BKB3533

OSH in Chemical &

Biotechnology Industries
Chapter 1:
Introduction
By:
Mr 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
 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
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 Potential of Potential for

of fatalities economic
Fire occurence loss
HIGH Low Intermediat
Explosions Intermedia Intermediat e
Toxic release te e HIGH
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.
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/10 8 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?
Continue on 18th Sept. 2014
 Inherent safety
Inherent safety is to select a process or equipment which is by
nature a safer process by applying;-

process and storage

hazardous materials in
-reduce inventories of
(intensifcation)
Minimize
INHERE
Substitution
- avoid using hazardous
materials, but instead, use
a safer one

NT condition
Simplifcation and
error toleranceSAFETY
under the least hazardous
- use of hazardous material
- Provide process or and limitation of efects)
condition that has fewer Moderate (attenuation
opportunities for error
Inherent Safety
Inherent Safety
 Responsible Care
Responsible Care is the chemical industrys 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
Source: all aspects of
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

Community
Product Awareness
Pollution
Stewardshipand
Prevention
Security Emergency
Code
Code
Process Safetycode
Code
Distribution
Employee Response code
Code
[adopted in 2002] Code
Health and Safety
 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]
 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
products 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
 Case Studies
Flixborough, England
Bhopal, India
Saveso, Italy
Pasadena, Texas
For the next week class (25th Sept. 2014)..
1. Presentation
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)
 2. Report
Your group are required to do a report based on the above
accident case occurs in chemical plant. Each group must
choose a different study case. Your report must contain but
not limited to:

i. Background of the study cases

ii. Issue/cause and problem
iii. Efect
iv. Action that has been taken
v. Lesson learned
vi. References

.Each group must choose one different case for the report.
Some of the case study can be refer to http://www.csb.gov.

.Due date: 3rd October 2014 (Friday), before 5.00 pm

Cover pa
ge