United States. The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released a new video examining the inherent safety concept and its application across the industry.
The video, "Intrinsically Safe: The Future of Risk Reduction," stems from the Aug. 28, 2008, explosion that killed two workers and injured eight others at Bayer CropScience's chemical plant at the Virginia West Institute. As a result of ongoing concerns about safety at the facility, Congress ordered the CSB to commission the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study the feasibility of reducing or eliminating the inventory of methyl isocynanate (MIC) stored at the Bayer plant.
The NAS study explored how the concept of "intrinsic safety" could be applied at Bayer's facilities. The NAS panel noted that the goal of safety design is inherently not just to prevent an accident, but to reduce the consequences of an accident that occurs. The 11-minute video includes interviews with NAS group members and staff, as well as comments from the CSB President and researchers.
The video is about the four main components of an intrinsically safer design, already identified by the NAS study. It is about replacing, minimizing, moderating and simplifying. Substituting is described as the modification of one material with another that is less dangerous. Minimizing is described as reducing the amount of hazardous material in the process. Moderating is described as using less hazardous process conditions such as lower pressures or temperatures, and simplifying is described as a design process to be less complicated, and therefore less prone to failure.
If you want to watch the video you can enter by clicking here.
