Safety dollars

Setting corporate goals for PSM. These may be tangible (e.g., dollar savings, percent reduction in accidental releases, etc.) and/or philosophical (e.g., "Our company will be an industry leader in process safety"). 

Perhaps, even more important, is the stagnation in our safety and environmental performance in the last five years. Until five years ago, we had seen dramatic year on year improvement in every aspect of safety and environmental performance. This has slowed down in all areas and ceased altogether in occupational safety. I expect that these changes will invigorate all our programs. Our current safety and environmental performance costs us at least 30 million each year in avoidable costs such as capital damage and clean-up costs. If we could put a dollar value on injuries to our work-force, the savings would likely be ten times this amount. 

Plant siting and layout are important for the safety of the workers in the plant as well as the surrounding comniunities. A proper plant layout can save both lives and dollars. 

Loss data5 published for losses after 1966 and in 10-year increments indicate that the total number of losses, the total dollar amount lost, and the average amount lost per incident have steadily increased. The total loss figure has doubled every 10 years despite increased efforts by the chemical process industry to improve safety. The increases are mostly due to an expansion in the number of chemical plants, an increase in chemical plant size, and an increase in the use of more complicated and dangerous chemicals. 

The damage radius is first estimated using a correlation published in the complete Dow index. This correlation is based on the previously determined F EI. The dollar value of the equipment within this radius is determined. Next, a damage factor (based on a correlation provided) is applied to the fraction of the equipment actually damaged by the explosion or fire. Finally, a credit factor is applied based on safety systems. The final number, in dollars, is the MPPD value. This number is used to estimate the MPDO using a correlation. Details on the procedure are available in the complete Dow reference. 

This article shows, through example, how established system safety concepts can be used to develop safety criteria for the design of a chemical surety materiel laboratory. This systematic approach, when applied as described in this article, results in a laboratory dedicated to achieve mission objectives in an environment relatively free of inherent hazards for the least number of dollars. 

The Hydrocarbon Processing Industry (HPI), has traditionally been reluctant to invest capital where an immediate direct return on the investment to the company is not obvious, as would any business enterprise. Additionally financial fire losses in the petroleum and related industries were relatively small up to about the 1950 s. This was due to the small size of facilities and the relatively low value of oil and gas to the volume of production. Until 1950, a fire or explosion loss of more than 5 million U. S. Dollars had not occurred in the refining industry in the USA. Also in this period, the capital intensive offshore oil exploration and production industry were only just beginning. The use of gas was also limited early in the century. Consequentially its value was also very low. Typically production gas was immediately flared or the well was capped and considered as an uneconomical reservoir. Since gas development was limited, large vapor explosions were relatively rare and catastrophic destruction from petroleum incidents was essentially unheard of. The outlays for petroleum industry safety features were traditionally the absolute minimum required by governmental regulations. The development of loss prevention philosophies and practices were therefore not effectively developed within the industry. 

It is also interesting that in 1970 Chevron pleaded "no contest" to charges of "knowingly and willfully" failing to install safety devices on 90 oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Three other oil companies were similarly charged with the same offense (Shell, Conoco and Humble). At the time Chevron was fined 1 million U S. dollars for 500 violations under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The violations involved failure to install safety chokes at the wells - i.e., a method to cut off the flow of oil automatically in the event of incident. 

Carcinogenicity studies are a time-consuming (up to 3 years to complete) and expensive (can be in excess of 1 million dollars each) proposition and are typically carried out in rats and mice. Their purpose is to determine if the drug possesses the capability to initiate or promote the development of tumors. The application of the results of these studies to the human safety has been debated for many years. In many instances over the past two decades, mechanistic studies have shown that positive responses in these rodent models do not have specific relevance for humans, and drugs have been approved on the basis of these explanations. While the scientific debate about relevance of these studies continues, they remain required by regulations. Positive responses without adequate explanation or safety margin can result in nonapproval of the product. 

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