Chemical firms grapple with new approach to process safety data

Industry processes safety changes

01 June 2009 00:00  [Source: ICB]

Pressure mounts as the chemical sector braces for wholesale change in its approach to safety best practices

THE GLOBAL chemical sector is striving to give more prominence to process safety within Responsible Care programs as governments move to bring the whole area of accident prevention in hazardous industries under greater regulatory control.

The European Commission is reviewing the 13-year-old Seveso II directive on the control of major accident hazards with the objective of making more effective obligatory safety management systems in plants, including those covering process safety.

In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been urged, particularly by the country's Chemical Safety Board (CSB) that investigates chemical accidents, to enforce existing legislation on process safety more effectively.

However, process safety is such a complex subject that the procedure of providing it with a higher profile with Responsible Care is proving difficult. There are even problems achieving a uniform approach to the issue.

Currently, the industries in the US and Europe have different views on the matter. Earlier this year there had been hopes that these would be resolved within a next few months so that a large section of the global industry would have a common platform from which standards could be raised throughout the world.

However, after recent talks on the matter, Cefic - the European Chemical Industry Council - and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) were unable to reach agreement on what process safety data should be monitored.

A series of major accidents within the chemical sector and the closely related segment of oil and petroleum products have prompted both regulatory authorities and the general public to expect the industry to do more to prevent incidents that have killed or injured people and caused extensive damage to both industrial and residential buildings.

In the health and safety area, the industry has tended to concentrate on collecting data on personal injuries resulting from trips and falls.

Most companies now publish in annual and sustainability reports data on items like lost working time due to personal accidents. Since it is a duty under Responsible Care for chemical companies to record personal accident data, chemical associations also provide it on a national basis.

OPENNESS ENCOURAGED
Until recently, little information from either chemical companies or associations was published specifically on incidents arising from disruptions to manufacturing processes, which have caused spills, fires, explosions or injuries. The ACC has been one of the few national associations to annually report process safety incidents. Since 1995, its members have been required under its Responsible Care program to report "significant" fires, explosions, chemical releases and injuries involving a chemical process. As a result it says that incidents of this type had declined by 46% up to 2007.

Pressure has been mounting on the industry for the collection and publication of process safety data on a much wider scale. This is particularly since disasters like the explosion at a fertilizer plant at Toulouse, France, which killed 29 people and injured hundreds more in 2001.

However, the event that has probably done more to raise awareness in the industry about the issue was a blast at global producer BP's Texas City refinery in Houston, Texas, US, in March 2005, which killed 15 and injured 170.

The accident was extensively investigated not only by the CSB but also an independent commission led by former US Secretary of State James Baker, which assessed safety culture and supervision at all five of BP's US refineries.

It recommended in early 2007 that BP "develop, implement, maintain and periodically update an integrated set of leading and lagging performance indicators" to monitor its process safety performance more effectively. A similar recommendation was made by the CSB in its report on the explosion.

There has been a recognition across large sections of the industry that the principles behind the Baker proposals on process safety performance indicators should be applied to the vast majority of chemical producers.

LEADING OR LAGGING?
The problem has been the huge variety of data which can be categorized as being indicators. Lagging indicators provide information on incidents, big and small, after they have happened, while lead indicators should help to measure the effectiveness of procedures, operating disciplines and protections preventing incidents. In addition there are near misses, which are not serious but could lead to severe incidents.

"The choice of lagging and lead indicators, as well as near misses, is causing a great deal of confusion," says one process safety specialist. "What some experts classify as a lagging indicator, others would categorize as a lead indicator."

Nonetheless a lot of progress has been made by chemical engineering organizations like the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) in the US and the UK-based European Process Safety Centre to achieve uniformity in the application of indicators.

A consensus has now emerged that the choice of lead indicators should be left to individual companies or even sites within companies because different lead indicators are required for different products and processes.

After consultation with a range of chemical and petroleum associations, regulatory bodies, trade unions and academics, CCPS drew up a list of process safety metrics in late 2007, which has now gained support in North and South America and in a few European countries.

It recommends a list of lagging indicators based mainly on the monitoring of releases or loss of containment of chemicals or energy above certain thresholds.

"There will be opportunities for adjustments to be made to the metrics and for continued improvements," explains Scott Berger, director of CCPS, which is part of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. "Our priority has been to get a consensus behind the metric system," he says. "The thresholds were set after an online voting process by company representatives."

The ACC is adopting CCPS metrics from this year so that its members will have, under Responsible Care, to adhere in many cases to lower threshold quantities when reporting losses of primary containment (LoPC) from equipment like pipes and storage facilities.

The CCPS thresholds are based on those of the United Nations Dangerous Goods categories rather than those of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Furthermore the numbers of chemicals included is over double that on the EPA list - over 1,800 specific chemicals and more than 450 generic chemicals compared with fewer than 1,000.

Brussels-based Cefic has misgivings about some aspects of the CCPS but nonetheless has been showing willingness to back much of it in its negotiations with the ACC on a uniform process safety strategy. These have been taking place under the umbrella of the International Council of Chemical Associations, the world body for chemical trade associations.

The difference between the European and US approaches to the issue has been highlighted by a current test project in Germany. While the CCPS system focuses mainly on release of hazardous substances, the German chemical industry association is piloting a monitoring program with producers BASF, Evonik Industries and Bayer, in which the objective is zero releases of all substances.

"All losses of primary containment, not just the releases of hazardous substances, show in some way that a process is not working properly," says Peter Schmelzer of Germany's Bayer Healthcare and chairman of Cefic's issue team on process and plant safety.

"The ultimate goal should be no losses, just as in the occupational health area the ultimate target is no personal accidents. It is the sort of high expectation that the public would appreciate and understand.

"But we want to reach a compromise with the ACC because our priority is to have a global approach so that as many companies as possible, especially SMEs, are reporting process safety incidents across the world," he says.

The compromise is likely to be an agreement to concentrate on monitoring of LoPCs, based on the United Nations Dangerous Goods list with Cefic pressing for low thresholds.

"The idea will be to keep it relatively simple in order to build up an awareness within companies globally and to create a reporting culture across the world," says Schmelzer.

Once recording of data on losses of containment become a core part of Responsible Care they should gain a similar importance to that of occupational health data, such as loss of working time through personal injuries. Companies would then feel free to publicize the competitiveness of their process safety data in annual and sustainability reports.

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By: Sean Milmo
+44 20 8652 3214

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