Chemical Industrial Accidents - Case Study Example

Chemical Industrial Accidents Chemical Industrial Accidents An industrial chemical accident is defined as an involuntary result of one or more harmful substances, which could have dire consequences to human health or the general working environment (International Labour Office, & International Program on Chemical Safety, 1991).). Chemical hazards are schemes where chemical calamities could occur under specific circumstances. Such events comprise of fires, eruptions, leakages, or discharges of toxic or precarious materials that can cause illness, harm, incapacitation, or an individual’s demise. It is a common belief that chemical mishaps may occur predominantly whenever noxious materials are warehoused, transported, or employed in normal operations. This is in light to this fact that the most dreadful accidents are industrial calamities involving major chemical manufacturing facilities. In order to understand further how and why the accidents happen, the United States division of Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is set to visit the site and make proper investigation. This paper shows how the department works by examining its full investigation of nitrogen incident at Valero Delaware city refinery chemical accident. In the United States, distress about chemical accidents escalated after the Bhopal tragedy in India and later led to the approval of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act in 1986 (Bünger, 2012). The act requires local industrial emergency planning doings throughout the country, which comprises of emergency notifications. The bill also requires establishments to make publicly existing information about their warehousing of noxious chemicals. Based on such evidence, citizens and workers can recognize the susceptible zones in which severe noxious discharges could cause impairment or death to them. Subsequently, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board also recognized as the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is an autonomous U.S. federal organization charged with studying industrial chemical accidents (Hardy, 2010). The firm’s headquarters is positioned in Washington. The CSB is obligated to conduct root trigger investigations of chemical mishaps at certain industrial facilities and write full reports on them. Case Study As earlier highlighted in the paper, a case study of the nitrogen incident at Valero Delaware city refinery chemical accident would be used to understand this phenomenon. Valero owns several refineries in the country with a sum output of about 3.3 million barrels of crude oil daily. The company took over the Delaware City refinery from Premcor Refining Company, Inc. also known as Premcor in late 2005 along with three other refineries making Valero the largest North American refiner. The Delaware City refinery as a single plant processes 180,000 BPD at the 5,000-acre complex and has around 570 staffs. Events preceding Valero taking over this refinery saw that Premcor collaborated with Matrix and other companies to perform operation maintenance in 2005. The Accident The accident happened at the Valero Energy Company Refinery in Delaware on November 5 2005 in the course of the overnight shift. The incident involved two workers working for Matrix Service Industrial Contractors, Inc. who worked on reinstalling an enormous pipe elbow on the top of a hydrocracker reactor. During the process, the yet to be installed pipe left a gap on a work platform 24 inches in width, fenced by two-foot high steel connection pins. What made the procedure dangerous was that the reactor was under a nitrogen purge, a procedure that expels oxygen and other hazardous gas from apparatus by flowing nitrogen through it. During their closing working session, a Matrix pipefitter told his boilermaker colleagues that a reel of duct tape was lying on the distribution tray, which was to be removed. By ignoring a set of safety procedures, a boilermaker decided to get the tape in rudimentary fashion and ended up falling into the oxygen deficient reactor. His supervisor found him there and tried to help him. However, he was later pronounced dead due to Asphyxiation lost consciousness. Investigation In order to understand what happened, the investigation team should include a lead investigator with experience in nitrogen asphyxiation cases, a refinery site engineer, a chemical engineer, and a hazard scenario specialist. In the investigation, a lead investigator with experience in the nitrogen asphyxiation case would easily highlight faults in operations on the accident site and make scenario simulations that help in solving the case. The engineer would be useful to understand the working surroundings in the incident related area. Lastly, a hazard scenario specialist would grill the workers on what kind of training they have in handling dangerous situations in the work area. In order to understand what happened, an interview and not an interrogation should be done on the people present during the time the accident happened, probably someone working there, or a colleague would shed more light on what really happened during that time. Then photos should be taken of the area of the accident to provide any visual analysis of the area. In this case, also company-operating procedures should be taken to compare them with the right stipulated safety operations given by the board. A chemical analyst should collect samples of the nitrogen levels at the site during the purge to help in making a simulation of the danger that these individuals were faced with at the time. The interview face of the investigation should include a transcript of the permit prepare, nightshift contract administrator, nitrogen hazard awareness training supervisor, colleagues at the site and anyone who saw the victims at the site prior to the incident. First on the stand should be the permit prepare who should explain on how and why the permits were given as they were and what rules were followed. This would shade light on determining if the right procedures were followed. Second would be the night shift contract admin who would provide information on that night working conditions including site and worker conditions. This would include questions if the workers had the proper gear for working on the site and if the site was safe to work on if not what measures were taken to reduce any case that would harm the workers or stall company operations. The nitrogen hazard awareness-training supervisor would be the third to shade light on how the workers are trained in case of being in a dangerous situation and if they were aware of the dangers around them. He would also provide information on how the employers take their training and if they are compliant to them. Lastly, colleagues and any observers who could have seen what happened that night should shade light on how the victims reacted to their situations. Causes of the Accident Facts First on the list is the fact that the Valero refinery had safe work procedures for using nitrogen. Nonetheless, they were ineffectively implemented in the evening of the incident. The procedures required operators to fit a blockade and post cautionary signs at all equipment entree points before the nitrogen purge was initiated. Furthermore, it comprise of lists of all workers working inside the barricaded area using a controlled area entry log. This procedure was not followed on the night of the incident. The reactor was on a nitrogen purge that emitted the gas directly onto the work platform area. Secondly, the Matrix work crew and the Valero unit operators were obligated to have a joint understanding of the job before it could proceed. The Valero safe work permit system also needed a company unit and illustrative operators for the work crew, typically the supervisor to jointly visit the worksite before seconding the permit. The jobsite visit was intended to examine the work area and review the planned work tasks to clearly identify all known or suspected hazards and safe work prerequisites. Contrary to the procedure requirement, the work permit issued to the Matrix boilermaker supervisor on November 5, 2005 to install the pipe assembly was approved without first doing this safety-critical jobsite visit. From the two work permits awarded to the supervisor, the work description on the permit limited the pipefitters to “set up [the] job,” which in this case meant taking tools and equipment up to the platform work area. Their permit correctly informed them of the continuing nitrogen purge. However, by designating an activity “set up only,” operators do not typically specify “fresh air” breathing equipment and air monitoring even if the workers might be exposed to a hazardous atmosphere. The pipefitters and boilermakers would be working near the venting nitrogen, so both safe work permits should have been designated “fresh-air” work areas regardless of any restricted work activities. Unlike the pipefitters’ work permit, the boilermakers’ safe work permit did not inform them that the reactor was on nitrogen purge. Furthermore, it did not restrict them to “set up only”, even though the Valero permit preparer told the CSB investigators that he and the boilermaker supervisor (the second victim) had agreed to that limitation when they discussed the permit. When the boilermakers considered entering the reactor to retrieve the tape, they should have had their respective supervisor with them yet this was never the way. When the supervisor got to the sight, he hurriedly grabbed a ladder, inserted it into the reactor, and immediately climbed down. While working near a purging reactor, he had no safety gear on. In this case, he used a self-contained breathing air respirator. Recommendations The CSB regulations are not whole sum in eradicating the hazards at a worksite of many manufacturing establishments. It should include a novel safe work permit refresher exercise for all permit-preparers and approvers and other refinery personnel and contractors. Moreover, all planned work needs a jobsite appointment by the supervisor and a unit operator to classify special safety measures, apparatus status, and special safety equipment supplies. Additionally, in the case study, the conditions for marking the nitrogen purge status box were not well sited. An improvement on such should be done in a way that all workers and operators understand what is going on around them. In conclusion, industrial chemical accidents are a constant threat to the health of workers in the manufacturing industry though the CSB has a lot to do to improve on the safety done in these establishments. It is up to the organizations themselves to make sure their staffs are up to date with safety procedures. As shown in the case research, negligence in such procedures led to the death of two workers who would be alive today if all was done by the book. References Bünger, D. (2012). Deficits in EU and US mandatory environmental information disclosure: Legal, comparative legal and economic facets of pollutant release inventories. Berlin: Springer. Hardy, T. L. (2010). The system safety skeptic: Lessons learned in safety management and engineering. Bloomington, IN: Author House International Labour Office, & International Program on Chemical Safety. (1991). Prevention of major industrial accidents: An ILO contribution to the International Programme of Chemical Safety of UNEP, the ILO, and the WHO (IPCS). Geneva: International Labour Office. Read More