HEALTH AND SAFETY
Hygiene Showers vs Safety Showers: Protecting Workers from Chemical Exposure
By James Hamilton, Global Engineering Manager at Hughes Safety Showers
In industries where exposure to harmful chemicals and dust is a daily occurrence, the importance of workplace safety cannot be overstated. Every year in the UK, approximately 13,000 deaths are...
Strong Partnerships – the Key to Success in a Changing World
Today’s business environment requires agility and adaptation to keep up with technological, economic and political challenges, just to remain competitive. In addition, woven into how we all conduct our businesses and deliver on targets, is the need to ensure...
Investors urged to advocate for standardisation of chemical industry regulations
New research highlights inconsistencies between U.S. and EU toxic release reporting requirements, exposing corporates and financiers to growing regulatory and litigation risks.
Lack of harmonisation between U.S. and EU toxic release reporting regimes makes it difficult to assess or...
New recommendations to improve and accelerate testing of chemicals
New recommendations from DEFRA’s Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee (HSAC) have set out steps that could make the UK a world leader in more ethical, safer, and cost-effective chemical testing, through early adoption of a risk-based approach to regulation (also...
Flixborough 50 Years on – Process Safety Competence Challenges
Major incidents such as Flixborough have strengthened the subject of process safety and rereading the investigation report 50 years on, I can’t help but think how the learnings must still remain relevant today and whether the challenges raised with...
ground-breaking solution for recessed lighting in hazardous areas
Raytec’s SPARTAN Recess is a ground-breaking solution for recessed lighting in hazardous areas. This one-of-a-kind range of luminaires offers a range of benefits, including multiple variant sizes to cater to various applications, easy installation and maintenance for reduced downtime,...
When did you last review your Hazardous Area Classification?
On the 1st of October 2024, the Energy Institute published the 5th edition of their ‘Model Code of Safe Practice Part 15: Area Classification for Installations Handling Flammable Liquids’ (EI15). The introduction of this publication is a perfect opportunity...
The Third Dimension of Risk: using organisational maturity to assess and mitigate risk
Mike Meen, Technical Director at Bureau Veritas, assesses whether the traditional two-dimensional approach to risk is adequate in today’s complex society, and highlights the importance of organisational maturity and resilience in hazardous environments.
The traditional two-dimensional risk model sees probability...
The Benefits of Automation Lines in Labelling Chemical Products
In today’s fast-paced industrial world, the chemical industry faces unique challenges in maintaining safety, accuracy, and efficiency. One of the pivotal elements in addressing these challenges is the labelling of chemical products. Traditional manual labelling methods, although still in...
Moving towards Green Energy and the Challenges That We Face
Chemical engineering, process safety and associated industries are built around the mutual core value of striving for a greener, more sustainable environment, and this can only become a realistic goal through collective efforts to make processes greener. The road...
Digitalisation in the verification of safety and environmentally critical elements in the chemical industry
Mike Meen, Technical Director at Bureau Veritas, highlights the crucial role that safety and environmentally critical elements (SCE) play in the chemical industry, and how evolving digitalisation is improving the monitoring of this equipment.
Safety and environmentally critical elements (SCE)...
Understanding the hazards of your ingredients
Do you know your ingredients?
Following the 1992 Earth Summit and 2002 World Summit, the United Nations developed the ‘Globally Harmonized System’ (GHS) or ‘Purple Book’, with the aim of producing a single worldwide system for the classification and labelling...
Bayer receives approval for ‘groundbreaking’ new fungicide
Bayer has received a regulatory ‘one-two’ for its new fungicide active substance and the first product to contain it.
The Chemicals Regulation Division (CRD) of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has approved the active substance isoflucypram and simultaneously granted...
Hazard Studies – The Value of a Staged and Methodical Approach
Hazard studies are a well-established and essential practice within the chemical industry and are intended to enable effective planning, implementation and safe operation of hazardous systems and processes.
Although studies such as Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) analysis are indeed well...
BSIF tests unveil vast quantities of non-compliant safety footwear on UK market
British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF) testing has revealed that a significant amount of safety footwear produced by non-members fails to perform as advertised.
Safety footwear is used to protect against hazards including slips, sharp objects, heavy loads, extreme temperatures, and...
Turning mine waste into healthy soil
Tailings, the waste left after extracting precious and critical minerals, often contain harmful chemicals and heavy metals that can pollute soil, water, and even crops. There are over 1800 tailings storage facilities around the world, and in 2019, a...
Integrating Sustainability into Hazard Studies: Making Projects Safe, Smart and Sustainable
With the uncertainty we are experiencing in relation to climate change and rising costs, professionals involved in process safety are confronted by a decision - keep project costs down or think about the bigger picture and try and to...
Ambient Temperatures – Are We at Risk of Becoming Complacent?
When it comes to Process Safety and the containment of hazardous substances, temperature is an important factor which requires management and control to ensure accidents such as pool fires and flash fires don’t occur. In the UK, when asked...
Managing Flood Risk – What Can You Really Do?
When we think of flooding, images of inundation and devastation typically come to mind, whether that’s for domestic communities or industrial areas. The credibility of flooding initiating and exacerbating major accidents cannot be questioned.
However, the stereotypical image of catastrophic...
4 tips for successful temporary plant shutdown planning
Planned shutdowns are necessary for chemical plants to keep equipment in optimal condition and avoid the significant risks associated with equipment failure. However, because they come with high costs, impacts on production and safety risks, they require careful planning...
The Impact of Climate Change, in Particular Extreme Temperatures, on Process Safety
It is becoming increasingly difficult for sceptics to argue against not only the existence of climate change and global warming, but also, its impact on our lives.
For example, in 1980, there were a little over 200 natural disaster events...
Understanding Natural Hazard Risks to Your Site
Natechs (Natural Hazards Triggering Technological Accidents) refers to accidents initiated by natural causes, including earthquakes, lightning and flooding, all of which have the potential to impact high hazard industrial sites.
Major accidents have the potential for catastrophic consequences to people...
What is the Value of the Environment?
Valuation of Environmental Harm for COMAH Cost Benefit Analysis
COMAH environmental risk assessment is typically performed in line with the Chemical and Downstream Oil Industries Forum (CDOIF) Guideline on Environmental Risk Tolerability for COMAH Establishments (V2.0). This involves prediction of...
Can obsolete parts contribute to workers’ safety?
The benefits of using obsolete spare parts rather than replace a whole machine are well documented when it comes to effectiveness and compliance. Worker safety, however, is often overlooked, with part failure leading to unsafe work environments. Neil Ballinger,...
‘Omics’ spinout brings new era in chemical safety
Mounting pressures across the globe to allow more cost-effective, higher throughput, non-vertebrate chemical safety testing are at last bringing much needed change. The US Environmental Protection Agency has made commitments to reduce vertebrate animal testing, and in 2021 the...
What triggers a review of Hazardous Area Classification and DSEAR Risk Assessment?
The Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 (DSEAR) is a set of rules and regulations which must be followed by employers to ensure risks from fire, explosion and similar events are sufficiently reduced.
DSEAR applies to all workplaces where...
ANYmal X – the first Ex-proof legged robot
The world’s first Ex-proof legged robot could be a game changer for operations and safety in the chemical and oil & gas industries. Chemical Industry Journal looks at its potential.
ANYmal X is designed and certified for use in hazardous...
CBA devises innovative IBC solution
Back in 2000, changes to the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR) regulations meant that the percentage concentration of Ammonia solution that could be legally carried in Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC’s) by road was almost halved.
This created...
Hazard Studies – The Value of a Staged and Methodical Approach
Hazard studies are a well-established and essential practice within the chemical industry and are intended to enable effective planning, implementation and safe operation of hazardous systems and processes.
Although studies such as Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) analysis are indeed well...
One third of companies not ready for chemical emergency
Crisis preparation and management standards are falling short in almost a third of businesses as a new report reveals internal teams worry their organizations are not prepared for a global chemical emergency as part of future risk management.
The global...
