Impact and Lessons Learned in the Mining Industry on Process Safety Incidents

Throughout the years, the mining industry has suffered a number of incidents, with some resulting in multiple fatalities. One of the most impactful incidents in the mining industry occurred in Brumadinho in Brazil. This incident not only involved multiple fatalities but had substantial environmental and financial impacts as well. This paper will discuss the event in detail as well as the root cause analysis findings and lessons learned. The discussion will include how the lessons learned from this event can be applied to different process safety elements to raise awareness of the importance of developing a strong Process Safety Management (PSM) program. Important elements such as process safety culture, hazards identification and risk analysis (HIRA), asset integrity and emergency response will be highlighted. Although the mining industry is not necessarily required to follow PSM principles by Government regulatory agencies such as OSHA in the USA, PSM principles that are applied in other more regulated industries such as Oil and Gas and Chemical are also applicable to the mining industry. These principles have benefited regulated industries by providing effective process safety guidelines and have been directly responsible for preventing incidents and, therefore, saving lives, and averting environmental and property damages.