Safety Thoughts, News and Information

We are nothing after our death. Let us donate our body organs for the poor.

Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work The moment you fear, you are nobody - Swamy Vivekananda

If you think safety is expensive, try an accident... - O.P.Kharbanda

Preventable accidents, if they are not prevented due to our negligence, it is nothing short of a murder - Dr. Sarvepalli Radha Krishna, 2nd President of India

Zero accidents through zero unsafe behaviors. Do not be complacent that there are no accidents. There may be near miss accidents (NMAs). With luck/chance, somebody escaped knowingly or unknown to the person. But, we can't be safe, if we depend upon the luck.

Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.

We make No compromise with respect to Morality, Ethics, or Safety. If a design or work practice is perceived to be unsafe, we do not proceed until the issue is resolved. - Mission statement by S&B Engineers & Consultants Ltd. http://www.sbec.com/safety/

Human meat gets least priority - A doctor's comment on accidents

CSB video excerpts from Dr.Trevor Kletz, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQn5fL62KL8

Mar 15, 2011

Ammonia explosion

I got this news item through google alerts. Many of us do not believe about explosion due to ammonia but this news item proves that it can happen. Personally, I too do not knew about it until I read about ammonia explosions in "What Went Wrong?" by Trevor Kletz. After a long time, I came across an ammonia explosion.

Nuclear emergency in Japan

The earthquake on 11.03.2011 followed with tsunami and nuclear emergency at Fukushima reminded me of Murphy's law. There was power outage. The pumps for cooling the reactors could not be operated by DG sets. The engineers of the nuclear plant are trying hard with available limited resources. Already there are reports of increase in radiation levels.

What lessons we can learn from this incident in a chemical plant?

Man Choked on HF acid cloud at refinery - experience briefing

Mar 10, 2011

Giant Acid Cloud in Nevada Desert

BBS-Reaction and Response

I read a post in http://www.lifeplan.co.nr/ dated 07.03.2011 on reaction vs response. It made be to realize about our behavior to different situations, let it be office or road or home. This can be used in safety training programmes also while talking about behavior based safety.

Spread of acid fumes from broken bottles to three villages

A news item in Hindu news paper today is about leakage and impact of acid fumes on residents of three villages. The leakage and spread of fumes from possible broken bottles containing bromine (HBr?) caused health complications such as irritation in the eyes, trachea and stomach, coughing, nausea, skin allergy. Another report says about the quantity stored as 40 bottles of each 750 ml. And as per another report, it is stored in 2 and 5 lit bottles and liquid bromine from one broken bottle reacted with husk in the area. I am unable to guess what quantity of the chemical leaked that caused spread of thick fumes to three villages affecting the people.
A report on the same incident mentions

Height of guard railing

Last week, there was water drip in the bedroom from the indoor unit of split AC. I went to the outdoor unit located on the chajja (sun shade) outside in the balcony, suspecting water pipe choke. I found that somebody put the water pipe in vertical position and is above its elevation in the indoor unit. This chajja is accessible to anyone on the stairs of the apartment complex. While trying to put it horizontal on the window chajja by standing on the stairs floor and bending, I nearly lost balance.
I got doubt what should be the height of the guard rail and a search in internet and factory legislations mention