The Ten Biggest Lies about Process Safety

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Thiry-seven years after the catastrophic explosion at Flixborough, twenty-six years after the toxic gas disaster in Bhopal, six years after Texas City, and one year after Macondo, many companies are still struggling to accept and embrace strong process safety cultures and robust process safety management systems. Unsurprisingly, the internal changes necessary to transform a company's outlook can be significant, and like any significant change, the company must go through all the phases of change: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  The first stage, denial, can be the hardest to overcome.  Company leaders tend to deny the need for change by telling themselves ten common lies, such as "A Flixborough/Bhopal/Texas City/Macondo scale accident cannot happen again."  This paper will examine these lies and why they are so easy to embrace,  refute them, and discuss methods to help transition past the denial stage of the change process.