Risk and Safety Blog

Symptoms of Oxygen Deficient Atmosphere

Oxygen Deficient Atmosphere (<19.5%)

Source: Compressed Natural Gas Safety Bulletin, SB-2, 1992.

Posted in Confined Space, Health, Process Safety, Toxicity | 1 Comment »

Nitrogen Asphyxiation Hazards

We all know that air is mostly nitrogen…79% to be precise. What may not be a common knoweldge is that colorless odorless Nitrogen has led to asphyxiation and fatalities and is a risk particularly for personnel working in confined spaces and personnel utilizing breathing air systems.

According to the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) research there were 80 nitrogen asphyxiation fatalities between 1992-2002. This translates to one nitrogen asphyxiation death every seven weeks. Approximately, 10% of fatalities were due to attempts to rescue person in confined spaces.

Reduced Oxygen concentration (18% or below) in breathing air can lead to asphyxiation.

At 16% Oxygen concentration, may impair thinking and the person may lose coordination.

An 4-6% Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere causes the victim to fall into a coma less than 40-seconds.

Posted in Confined Space, Process Safety | 2 Comments »

Safety Rap

Take a look at the following video from Dominion Power:

And if you have time also check out this safety annoucement from Southwest:

Posted in Process Safety, Risk Communication | No Comments »

Train To Bhopal

In Dec. of 2004, I attended a conference in India to commemorate 20 years of Bhopal. After the conference, a few attendees took a train to Bhopal to visit the plant site. While in Bopal I visited my aunt - her name is Maya. She was in her house in Bhopal on the day of the tragedy…luckily her family was not affected. However, I distinctly remember seeing video footage of folks who were affected from the tragedy and it was horrifying.

It took the Indian courts merely 25-years to reach a verdict on the Bhopal case. Many, including Aunt Maya, would say this is too little too late. Here’s a video http://tiny.cc/Bhopal_CNN) from CNN expressing similar sentiments:

Will There Be Another Bhopal?

What bothers me is the likelihood of another mega-incident.Increasing industrial activities, particularly in countries such as India and China, and proximity of facilities to the neighboring population does present a significant potential for major incidents.

At the same time there appears to be increased awareness with respect to process safety particularly in petrochemical and chemical facilities in various countries. The increased reliability of risk mitigation measures that are being employed in the process industry for high consequence incidents considerably minimize the occurrence of catastrophe. I also anticipate that industrial insurance providers in various parts of the world will contribute to increased risk mitigation measures implementation.

All the above factors indicate increased risk management practices and lead me to believe that likelihood of major incidents will reduce in the coming decades.

Then again…only time will tell.

Posted in Chemical Accidents, Process Safety, Regulations | 1 Comment »

Indoor Dispersion: A Simple Model To Estimate Indoor Concentrations

While evaluating impact of a toxic release, you may be interested in how the concentration of the toxicant increases in a room and its impact on indoor personnel. For example, if there is a H2S release in the plant and you want to estimate the increase in concentration in a nearby office building.

I want to share a simple model to estimate indoor concentrations following an outdoor toxic release.

Being a chemical engineer by background, the indoor dispersion represents an excellent opportunity to apply equation for well-mixed reactor.

In the above equation,

 - Indoor toxicant concentration at any time t

- Concentration of toxicant entering the indoor room (assumed constant in this model)

 - Air exchange rate (#exchanges per hour)

With the above model you can see how the concentration in an indoor room will increase with time. As time goes to infinity the indoor concentration will equal inlet concentration. If you want a spreadsheet cotaining the above equations, please email me with the subject line “indoor dispersion”.

Be careful while choosing the value for inlet toxicant concentrtion entering the room - remember your toxicant concentration should reflect any dilution that may have occured prior to entry.

Posted in Consequence Modeling, Health, Siting | 2 Comments »

RFID: Potential Ignition Source

Earlier I had written about the use of RFID for tracking hazardous substances. One of the readers, Sujith, wrote to me that RFID can be a ignition source and thus pose a potential for fire/explosion.

Special attention should be paid while choosing RFIDs for applications involving flammable materials.

 Here’s a file that provides more details on RFID as ignition source (pg. 78).

Posted in Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Technology | 1 Comment »

Value of Life

As safety professionals, we are often required to consider value of life in decision making.

So, what is the economic value of a life? According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), it is $5.8 million. Click on the link below to read more…

http://ostpxweb.dot.gov/policy/reports/080205.htm

Posted in Chemical Accidents, Process Safety, Risk Analysis | 1 Comment »

Worker Safety? There’s an App for That!

I have always been fascinated by Apple products. Apple’s iPhone besides providing the “cool” touchscreen also lets developers create customized applications. Here are a few safety applications you may find useful:

1. USW Safety App: Chemical Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and relevant health and safety information.
2. NFPA 1600 App: Provides user access to NFPA 1600: Standard for Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs protects public safety with updated best practices for disaster/emergency management endorsed by DHS.
3. Decibel App: Can be used to measure noise levels at workplace.

If you know of any other iPhone apps that may be useful to the EHS community, do leave a comment below.

Posted in Process Safety, Technology | 1 Comment »

Risk and Safety

I had been  away from writing blog posts for last 3 months or so…mainly because of my travel to S. Korea. I have also been kept busy working on adding advanced features to Risk and Safety site. I will unveil them in the coming few months.

I hope to get back to writing blog posts regularly.For the moment, I would like to direct your attention to one of the earliest blog post I wrote - Safety Forecast for the 21st Century. I concluded that “Every decade in the 21st century, the process industry will witness an incident that will result in at least 10 fatalities.” In particular, I want you to notice John Westover’s (http://www.process-engineers.com/) comment at the bottom of the post.

We are far from zero incident plants!

Posted in Chemical Accidents, Process Safety, Risk Analysis | No Comments »

Use of RFID in Process Safety: Track Hazardous Chemicals and Track Personnel

RFID stands for Radio-Frequency IDentification. It is a small electronic device that consist of a chip (capable of carrying 2000 bytes of data) and an antenna.

A RFID device provides a unique identifier and serves the same purpose as a bar code on a consumer product or a magnetic strip on the back of a credit card.

I would like to highlight two uses of RFID technology for process safety applications.

Tracking of Hazardous Chemicals

BASF plans to use RFID to monitor the location and condition of its fleet of rail cars containing hazardous chemicals. The RFID system system not only provides location of the cargo but also sends alerts to authorized users in the event of incidents such as a rail car collision, an unacceptable temperature fluctuation or tampering with rail car. (Read More)

Tracking of Personnel During An Emergency

During an emergency evacuation, it is vital to account for plant personnel. Typically this task is performed by designated plant employees but BP’s Cherry Point facility is using RFID for tracking personnel. The RFID tracking system will be used to ascertain the whereabouts of staff members, contractors and visitors. (Read More)

Posted in Emergency Response Plan, Process Safety | 2 Comments »