Safety Considerations in Process Industries

On December 26, 1984 at 11 30 p.m, when the people of Bhopal, India, were preparing for sleep, a worker detected a water leak in a storage tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) at the Union Carbide Plant. About 40 tons of MIC poured from the tank for nearly 2 hours without any preventive measures being taken. The night winds carried the MIC into the city of Bhopal. Some estimates report 4000 people were killed, many in their sleep and as many as 400,000 more were injured or affected. 

On April 26, 1986 at Chernobyl, Ukraine, a nuclear reaction went wrong and resulted in the explosion of one of the reactors in a nuclear power plant. These reactors were constructed without containment shells. The release of radioactive material covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. More than 3 million people in the surrounding suburbs suffered from this disaster. While 36 people died in the accident itself, the overall death toll has been estimated at 10,000. 

In another incident, on January 29, 2003, an explosion and fire destroyed the West Pharmaceutical Services plant in Kinston, North Carolina, causing six deaths, dozens of injuries, and hundreds of job losses. The facility produced rubber stoppers and other products for medical use. The investigators fovind that the fuel for the explosion was a fine plastic powder used in producing rubber goods. Combustible polyethylene dust accumulated above a suspended ceiling over a manufacturing area at the plant and was ignited by an unknown event (Fig. 2.1). 

Fvuthermore, on October 29, 2003, a series of explosions killed one person, severely burned another worker, injured a third, and caused property damage to the Hayes Lemmerz manufactvuring plant in Hvintington, Indiana. The Hayes Lemmerz plant manufactures cast aluminum automotive wheels, and the explosions were fueled by accumulated aluminum dust, a flammable by-product of the wheel production process (Fig. 2.2). 

These examples along with others show that the causes of these incidents were not only because of ergonomic factors but also because of the failure of the equipment or some other unknown reasons. The breakdown of these incidents was probably a lack of safety measures for the plant workers and also to the nearby communities. 

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