Atmospheric deposition of major and trace elements in Amman, Jordan

Wet and dry deposition samples were collected in the capital of Jordan, Amman. Concentrations of Al, Ba, Bi, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Sb, V, Zn, Fe, Sr, Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺, Na⁺, K⁺, Cl⁻, NO₃ ⁻ and SO₄ ²⁻, along with pH were determined in collected samples. Mean trace metal concentrations were similar or less than those reported for other urban regions worldwide, while concentrations of Ca²⁺ and SO₄ ²⁻ were among the highest. High Ca²⁺ concentrations were attributed to the calcareous nature of the local soil and to the influence of the Saharan dust. However, high SO₄ ²⁻ concentrations were attributed to the influence of both anthropogenic and natural sources. Except for Cl⁻, NO₃ ⁻, SO₄ ²⁻ and Cu, monthly dry deposition fluxes of all measured species were higher than wet deposition fluxes. The annual wet deposition fluxes of trace metals were much lower than those reported for other urban areas worldwide.     

The successes and challenges of implementing high reliability principles: A case study of a UK oil refinery

Research conducted on organisations that are able to sustain excellent safety records over long time periods suggests that there are a number of practices that organisations can adopt to achieve high levels of reliability and safety. These practices are often discussed in the context of major incidents to highlight the safety standards that high hazard organisations should try to emulate. However, previous research has predominantly focused on non-profit organisations, and comparatively little research has examined whether high reliability practices may be meaningfully applied to commercial contexts. This paper addresses this gap by using a qualitative approach to explore the types of reliability-enhancing practices implemented in a UK-based oil refinery in its attempt to achieve its ethos of ‘safe and reliable operations’. The findings illustrate the successful application of reliability-enhancing practices in several domains, including: hazard identification and control; emergency preparedness and collection; and analysis of incidents and near misses. Management commitment to safety emerged as an important factor underpinning the successful implementation of reliability-enhancing practices, highlighting its potential significance in the context of commercial organisations. However, promoting an open reporting culture and maintaining high levels of management visibility may be some of the challenges encountered by organisations striving to implement reliability-enhancing practices.     

Global process industry initiatives to reduce major accident hazards

In the past 10 years, the vapor cloud explosion at Texas City, the ammonium nitrate explosion in Toulouse, a pipeline disaster in Belgium, and three near total loss events in Norway have highlighted that major accident process safety is still a serious issue. Hopes that PSM or Safety Case regulations would reduce process events by 80% have not proven true. The Baker Panel, convened after Texas City developed a series of recommendations, mainly around leadership, incentives, safety culture and more effective implementation of PSM systems. Many US-based companies are working hard to implement the Baker recommendations. In Europe, an approach built around safety barriers, especially relating to technical safety systems, is being widely adopted.The author’s company has carried out a global survey of process industry initiatives, for both upstream and downstream activities, to identify what the industry itself is planning to enhance process safety in the next 5-10 years. This paper presents a summary of some of the major programs and initiatives as apply to traditional oil majors, newer national oil companies, and the chemical industry. These are a mixture of Baker recommendations, barrier approaches and tighter integration of process safety and asset integrity. While the factor of 10 improvement achieved in occupational safety over the past 20 years seems unattainable for process safety, a factor of 3-4 improvement in the next 20 years does seem possible. This would call for significant effort on the part of operators, but the benefits fully justify the effort.     

Technological disaster factors

Major Hazard Installations (MHIs) deal with the hazardous substances which exceed the threshold quantity. Although MHIs are safe organizations, they cannot fail due to a single error. However, due to their high complexity, the designer and the operator make errors during the design, and operation of the plants. Consequently, the technical, operational and organizational errors may lead to a major accident. The world has seen many incidents due to the operation of the MHIs. Malaysia has experienced several technological disasters. Four investigation reports have been reviewed in detail. This paper reviews the causes of the technological disasters in general. This paper also summarizes the causes of the technological disasters in Malaysia. Finally the paper rearranges the technological disaster causes and errors.     

Use of safety barriers in operational safety decision making

Operational personnel in complex hazardous industries are regularly called upon to make decisions that balance the production and safety objectives of their organisation. Regulations and industry standards focus on defining and complying with operating limits of various kinds as the primary method of achieving the right balance. Such limits remove the need in many cases for in-the-moment judgements about safety and production priorities.Focussing solely on the compliance with a pre-defined envelope underestimates the direct contribution to safety from operational managers based on their professional judgement. Research in a chemical plant, a nuclear power station and an air navigation service provider has identified a “line in the sand” approach taken by experienced operating personnel when abnormal situations arise. In developing these situation-specific self-imposed limits, operational managers focus on the status of safety barriers, rather than considering risk from first principles. This approach could form the basis of a new procedure, which lays out the process to be followed in determining how best to proceed (similar to job safety analysis or permit to work). This would acknowledge that such decisions are necessary, assist operational personnel in making better choices and open such decisions to appropriate audit and scrutiny.     

贵州省乌江干流思南段水质状况及主要污染物

贵州省乌江干流思南段作为思南县县城饮用水源,存在水质达标率不高的问题,给思南县的人民生活和社会发展造成了不利影响。本文分析了乌江思南段现存的主要环境问题,对总磷超标问题探讨了其产生的原因。同时乌江作为贵州的经济动脉,伴随经济发展带来的环境压力,导致乌江水质改善仍存在诸多不确定因素。     

Small enterprises and major hazards: How to develop an appropriate safety management system

Many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are obliged to adopt a Safety Managements System (SMS) by the Directive 2012/18/EU for the control of Major Accident Hazards (Seveso III). The difficulties of implementing an SMS within a small sized work organization are well known by practitioners, including inspectors and auditors and have been discussed in many recent papers. In the present paper is discussed a new method, based on the bowtie model, to build an easy and effective SMS. The very core of this method is a “safety net model”, which is able to connect in a network all the tangible and intangible elements of safety, including equipment, operating instructions, procedures and safety documents. This safety model has been used as the core of a smart application, the strength of which is the workers' contribution. The application allows the users to build step by step an SMS. It starts from a first version based just on regulations and standard codes (version 0), then it integrates internal knowledge through the bowtie paradigm (version 1). Near misses' discussion is used to transfer actual workers' experience into the system, to get intermediate improvement of the SMS (version 1.x). At the end audit may be used to a major release of the SMS (version 2). The full cycle has been tested at two small Seveso establishments: a galvanic plant and small glue manufacturer.     

Root causes of hydrocarbon leaks on offshore petroleum installations

Hydrocarbon leaks on offshore installations may result in severe consequences to personnel, to the environment and to assets. In order to prevent such leaks, it is crucial to understand their root causes. The objective of this paper is to study the circumstances of hydrocarbon leaks on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). In the study, all reported hydrocarbon leaks from process inventories on all offshore installations on the NCS, with an initial leak rate higher than 0.1 kg/s in the period 2008–2014, have been considered. This includes 78 hydrocarbon leaks, of which about 60% have occurred during manual intervention on normally pressurized systems. The dominating activity when leaks occur is preventive maintenance. A significant fraction of the leaks occur during the preparation for maintenance; such a preparation is typically carried out during the night shift. About half of the leaks are associated with wellhead area and manifolds, separation and compression systems. A substantial fraction of the leaks can be associated with verification faults, dominated by the failure to comply with procedural requirements that are needed to carry out independent verification.     

Quantitative assessment of environmental risk due to accidental spills from onshore pipelines

The transport of hazardous materials by pipeline is widely used for the transfer of significant quantities of oil and chemicals. Due to the extremely low frequency of spills, pipelines are considered the safest mode for the land transportation of hazardous substances. Accident records, while confirming that Loss of Containment (LOC) events are rare, also point out the major-accident hazard of pipelines, due to the extremely severe potential consequences of spills. Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) techniques have been applied to pipelines since many years with the aim of evaluating risk for workers or exposed population. However, releases of liquids, as oil and oil products, also create an hazard to the environment, due to the potential of extensive soil and groundwater contamination. An integrated model was developed for the environmental Risk Analysis of spills from pipelines. Specific environmental risk indexes were defined, expressing the risk of soil and groundwater contamination, both in physical and economic terms. A case-study is presented and discussed to illustrate the features of the methodology. The results confirmed that the proposed model may be considered an important tool within a comprehensive approach to the management of risk related to onshore pipelines.     

Risk assessment of antagonistic hazards

This paper considers the risk to major hazard plant from terrorists deliberately causing catastrophic industrial accidents. The United States of America Department of Justice [Assessment of the increased risk of terrorist or other criminal activity associated with posting off-site consequence analysis information on the internet, 2000] reports that “breaching a containment vessel of an industrial facility with an explosive or otherwise causing a chemical release may appear relatively simple to…a terrorist”. They concluded that the risk of such action is “real and credible”.

Analysis of terrorism is often hampered by its being described as ‘irrational’; one corollary would be that it is unpredictable. However, terrorism may usefully be treated as a rational behaviour and in doing so it becomes possible to assess the risks it causes.

We analyse the vulnerability of major hazard plant to terrorist attack and identify nine factors (access, security, visibility, opacity, secondary hazard, robustness, law enforcement response, victim profile, and political value) that might be used as a starting point for more formal risk assessment and management.