Incidents publicizing

One of the primary consequences of any disaster is its adverse impact on human health and welfare. In order to effectively and efficiently prepare for and respond to possible incidents, public health and medical officials at all levels of government must be prepared to address sudden and unexpected demands for services that may exceed readily available resources. Conduct and support research and investigations into the cause, treatment, or prevention of a disease or disorders. 

Celanese Bayport Marine Terminal June 13, 1998 Methyl Acrylate Tank V-9227 Polymerization Incident Public Information Disclosure, Celanese, Pasadena, Texas, 1999. 

Some companies have found success with a periodic publication of incident abstracts. Each incident may appear as a one or two paragraph summary in a quarterly bulletin. This information is circulated widely within the corporation or is available online. If a site has a special interest in one particular incident, full details are then requested by direct contact between the two sites. The highly abbreviated summary has other uses, such as material for employee safety training meetings or bulletin board postings. This is another example of the practical trade-off between quantity of incidents publicized and the amount of detail presented for each incident. 

Lanjouw, Peter, and Martin Ravallion. 1999. Benefit Incidence, Public Spending Reforms, and theTiming of Program Capture. World Bank Economic Review 13 (2) 257—73. 

In adults, a few areas may require further study. For example, there is a report of soya consumption causing an increased incidence of hyperplastic epithelial cells in the nipple aspirate fluid of pre- and postmenopausal women.This could constitute a risk factor for breast cancer. Also, the use in herbal medicine of particular plants emphasises that these species have the potential to cause physiological changes. Consequently, the increasing public interest in the use of herbal medicines could lead to unintended (adverse) effects, particularly as most... 

The first known incidence of pollution from approved herbicides was identified in 1972 in Essex, where tomato plants grown by commercial producers became malformed. The plants had been watered from public water supplies fed from a reservoir. The reservoir in turn abstracted water from a river supplemented by a water transfer scheme, from the River Cam in Cambridgeshire. Pollution from a factory manufacturing 2,3,6-TBA was identified as the cause and the problem was subsequently resolved by treating the effluent. 

PHAs are performed primarily to reduce losses resulting from incidents that can injure plant personnel or the public, or damage or destroy buildings, equipment, and material. There are other less measurable losses that occur after incidents. Companies reputations, the industry s reputation and the effect on customers and the public are all at stake. 

The final incident investigation report written by the assigned incident investigation team (which may include members from the client) can be written in a less structured way depending on the extent of the incident. A detailed discussion of how and why to conduct incident investigations can be found in the AIChE publication. Guidelines for Investigating Process Safety Incidents, Second Edition. 

Our survey of the activities of the Government, industry and voluntary bodies in the control of pollution discloses several issues which need further enquiry. The first and most difficult of these is how to balance the considerations which determine the levels of public and private expenditure on pollution control. Some forms of pollution bear more heavily on society than others some forms are cheaper than others to control and the public are more willing to pay for some forms of pollution control than for others. There are also short and long-term considerations in the short-term the incidence of pollution control on individual industries or categories of labor may be heavy but. . . what may appear to be the cheapest policy in the short-term may prove in the long-term to have been a false economy. 

For over 30 years the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has been involved with process safety and loss control issues in the chemical, petrochemical, hydrocarbon process and related industries and facilities. AIChE publications and symposia are information resources for the chemical engineering and other professions on the causes of process incidents and the means of preventing their occurrences and mitigating their consequences. 

After the accident a search disclosed 11 other failures that had occurred but had received little or no publicity [26]. If they had been publicized, this incident could have been avoided. The company concerned withdrew all its carbon dioxide vessels that could not withstand low temperatures and replaced them with stainless steel ones. The company found that it could manage with 75% fewer vessels than it had used before (see Section 21.2.1). 

Similar incidents have occurred in technical reports. A writes something in a book or paper. B copies it without acknowledgment. A then repeats it in another report, citing B as the source and thus giving it an authenticity it lacked in its first publication. 

Some of the reports in this book have come from my own experience. Others were supplied by other people, either privately or through publications. [ hope they will help you prevent similar incidents on your plant. 

Selection of incidents described was based on the availability of information, the kind and amount of material involved, and severity of damage. Accidents occurring on public property generally produce better published documentation than those occurring on privately owned property. 

Another publication produced by the Center for Chemical Process Safety, Guidelines for Investigating Chemical Process Incidents (CCPS, 1992d), is directed at achieving similar objectives but from a differing perspective and with differing emphasis. Both sources of information can be used in a complementary manner to improve the quality of data collection and incident analysis in the CPI. 

Beyond that, we annually set emissions, injury, and incident rate targets. Our performance against these is publicly reported in our annual report. Each year we review performance and set new, more demanding, targets. 

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has a 30-year history of involvement with process safety and loss control for chemical and petrochemical plants. Through its strong ties with process designers, builders and operators, safety professionals, and academia, the AIChE has enhanced communication and fostered improvement in the high safety standards of the industry. Its publications and symposia have become an information resource for the chemical engineering profession on the causes of incidents and means of prevention. 

As stated before, it is not practical to test in the range of such a low incidence. In fact, laboratories conduct animal tests at high doses to increase the likelihood of inducing cancer in a portion of a test population. Thus, to apply the results of animal tests to human exposures, the data from the high doses used in the tests must be extrapolated to the low doses of public concern. 

Memorability. An incident tlrat remains in tire public s memory makes the risk easier to imagine and is, tlicrcfore, more risky. 

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