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September 6, 2012

Responsible Care - to make it work in India

The accident at the fireworks factory in Sivakasi highlights the need for enhancing safety in the chemicals and explosives industry. There are two aspects to safety - one is voluntary and the other is enforcement. I want to talk about the voluntary initiatives. Initiatives like Responsible Care (trademark of American Chemistry Council) etc  are adopted voluntarily by organisations. In India, the awarding of the Responsible Care logo is carried out by the Indian Chemical Council (an organisation of chemical manufacturing units). The proof of the pudding in awarding the logo lies in the company not experiencing any fatal accident after the award of the logo. If any fatal accident does occur in a company that has been awarded the logo, then the logo must be withdrawn by the awarding authority. Unless this happens, the public are not going to develop faith in the process.
In India, for Responsible Care, I suggest that companies must adopt one more code called " mentoring of small scale industry" around the location of the unit. This means that resources for improving the safety in nearby small scale industries must be voluntarily expended by the company. This will have a trickle down effect to improve safety in the whole chemical industry.

 Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

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