35 years ago, on the night of December 2nd/3rd 1984, the Worlds worst industrial disaster took place.
In India and elsewhere around the World, catastrophic chemical plant incidents continue to occur. Memory is short. In the numerous incidents since Bhopal, many of the reasons are similar to those of the Bhopal disaster:
Even if you have a 40 element PSM system, there is no guarantee that a catastrophic accident will not occur. Is there a solution to this? One of the possible solutions is accountability at the highest level. By this I mean legal requirements that will make the entire board of chemical organizations accountable for a process incident that kills or maims people. The Sword of Damocles should surely work.
We still do not have any PSM rule in India apart from the OISD guidelines for the oil sector. We still do not have an independent incident investigating authority. The status of the chemical safety and security rating system whose draft was published few years ago is not known.
My thoughts are with the victims of Bhopal - dead and surviving...and I pray that another Bhopal does not occur.
Read my earlier posts on Bhopal:
In India and elsewhere around the World, catastrophic chemical plant incidents continue to occur. Memory is short. In the numerous incidents since Bhopal, many of the reasons are similar to those of the Bhopal disaster:
- cost cutting without properly analysing the effects on process safety
- poor competency
- poor asset integrity
- high attrition rate
- inadequate emergency response and planning
- inadequate facility siting
- not paying heed to audit reports and past incidents etc.
Even if you have a 40 element PSM system, there is no guarantee that a catastrophic accident will not occur. Is there a solution to this? One of the possible solutions is accountability at the highest level. By this I mean legal requirements that will make the entire board of chemical organizations accountable for a process incident that kills or maims people. The Sword of Damocles should surely work.
We still do not have any PSM rule in India apart from the OISD guidelines for the oil sector. We still do not have an independent incident investigating authority. The status of the chemical safety and security rating system whose draft was published few years ago is not known.
My thoughts are with the victims of Bhopal - dead and surviving...and I pray that another Bhopal does not occur.
Read my earlier posts on Bhopal:
See a presentation on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy by Vijita S
Aggarwal, Associate Professor, University School of Management Studies,GGS Indraprastha
University,Delhi, India in this link.
Read my older post comparing the Bhopal and the BP incident of 2005 in this
link
Read the then Police Chief’s account of the tragedy in this
link.
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