Safety and Environmental Considerations - Fundamentals of Industrial Chemistry: Pharmaceuticals, Polymers, and Business - page 240

healthful working conditions by setting and enforcing standards and by pro-
viding training, outreach, education, and assistance. Subsequent to Bhopal,
OSHA developed the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard which
places accident prevention and emergency response requirements on facil-
ities having listed hazardous chemicals above certain threshold quantities.
Also with a focus on prevention, the EPA instituted the Risk Management
Program.
Also, in response to the tragedy at Bhopal, the chemical industry volun-
tarily launched the Responsible Care ® initiative. This began in Canada in
1985 but now applies in more than 50 countries with the major chemical com-
panies adhering to the principles of Responsible Care ® . Responsible Care ®
requires a focus on continuous improvement in the seven areas of Community
Awareness and Emergency Response, Pollution Prevention, Process Safety,
Distribution, Employee Health and Safety, Product Stewardship, and Secu-
rity. Product stewardship covers not just the production and use of chemicals
but also transport, storage, and disposal. Although this is a global initiative,
there is widespread participation within the United States. Participation is a
condition of membership for American Chemistry Council (ACC) member
companies. The ACC reports in 2011 that the United States chemical industry
had spent $10.8 billion in 2010 in environmental, health and safety programs,
that releases had been reduced by 75% since 1988, and recordable injury and
illness rates had been reduced by 74% since 1990 [1].
In 1998, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), an independent orga-
nization established by Congress, began with the purpose of investigating
accidents to determine the conditions and circumstances which led up to the
event and to identify the cause or causes so that similar events might be pre-
vented. They look for root causes of accidents and make recommendations.
They also make their findings public and provide safety videos so that mis-
takes are not repeated. For example, in January 2010, in just a 33 hour time
frame, there were a series of three separate incidents at a DuPont facility.
There were releases of methyl chloride, oleum, and phosgene. The CSB did
a thorough investigation of the root causes and issued a series of recommen-
dations. A review of the incidences and the recommendations was put into a
safety video so that others may learn from the accidents. The library of videos
produced by the CSB on a variety of incidents is publicly available. Several
companies show videos from the CSB collection at their safety meetings.
Sometimes it is not the “dangerous” chemicals that result in tragedy.
I worked at one chemical site when they celebrated their 25 th anniversary
since the facility was built. This site had over one thousand workers and
performed chemical operations from small laboratory scale to pilot plant and
production. They produced chemicals in the order of hundreds of millions
of pounds per year. Poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide, chlorine, and