DEVELOPING STORIES

On February 5, 2021, a water treatment plant employee in Oldsmar, Florida, noticed that the cursor was moving strangely on the control computer screen, Initially, there was no concern; the plant used remote access software to allow staff to share screens and...

The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) collected data from 105 dust explosion from 2006 through 2017. The CSB did not review all the incidents from that timeframe. The CSB data was then categorized into several broad industry types. Figure 1: CSB Dust Explosion...

In October 2009, a release of over 260,000 gal. (984 cubic m. m.) of gasoline from a storage tank led to a major explosion, killing 11 including both operators. The official report indicated that the operator made a mistake in the sequence of valve operations when...

Pourquoi, malgré les réglementations et obligations en place, la gestion de crise en cas d’accident industriel connaît-elle des dysfonctionnements le jour J ? Pour explorer cette question et identifier des solutions éprouvées et capitalisables, l’Icsi et AMARIS...

A recent event in Gainesville, Georgia, US, involved a significant leak of liquid nitrogen. A poultry processing plant used liquid nitrogen to quickly freeze chicken products. This freezing system had only been in operation for 4 6 weeks before the event. Six workers...

On April 12, 2004, a company in Dalton Georgia, USA was contracted to make triallyl cyanurate. A runaway reaction occurred, and flammable and toxic allyl alcohol and allyl chloride were released to the atmosphere. Some material was released through a poorly sealed...

A U.S. company had fires at 2 of its locations about 100 days apart. Both were caused by static sparks igniting flammable liquids and vapors. On July 17, 2007, flammable VM&P naphtha was being transferred from a tank truck to a vertical 15,000 gallon (57 m3 )...

An operator was adding a raw material from many drums. All the drums were black with white ends and had blue & white labels. After adding ~20 drums, the operator noticed a drum that had a different name on it. Same black and white drum, same blue and white label....

Do you think that you do not have to worry about potential reactive chemistry incidents because your workplace has no intentional chemical reactions? Don’t be fooled – reactive chemistry  incidents can happen almost anywhere. Here are two examples. On November 7,...