Chemical Plant Safety Inspections

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Plant safety inspection is a kind of self-checking system. Its aims are to identify potential hazards, look for facility failure, conform the existing safety measures are effective, ensure safety tools availability and conformity, check safety-protection devises functionality, seek unsatisfactory safety programs, check documents and check current safety of the workplaces.

Areas in the plant site that are subjected to be inspected include plant facilities, working conditions, safety equipments/tools, workplace references, jobs, tasks and activities.

Plant safety inspection is the effective measures to prevent accident and even emergency situations. In most cases, safety inspection is more active, rather than reactive.

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Who is in charge for doing it?

Safety inspection should be done by well-trained individuals or team, which can consist of safety representatives in your organization or internal-safety inspectors.

Plant Safety Inspection Procedures

At first, a procedure for doing the inspection has to be provided as well as safety inspection form and checklist. The procedure should describe clearly scope of inspection area, corrective actions and management review. To prepare the best inspection checklist, an initial complete survey to the facility and jobs/tasks is required.

Inspection is performed by surrounding the plant site area and filling out the checklist. Then, classify inspection findings or deficiencies into urgent action, quick improvement or recommend for future improvement. Write down these findings on report form and distribute copy of the report to the management, related sections and don not forget to provide one copy for filing.

It is no problem if we separate each area to be inspected. Making a schedule will give us a good mapping area and get better inspection results. Plant safety inspection is recommended to be performed in a regular basis. For instance, it is scheduled once per month.

Follow up Against Safety Inspection

Put at the top priority the required urgent actions soon after inspection report released. When it is too late to take actions, an accident may occur. Of course, the management should review all the inspection findings according to the report and introduces quick decision on urgent ones before taking actions.

Some actions may require additional investment and could not be decided in a short time. However, alternative corrective measure has to be provided to control the associated potential hazards. That is why management review on this matter is essential.

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Confined Space Dangers

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Let's start with some basic OSHA definitions to understand this topic...

According to OSHA 1910.146, the definition of a confined space is as follows:

• Is large enough for an employee to enter fully and perform assigned work;
• Is not designed for continuous occupancy by the employee; and
• Has a limited or restricted means of entry or exit.

These spaces may include underground vaults, tanks, storage bins, pits and diked areas, vessels, silos and other similar areas.

By definition, a permit-required confined space has one or more of these characteristics:

• Contains or has the potential to contain a hazardous atmosphere;
• Contains a material with the potential to engulf someone who enters the space;
• Has an internal configuration that might cause an entrant to be trapped or asphyxiated by inwardly converging walls or by a floor that slopes downward and tapers to a smaller cross section; and/or
• Contains any other recognized serious safety or health hazards.

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Why care about Confined Space?

As an Owner, Safety Manager, Safety Coordinator, Site Manager or other related title, you must have knowledge and understanding of the serious risks for your employees that work in confined spaces. It is imperative that written procedures to protect your employees, contract workers and representatives from entering permit spaces must be developed and made available to all parties. To help you evaluate your workplace to determine if spaces are permit spaces, this Decision Flow Chart is a useful tool. If it is, the employer must inform exposed employees of their existence, hazards they pose and location. Effective measures must be taken to prevent employees from entering permit spaces if they are not allowed. You must be prepared to deal with increased risk of exposure engulfment, entrapment and hazardous atmospheric conditions. These issues would not normally come up in an open workplace/setting. For further info, you can review the OSHA Permit Required Confined Spaces article.

Gas Dangers

Confined spaces may contain toxic hazards that can be detected only through testing. Oxygen (O2) deficiency, hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4) are common hazards in confined spaces that can be detected with a portable gas monitor. Depending on the industry, other gas hazards may be present. Relying on a portable gas detector for H2S readings, and not sense of smell, is the most reliable method of ensuring that workers are notified well before dangerous levels are reached. In the range of 200 to 300 ppm, eye inflammation, respiratory tract irritation, and a loss of consciousness can occur. When levels of H2S reach 500 to 700 ppm, death will occur within 30 minutes to an hour.

Gas Safety is important. The risks can be divided into three categories: combustible gas, toxic gas, and high or low oxygen levels. Making the worker's assignment as safe as possible is the employer's responsibility. A work location assessment is a requirement.

• Combustible gas

For combustion to occur, the air must contain a minimum concentration of combustible gas or vapor. This quantity is called the lower explosive limit (LEL). At concentrations equal to or greater than this, combustion will occur in the presence of a suitable ignition source such as a spark or hot surface. For most combustible gases and vapors, the LEL is less than 5% by volume, and a combustible atmosphere is usually described as " hazardous" at 10% LEL.

Some examples that present dangers are as follows: storage vessels which have contained hydrocarbon fuels and oils, and fuel leaks in pipelines, gas cylinders and engine-driven plant. For workers in sub- surface environments such as sewers and pits, methane is an almost universal danger. It's an odorless gas underground and it's formed by decaying organic matter

• Toxic gases and vapors

Depending on the environment and the nature of the work, confined space workers may be exposed to any of a large number of toxic compounds. For example, generators used in a confined space produce carbon monoxide in the exhaust fumes thereby creating a serious poisoning risk. Workers near vehicle traffic may be exposed to carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide from exhaust fumes. Subsurface hazards are hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide due to bacteria decomposition.

• High or Low Oxygen Levels

The normal concentration of oxygen in fresh air is 20.9%. If it falls below 19.5% or goes above 23.5%, an atmosphere is considered hazardous. If the concentration falls to 17%, mental and physical agility are noticeably impaired; death comes very quickly if it drops only a few percent more. At these levels, unconsciousness takes hold so rapidly that the victim will be unaware of what is happening.

How does a location get oxygen-deficient? Numerous reasons such as: the result of oxygen displacement by a toxic or inert gas, microbial action, oxidation caused by rusting metal, combustion, and absorption.

High oxygen levels are also dangerous. As with too little, too much will impair the victim's ability to think clearly and act sensibly. Moreover, oxygen-enriched atmospheres represent a severe fire hazard. From clothing to grease, materials which would not normally burn become subject to spontaneous combustion under these conditions. Common causes of oxygen enrichment include leaks from welding cylinders and even from breathing apparatus.

Gas Testing

Nowadays, multi-sensor confined space instruments are increasingly much less expensive, rugged, compact, easy to use than ever before. A confined space gas detector kit makes stratified testing easy and generally includes a multi-gas monitor with pump, 10-foot sampling hose for pre-testing (longer lengths are available), spare batteries (rechargeable or alkaline), quad-gas cylinder for bump testing, and calibration with gas regulator, all conveniently contained in a rugged carrying case.

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Industrial Accident Investigation Procedures

In this article, we will learn about how to investigate an industrial accident. Within Safety Officer Courses in Rawalpindi islamabad lahore, we will use term of accident, in order to describe an event that causes injury, property damage and death.

It is extremely important to find out the cause of an industrial accident or workplace accident in general. All accidents that occur in the plant site both minor and major accidents have to be reported as quickly as possible. The accidents are then investigated to identify the causes and set up proper control measures to avoid accident recurrence.

Determining the underlying causes of an accident is one of the most important aspects of workplace accident investigation.

Underlying cause may accompany each main cause of the accident. However, in many cases we often forget about this and do not perform the investigation until it is finished completely. Let' take an example. Some people may agree that the cause of accident (slips) on a wet floor was the wet floor. It is actually the immediate cause not the root cause.

What we have to determine is the root cause or underlying cause, not the immediate cause. In the above example, we have to determine why water was on the floor. Did the water come from leaked valve, pipe or equipment? Or has someone dropped the water? How long did the water on the floor before the accident happened? This information is much more important and useful.

By knowing the root cause, we will get many benefits for our long term safety, because we already known how to prevent such accident in the future.

Industrial Accident Investigation Procedures explained in safety officer course in rawalpindi

Okay, now we will talk about the procedures of industrial accident investigation. The procedures contain five main stages, namely reporting, gathering information, analyzing the information, identifying risk control measures and setting up action planning and its implementation.

Reporting

Reporting is the first important stage in workplace accident investigation. It should be made as detail as possible and complete. Some accidents may be adequate to be reported internally and others are required to be reported not only to the related section in internal of the company but have to be reported to local government or Department of Labor in your country.

Each company should refer to the applicable government regulations on how to report the industrial or workplace accident. This includes time of reporting and applicable reporting media.

Gathering Information

The second stage of workplace accident investigation is to collect as many information as we can about the accident and related events.

Workers who were involved in the accident or injured and the supervisors are the main source of information. The gathering information involves interviews.

In addition to interviews, taking photos and drawings of the accident scene can also be done to collect information. During this stage, we should always remember to five W and one H. They belong to what, who, where, when, why and how.

In safety officer course in Islamabad, here are some examples of questions in order to gather information about the accident:

• What was happened?
• When the accident happened?
• Who was involved in the accident?
• Who were the supervisors?
• Where did the accident happen?
• What did workers doing before the accident and when the accident happened?
• What tools, machine, equipment were being used when the accident happened?
• Did the workers follow standard operating procedure?
• Have the workers received related training to the operation?
• Were there any injured workers?
• How did the workers get injured?
• Did the workers wear suitable personal protective equipments?
• Did the injured workers get the first aid measures at site?
• Were there any other persons who saw the accident?
• How did the accident happen (sequence of events)?

The sequence of events is the most important question for anyone who performs industrial accident investigation. Workplace accident in most cases is caused by something that went wrong in the past rather than caused by immediate cause.

Analyzing the Information

Having collected information related to the accident, the information then has to be analyzed by the investigators. In this stage, the investigators will start analyzing the sequence of events in order to clearly understand why the accident happened. Finally, the investigators have to determine the root causes of the accident.

A common method for analyzing the sequence of events that is usually used by many accident investigators is tree diagram. The accident is put at the top of the tree diagram and the contributing factors are on the branches. The root cause of the accident lies at the root of the tree. So that is why it is extremely important to know the root cause to prevent accident recurrence.

Identifying Risk Control Measures

Once the root causes of the accident have been identified, then we should provide control measures or preventive actions to cut off the root and prevent the accident from recurrence.

The best control measure is eliminating the risk at all. If eliminating the risk is not possible, try to reduce the risk. If the risk still exists, then we have to minimize risk exposure to the workers. Principally, follow the risk or hazard control hierarchy when determining the best control measures.

Setting up Action Planning and Its Implementation

A plan is prepared and scheduled for the implementation once control measures are determined. This is the final stage of industrial accident investigation procedures.

If the five stages of industrial accident investigation procedures is implemented properly then the employers could improve the workplace safety. But, remember that the best accident prevention is how to prevent the accident from happening. Accident investigation requires 'much' cost even workers' life.