By: Rahul Koul
Last updated : March 04, 2021 12:53 pm
The well-prepared staff, proper communication with transporters and awareness among people around the chemical plants a need of the hour.
To ensure safety from industrial hazards, attention is required not only towards the in-house prevention but also beefing up preparations outside the chemical plants. This came to the fore during discussions at the webinar, ‘Are we learning from industrial accidents?’ to mark National Safety Day by FICCI.
Outlining the risk considerations in decision making across the supply chain, Janardhanan Ramanujalu, Co-Chairman, FICCI Petrochemicals Committee and Vice President & Regional Head – SABIC stresses the need to put all the safety aspects together. “Companies must not worry about the cost factor during preparation for hazards but see it as a future investment. We can’t afford to only focus on manufacturing and say we are done with our responsibility. There is logistics, storage, and transportation. We see a lot of chemicals getting shipped by road in tankers and from abroad in ships. The accidents could be happening anywhere and then the contamination of chemical is a major issue. In such a scenario, you can’t rely on supplier and transporter as they might not be specialized in dealing with such a situation. Besides the parameters such as temperature and humidity, storage is a science in itself and needs preventive actions. Educating drivers about the chemicals and mandating them to call for any help if needed is important.”
As per Joseph Oommen, Director, DuPont Sustainable Solutions India, it is not a person who simply dies due to an industrial accident but a lot many other lives too are affected. “Since the soil and air are getting contaminated due to man-made chemicals, companies around the world are diversifying their supply chain. There is regulatory compliance and we have to ensure safe operations. To prevent accidents, process safety needs to be taken seriously and process hazard measures have to be in place.”
Speaking on the learning from the styrene vapour release accident at LG Polymers India, Dr. P.S.G. Krishnan, Principal Director, CIPET Bengaluru said, “On 7th May 2020 in Vizag, the accidental release of styrene from a storage tank killed 12 people and affected 800 people. Even animals were affected as well. It was a first of kind incident amid lockdown and thus an unprecedented scenario. Although a mock drill was carried out earlier, it was only for fire and styrene release was never thought of. People living around weren't prepared as they had no idea about such a situation.” As per Krishnan, an average of 1000 people in India get affected due to accidents every year. “Comparatively in Japan and US too have the cases right from 1994 but fatalities are lesser than in India because of the presence of better system in place.”
VV Surya Rau, Head - Safety, Reliance Industries on what more to do while learning from incident says, “Culture of safety determines the performance. People must know what is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour in paper and it should get displayed prominently. The consequences must be made clear on regulatory procedures. Most of the accidents are man-made. 80% are man-made and even only 4% are by act of God. The right behaviour, community awareness and pandemic wisdom are the keys to prepare well for any such accidents.”
Sharing his thoughts on the business impact of safety incidents, Rupark Sarswat, CEO, India Glycols says, “There is a cascading effect. About 31 crore people are affected by non-fatal accidents. There are huge costs, be it the Bhopal incident or Chernobyl, it cost billions of dollars to companies. The business impact of such incidents is quite huge and thus companies need to have the right kind of processes, leadership, and employees. Few a times people are concerned more about business and delay while setting up a new plant, forgetting the criticality of safety aspect. Culture of safety is like a garden that requires training, perseverance. We may have as many as ISO certificates but the actual test of the safety depends on the efforts at the ground level. The culture of short cut must be shelved.”
Preventive measures are high on our agenda than remedial measures, says Kanishk Kant Srivastava, Director (Chemical-I), Department of Chemicals & Petrochemicals who stresses the need for ensuring compliance of safety protocols. He assures that his department is working towards improving the system and is confident that the industry too will take steps to minimize such incidents.