Chapter-1
Introduction
Industrial safety
• Safety in the industry means the worker must be
free from:
• Toxic chemicals, hazardous substance, faire accident
, noise pollution, pathogens, air pollution, water
pollution, explosion and etc.
• There is an increased emphasis on chemical process
safety as a result of highly publicized accidents.
• Public awareness of these accidents has provided a
driving force for industry to improve its safety
record.
• There has been an increasing amount of
government regulation.
• Perhaps this is because sometimes when there is an
accident in a chemical plant it is spectacular and
receives a great deal of attention.
• The public often associates the chemical industry
with environmental and safety problems, which
results in a negative image of the industry.
• The chemical process industry represents a
significant contribution to the world economy.
• Companies engaged in this industry produce a wide
variety of products, including antibiotics, cement,
gasoline, paper, explosives, plastics, fertilizer, food
products, glass, soap, ceramics, and petrochemicals.
• Many of these processing facilities handle
hazardous materials and manage large amounts
of energy.
• Although the industry has one of the best safety
records of all manufacturing sectors, the fact
remains that when something goes wrong at a
processing facility, it can have catastrophic
consequences.
• Chemical process accidents are often the result
of an unexpected interaction between
automated process equipment and operators.
• In the drive to improve safety and reliability,
chemical process facilities tend to rely heavily on
automation, using sophisticated instrumentation,
computers, and programmable logic controllers
to run their plants.
• In an effort to improve energy efficiency and
reduce pollution, various pieces of equipment
are interconnected in ways that complicate their
operation.
• Equipment failures or operator errors can lead to
sudden and unexpected changes in the plant
operation.
• If these disruptions to normal process operation
exceed the capabilities of the operators or the
capacity of the safety systems, a severe accident
can occur, potentially resulting in a devastating
fire, explosion, or toxic release
Quality standards
Water Quality Standards for Surface Waters
• Water Quality Standards protect uses of water
bodies including streams and wetlands.
• Water Quality Standards are the foundation of the
water quality-based pollution control program
mandated by the Clean Water Act.
• Water Quality Standards define the goals for a
water body by designating its uses, setting criteria
to protect those uses, and establishing provisions
such as antidegradation policies to protect water
bodies from pollutants.
• Many developed countries specify standards to be
applied in their own country.
• In Europe, this includes the
European Drinking Water Directive and in the USA
the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) establishes standards as required by the
Safe Drinking Water Act.
• For countries without a legislative or administrative
framework for such standards, the World Health
Organisation publishes guidelines on the standards
that should be achieved.
• Optimum values of water quality characterstics in
relation to types of water
Noise quality standards
What is noise?
• In simple terms, noise is unwanted sound.
• Sound is a form of energy which is emitted by a
vibrating body and on reaching the ear causes
the sensation of hearing through nerves.
• Sounds produced by all vibrating bodies are not
audible.
• The frequency limits of audibility are from 20 HZ
to 20,000 HZ.
• Sounds of frequencies less than 20 HZ are called
infrasonics and greater than 20,0000 HZ are called
ultrasonics.
Impacts of noise
• Why bother about noise? Often neglected, noise
induces a severe impact on humans and on living
organisms.
• Some of the adverse effects are summarized below.
• The periodic sound due to its irregular
occurrences causes displeasure to hearing and
causes annoyance.
• Physiological effects: The physiological features
like breathing amplitude, blood pressure, heart-
beat rate, pulse rate, blood cholesterol are effected.
• Loss of hearing: Long exposure to high sound levels
cause loss of hearing. This is mostly unnoticed, but
• Human performance: The working performance of
workers/human will be affected as they'll be losing
their concentration.
• Nervous system: It causes pain, ringing in the
ears, feeling of tiredness, thereby effecting the
functioning of human system.
• Sleeplessness: It affects the sleeping there by
inducing the people to become restless and
loose concentration and presence of mind during
their activities
• Damage to material : The buildings and materials
may get damaged by exposure to ultrasonic waves
and even get collapsed.
Air Quality standards
National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)
• The Clean Air Act, which was last amended in 1990,
requires EPA to set
National Ambient Air Quality Standards for
pollutants considered harmful to public health and
the environment.
• The Clean Air Act identifies two types of national
ambient air quality standards.
• Primary standards provide public health protection,
including protecting the health of "sensitive"
populations such as asthmatics, children, and the
elderly.
• Secondary standards provide public welfare
protection, including protection against decreased
visibility and damage to animals, crops, vegetation,
and buildings.
• EPA has set National Ambient Air Quality Standards
for six principal pollutants, which are called
"criteria" pollutants.
• These are Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen dioxide,
Ozone, Sulfur dioxide, lead and particulate.
Harardou substance
• Waste: waste is the unwanted or useless materials
generated from combined residential, industrial and
commercial activities in a given area.
• It may be categorised according to its origin (domestic,
industrial, commercial, construction or institutional);
according to its contents (organic material, glass, metal,
plastic paper etc); or according to hazard potential
(toxic, non-toxin, flammable, radioactive, infectious etc).
Hazardous waste:
• Hazardous waste is any unwanted material, the
disposal of which poses a threat to the
environment, i.e. it is explosive, flammable,
oxidising, poisonous/infectious, radioactive,
corrosive and/or toxic.
• Examples of hazardous
(a) very toxic chemicals such as:
– methyl isocyanate;
– phosgene;
- Heavey metals (Pb, Hg, Cd...)
(b) toxic chemicals such as:
– acrylonitrile;
– ammonia;
– chlorine;
– sulphur dioxide;
– hydrogen sulphide;
• – hydrogen cyanide;
• – carbon disulphide;
• – hydrogen fluoride;
• – hydrogen chloride;
• – sulphur trioxide;
(c) flammable gases and liquids;
(d) explosive substances such as:
– ammonium nitrate;
– nitroglycerine;
– trinitrotoluene