Safety practices priorities

From a safety standpoint, priority must be given to the measures in item 1. Group 2 cannot be used as a sole protective measure for flammable gas or solvent vapors in industrial practice with sufficient reliability, but can be applied as the sole protective measure when only combustible dusts are present if the minimum ignition energy of the dusts is high (>10 mj) and the operating areas concerned can easily be monitored. 

Where an effective informal system exists and is followed, the issue is one of style, not substance. A facility or unit may have a strong safety culture and sound safety practices, but its managers lack the habit of form documentation, or simply don t think it is important. Assuming that safety performance meets applicable standards, you will probably assign cases like these a relatively low priority, compared with other noncompliance situations. Cases like these are also often the easiest to fix since the fundamentals are already in place, what s required is simply to formalize the informal system by preparing and implementing documentation procedures. 

The oil industry has always given safety high priority. There are no incentives at all for not doing that. This applies least of all to the oil companies that have to compete for new licences and are dependent on safe and efficient operation of their production facilities. I have worked for so long in public administration that I know what emphasis is put on safety statistics and safety evaluations when new licences are granted. It is important that the authorities continue this practice. The oil industry spends enormous resources on safety work, and statistics show that there has been radical and continuous improvement in the safety level in the industry throughout the 80s and 90s. It is therefore very unfortunate and totally wrong when it is claimed that safety was better in the past. Safety has never been better than it is now. 

The next step is completing a thorough, orderly, systematic approach for identifying, evaluating, and controlling the hazards of the processes involving the highly hazardous chemicals. There must be documentation of the priority order used for the analysis. The analysis must use one or more of specified methods to determine the hazards and evaluate them. Several of these methods came from system safety practice, discussed in Chapter 36. OSHA Publication 3133 (Note 33) summarizes each of the methods. 

It is generally the case that the bureaucratic burden on such people is considered oven/vhelming. For a self-employed person business continuity and cash flow are often priorities which leave little resources for researching and implementing well-founded safety practices. 

In order to prevent incidents, a process plant must not only be well-designed, but also properly operated and maintained. To ensure that all safety aspects receive adequate priority, the commitment to safety from all levels of management is essential. In practice, conflicts of interest may arise between safety and other goals such as production demands and budgets. In these cases, the management attitude will be decisive. In reality, such a conflict of interests is only an apparent one because safety, efficiency, and product quality all depend on a reliable production facility with a low frequency of technical troubles and safety problems. 

Health and safety were absent from the list of priorities in the early decades of the synthetic dyes industry. Practical experience in the primitive working conditions of the time [64] no doubt made workers aware of the more obvious dangers, such as corrosive acids, flammable solvents and potentially explosive nitro compounds. Accidents must have occurred frequently, reminding victims and supervisors alike of the penalties suffered if hazardous chemicals were handled carelessly. 

---