Certain chemicals can pose explosion hazards due to their inherent reactivity or interaction with other chemicals or metals.  A few years ago the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) had recommended regulating “Reactive Chemicals”. This begs the ...