Very soon, we will have the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster-one of the worst industrial accidents in the world. For the chemical industry worldwide, Bhopal is said to be the wake-up call and turning point that forever changed attitudes towards safety. For those of you who are too young to remember the incident, … Read more
Nov 09, 2009– The US Chemical Safety Board has released a new safety message regarding the safety of pressure vessel. Improperly installed or modified pressure vessels have led to a number of serious chemical accidents. Eleven states still don’t require adherence to the ASME pressure vessel code! ( And we thought that such negligent behavior … Read more
By now, all of you must have read about the salmonella outbreak, at Peanut Corporation of America’s plants. The NY times reports that, the company now says that its plant was inspected by “private” food safety inspectors regularly who gave them “an overall superior rating”. Some other inspectors apparently gave the plants ‘meets or exceeds … Read more
As if we did not have enough of welding related fire accidents in conventional plants (read my last post on the issue here ), now we have a report of a similar accident in a Japanese nuclear plant. Here is the incident reported by various agencies: A fire broke out at a nuclear power plant … Read more
Running an industrial manufacturing plant in these days is tough. First, you have to meet all the production and cost targets, whereas you are not allowed to hire more hands (due to the slowing economy), or to have any safety violations or incidents, nor any environmental issues. With shrinking budgets and an equally shrinking manpower, … Read more
