Chemical Process Safety (PSM/RMP)

Seven hundred firefighters are struggling to extinguish a blaze at a food factory, hours after a chemical leak triggered a mass evacuation. One thousand eight hundred people were removed from the area.  The incident happened in the small town of Bad Fallingbostel in the country’s north. Workers at the facility accidentally poured nitric acid into…...

  Louisa Nara, Technical Director for the Center for Chemical Process Safety, sat down with Jordan Barab, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Mr. Barab spoke at the 10th Annual GCPS in New Orleans giving an overview of Executive Order 13650, which aims to improve chemical facility and security…....

The purpose of this fact sheet is to compare some provisions of two key laws for preventing chemical process accidents in New Jersey. The facts presented are summaries of the laws. These laws are: The Occupational Safety and Health Act’s standard for Process Safety Management (PSM). This law is enforced by the U.S. Occupational Safety…...

One of the methods EPA uses to determine RMP inspection priorities is based on their use of the Wharton School’s Hazard Index, which is defined as  “the sum over all chemicals of log2 (maximum quantity of inventory on-site/threshold), or, alternatively, as the number of chemicals times log2 of the geometric mean of the maximum-to-threshold quantity…...

UPDATED with the actual working EXCEL Spreadsheet so that members can sort the data as needed;as well I updated the #’s related to refrigeration below.  I had messed up my first sort and was off by a couple.   This week I raised a red flag regarding ammonia accidents after the UNLOADING FATALITY at a…...

Canada’s consensus standard for Process Safety Management far surpasses OSHA and EPA’s versions.  My favorite upgrade is how senior management has a few of its own sections in the standard.  For example: Leadership commitment at all levels of an organization is key to achieving excellence in PSM and establishing a process safety culture. Management must…...

I have written often about how we should establish safe upper and lower limits for our covered process(s). (SAFTENG members can read Establishing Safe Upper and Lower Limits)  One mistake we have discussed is related to safe upper pressures and its relationship to the MAWP of process vessels. We continue to see errors in such…...

There are some really good comments and there are some very political comments, which should be expected in this type of transfer of information. I did notice that NOT ONE of the commenters answered the 85 questions OSHA requested they answer to support their comments/positions. Here is what the RFI stated: OSHA is providing the…...

How many times have you heard, or maybe you were the one saying it, that “our initial start-up is the same as normal start-up and that is why we do not have initial start-up procedures”? If I had a $20 bill each time we heard this I would be retired!!!!  Recently I was talking process…...

Question Under the Chemical Facility Anti-terrorism Standards (CFATS), should a regulated facility submit a revised Top-Screen if it changes either the type (i.e., bulk versus portable packages/containers) or the amount of Ammonium Nitrate (AN) that it possesses?… Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here...