Dear Sir / Madam,
Greetings from National Safety Council..! The National Safety Council of India would be organizing a 1-day virtual Seminar on Industrial Safety on 5th March 2021 to mark the 50th Glorious National Safety Day Campaign. The theme of the Seminar will be “Learn from Disaster and Prepare for a Safer Future”.
The National Safety Day/Week campaign, spearheaded by the National Safety Council for commemorating its foundation day – 4th March, has grown into a major national Occupational Safety & Health (OSH) campaign and is widely celebrated by Industry, trade unions, Govt. departments including regulatory agencies, NGOs’ and institutions. The objective of the Campaign is to promote integration of OSH in work culture and lifestyle.
The Seminar will have four technical sessions viz. Industrial Safety & Disaster Management Governance; Industrial Safety & the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; Industry 4.0 & its impact on OSH and Role of Campaigns in creating a Safety Culture.
For further details and online registration with payment link is provided below:
https://nsc.org.in/2021/02/01/seminar-on-industrial-safety/
Looking forward to receiving the nominations.
Thanks & Regards,
NATIONAL SAFETY COUNCIL, INDIA
HQs & Institute Building, Plot No:- 98A. Sector 15,
Institutional Area, CBD Belapur, Navi Mumbai-400614
Direct +91-22-2752 2803, Mobile No: +91-9969036803, Website : www.nsc.org.in
“Wishing won't keep you safe, Safety will.”
36 years have passed since the terrible disaster in Bhopal.
The accident was caused by a leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) owned by US company Union Carbide.
There are multiple theories and possible causes of the accident, though the main theory that emerges from research conducted by Union Carbide and the Indian justice is that the accident was caused by not taking the proper precautions during cleaning and maintenance of the plant, which made the water pressure used, sodium chloride crystals, metallic debris and other impurities come into contact with the stored gas, initiating an exothermic reaction that caused the opening of the safety valves for the tanks due to overpressure and thus releasing toxic gas into the atmosphere; with the aggravating circumstance that the tank cooling system and the prior catalyst of gases released in the atmosphere, were disabled because of cost savings.
Upon contact with the atmosphere, the released compound began to decompose several highly toxic gases that formed a lethal cloud. Since they were gases that were denser than what is found in the atmosphere’s air, it swept across the city on the ground. Thousands of people and living things died almost immediately, being suffocated by the toxic cloud and many died in accidents while trying to escape from it due to the desperate and chaotic evacuation of the city.
An estimated 10,000 people died in the first week after the toxic leak and at least 25,000 later died as a direct result of the disaster, which affected more than 600,000 people, 150,000 of whom suffered serious sequelas. In addition, thousands of livestock and pets also perished and the whole environment around the location of the accident was seriously polluted by toxic substances and heavy metals that will take many years to disappear.
The lessons we learn from this unfortunate accident have had a significant impact on process safety and how we should be educated and trained to prevent future accidents:
1) Safety Culture:
No safety measures that can prevent an accident if there is not a safety culture that governs the behaviour of management and employees. In Bhopal this basic pillar was not present or was weak.
2) Safety Management:
In 1984 safety management systems were not widely established, although there were recommendations and procedures such as PSM (Process Safety Management) or the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. There were two major accidents in 1984 (Bhopal and the explosions of PEMEX in Mexico), which created the need for an organized and systematic approach.
3) Intrinsically Safe Design:
The application of the principles of intrinsically safe design are those that offer the best results. In Bhopal the main cause of the disaster was unnecessary storage of large quantities of MIC, which ultimately was what caused the mass poisoning.
4) Knowledge Transfer based on Learning from Accidents:
The Bhopal accident still provides valuable lessons after 36 years. Concepts such as “Zero Accidents” or “Total Inherent Safety” arose as a result of accidents in 1984 as well as what was coined by Professor Trevor Kletz, one of the fathers of modern chemical safety: “Why should we publish accident reports?”.
Since then, there has been significant progress in the development of safety and health at work, which is giving rise to the corporate social responsibility initiatives that are operating in recent times, such as Responsible Care, a voluntary global initiative for the chemical industry under which companies work to continuously improve their performance in safety, health and the environment. Paradoxically, however, one of the companies that created the Responsible Care initiative in 1987 was Dow Chemical, the company that acquired at the time the assets of Union Carbide, and has yet to take any responsibility for the accident, despite it was found that the three factors that triggered the tragedy of December 3, 1984: Lack of technical expertise, Corrosion of Materials and Equipment, and Deactivation of Safety Measures, could have been controlled by the company.
Disasters like Bhopal or the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, were incidents that tragically started to concoct the current concept of the safety culture. Surely, those accidents helped us to create a new safety culture that has saved the lives of many other people from disaster. Or at least that’s one of the only positive lessons we have managed to find…
5) Action Plan
Should follow a plan to focus on the proactive Key Performance Indicators (KPI) like unsafe conditions /unsafe behaviors and near miss incidents to ensure and create a total safety management system which can eliminate the necessity to think about the reactive KPIs such as property damages, non-reportable and reportable accidents.
6) Remember Bhopal: As professionals, we make decisions daily and define our Process Safety identity:
· When you choose not to investigate a chronic failure, remember Bhopal.
· When the right choice is not the most economical choice, remember Bhopal.
· When choosing to accept actual operation because you cannot get expected or design operation, remember Bhopal.
· When designing a solution that manages a hazard instead of eliminating it, remember Bhopal.
· When tempted to execute a procedure the way you think it should be written instead of how it is actually written, remember Bhopal.
· When thinking about substituting engineered equipment with people, remember Bhopal.
· When redesigning a system to make it “Safer,” remember Bhopal.
· When operators have concerns with a decision you are about to make, remember Bhopal.
· When making changes for the sake of improving personal safety , remember Bhopal.
· When you perform a safety audit, remember Bhopal.
Let's own our own areas and say : "I am responsible for the safety of all working with me"
“Safety Is A Race - We ALL Can Win.”
With the goal of “0” ACCIDENT.
Massage of, Chairman & Secretary, telecast on Doordarson dated on 4th March 2020
49th NATIONAL SAFETY DAY (4th MARCH' 2020)
“ ENHANCE SAFETY & HEALTH PERFORMANCE BY USE OF ADVANCE TECHNOLOGY ”
The 49th “NATIONAL SAFETY DAY” is being celebrated on 4th March' 2020 as a mark of foundation day of the National Safety Council, set up by Ministry of Labour, Government of India. On this occasion Safety celebrations will continue for a fortnight period at site.
On this occasion, our motto is to rededicate ourselves to the cause of Safety, Health and Protection of Environment. We will do our best to develop attitudes and habits to ensure SAFE days ahead.