(146b) Major Chemical Safety Incidents – a Review

This session aims to review incident investigations from The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) with a focus on gathering data on common causes & failure modes, Severity data, as well as any links to the facility’s EPA compliance and major incidents.

The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents. The CSB conducts root cause investigations of chemical accidents at fixed industrial facilities. Root causes are usually deficiencies in safety management systems but can be any factor that would have prevented the accident if that factor had not occurred. Other incident causes often involve equipment failures, human errors, unforeseen chemical reactions, or other hazards.

In this session, attendees will:

• Receive an overview of many major industrial chemical incidents over the last 10 years within the US.
• Identify commonalities between the incidents.
• Understand how failures within a safety management system can be key factors that lead to high hazard facility incidents.