Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Surprisingly, many organization and professionals believe that safety can be achieved by common sense. Here is an excellent article from Kevin Jones' Safety at Work blog about common sense and safety:
Safety is More Than Common Sense
Posted in Process Safety, Risk Analysis | 5 Comments »
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
I would like to wish readers and the growing list of subscribers of risk and safety blog a prosperous 2010.
It has been a year since I started writing the blog. Here are top five blog posts for 2009:
1. Biofuel Safety: Is it time for Bio-PSM?
2. Lithium Battery Fires: Why Your ...
Posted in Battery Fires, Biofuels, Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Risk Analysis | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
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? How to tell which compositions are more reactive and ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Friday, October 16th, 2009
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 measure of explosion potential. One can therefore envision that estimation of heats reaction ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Monday, August 24th, 2009
Process Safety has evolved significantly since the introduction of PSM in 1992. Here are top five challenges facing the process safety community today.
1. Human Error
One of the reasons “zero incident plants” is a myth is the potential for human error. We cannot take away human intervention and the possibility of ...
Posted in OSHA PSM, Process Safety, Safety Culture | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
We appear to be in a global recession – companies all over are struggling to deal with impact of economic slowdown. In an attempt to maintain profits, companies are drastically reducing their spending and also trimming down their workforce. It is anticipated that one-fourth of the employers in the US ...
Posted in OSHA PSM, Process Safety, Risk Communication | No Comments »
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
The 20th century was a time of great technological change that forever transformed how we live and work – changes that necessitated the birth and development of the field of Process Safety Management. The early years saw the evolution of mechanization into assembly lines and true industrialization. Lack of access ...
Posted in OSHA PSM, Process Safety | 5 Comments »
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
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 substance is normally assessed by performing calorimetric measurements.
Information about the amount of ...
Posted in Process Safety, Reactive Chemicals | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 16th, 2009
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 groups can be considered potentially reactive:
-NO2 : organic nitro compounds
-O-O-, -O-OH : organic/inorganic peroxide and ...
Posted in Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
Under Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act, the Chemical Accident Prevention Provisions require facilities that produce, handle, process, distribute, or store certain chemicals to develop a Risk Management Plan (RMP), and submit it to EPA. The following presentation provides a brief overview of EPA RMP.
[slideshare id=389818&doc=epa-rmp-regulations-1210041888596002-9&w=425]
Starting 2009, EPA RMP ...
Posted in Consequence Modeling, EPA RMP, Regulations, Risk Communication | No Comments »
