Who at your place of business calls the National Response Center after your business has experienced a chemical incident.  Not many people have ever had to call this center (luckily!) but if your business ever does have a “reportable release”  a call just like this one MUST BE MADE within 30 minutes after you have determined that the release exceeds the “Reportable Quantity”. PLEASE...

Human Performance Improvement (HPI) is the systematic process of determining desired performance, continually monitoring performance, discovering and analyzing performance gaps, designing and developing effective interventions, implementing these interventions, and continually evaluating the results of improvement interventions within performance monitoring to ensure that the improvement process takes...

Humans are integral to the safe operation of a nuclear power plant. In the late 1970s, NRC began to focus on protecting and ensuring adequate training of plant staff to perform their assigned tasks. The NRC studied factors affecting performance, such as the effects of shift work on health and whether control room simulators would improve training. As a result of this focus, NRC created the Human Factors...

I could have sworn I had already written about this hazard, but I’m guessing it was inside one of my social media groups.  So BUCKLE UP, Butter Cup, as this is going to make a lot of folks unhappy.  Question:  Do I have to isolate my fixed fire suppression system protecting my PRCS? … HomeRead More »

What happens when you try to pull water out of a tank using a 3HP pump and leave the vent closed … HomeRead More »

I have posted numerous fatal accidents that occurred during the pressure testing of piping and pressure vessels.  Although hydrostatic testing involves less energy release should something fail vs. using pneumatic pressure, the hazard(s) are still HUGE and must be respected.  This incident involved a propane bullet built in 1994 and placed into service in 1996, so do not think this was some...

A 43-year-old assemblyman died on May 26, 1999, from chest injuries he received earlier that day when struck by a high-pressure water jet emitted after the failure of a gasket during a hydrostatic test of a cooling coil for an air-cooled heat exchanger. At the time of the incident, the victim was part of a two-man team conducting hydrostatic testing at a heat exchanger manufacturing company. The laborer...

A process, in terms of Process Safety Management, is defined as:  “Any activity involving a regulated substance including any use, storage, manufacturing, handling or on-site movement of such substances, or any combination of these activities. For the purposes of this definition, any group of vessels that are interconnected, or separate vessels that are located such that a regulated...

One of the debates we routinely have with fellow process safety professionals is the adoption of NFPA 51B vs. meeting 1910.252(a) requirements for their Hot Work safe work practice. I am a huge fan of NFPA 51B, as it is much more up-to-date than OSHA’s 1910.252, which, by the way, was based on the first edition of NFPA 51B in 1962. As I have stated many times before, PSM (nor RMP) does NOT allow...

A massive leak of liquefied chlorine gas created a dangerous cloud of poison gas over the city of Henderson, Nevada, in the early morning hours of May 6, 1991. Over 200 persons were examined at a local hospital for respiratory distress caused by inhalation of the chlorine, and approximately 30 were admitted for treatment. Some 700 persons were taken to shelters. It is estimated that from 2,000 to 7,000...

Those of us living within the realm of Process Safety Management know all too well the difficulty of controlling contractor work activities to a level that we are confident they are not increasing our process risks beyond our acceptable levels. Many contractors are offended by the fact that many PSM programs have multiple layers of protection regarding their presence and work practices in, on, or even...