Bhopal disaster—a personal experience

Bhopal Gas Tragedy was the worst industrial accident in the world where several thousand persons lost their lives. It occurred at the Union Carbide plant located inside the city of Bhopal and close to the railway station, at midnight of December 2-3, 1984 due to the leakage of MIC gas which took the local sleeping and floating population unawares.

This paper describes the experience of a transit passenger who reached the Bhopal Railway Station by train at about the same time when the deadly gas leakage occurred.     

The Bhopal gas tragedy—A perspective

We, the then Mayor and Chief of Police of Bhopal, were the two people on whom the responsibility of handling the world's worst industrial disaster fell unceremoniously on the cold night of December 2–3, 1984 when 41 tons of MIC gas was released from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. With the company initially in denial mode about the release and then calling it a ‘tear-gas’ type and providing no information on antidote, and with the limited means of evacuation, handling of medical emergency affecting hundreds of thousand, identification and disposal of the thousands of dead, it was probably the most challenging task faced by a duo in peace time. The local people, the medical community, the railway staff, the NGOs, were all very helpful. We narrate the happening and the handling of the consequences and the spot decisions that had to be made with the hope that no such accident happens anywhere.     

Bhopal gas tragedy: scientific challenges and lessons for future

Some of the challenges of BGT were answered by two multi-disciplinary projects of the ICMR on Pathology and Toxicology and Pathophysiology. Unlike other chemical disasters, the aerosol inhaled by the Bhopal victims contained a mixture of MIC and its trimers and dimers, as well as aqueous and thermal decomposition products, including HCN. A coordinated GC–MS study of the blood and autopsy tissues and chemicals in the Tank residue confirmed their role.

Autopsy studies revealed the pathological changes in the acute, sub-acute and chronic phases progressive changes of pulmonary edema and bronchiolitis, followed by chronic pulmonary fibrosis. Cerebral edema resulted in ‘acute histotoxic anoxia’. Intensive experimental studies with the help of newer tools of molecular biology might throw more light on the underlying mechanisms and newer therapeutic approaches.

The initial finding of cherry-red discoloration of lungs led to a suspicion of cyanide toxicity. Eventually, elevated blood and tissue cyanide levels confirmed the prompt therapeutic response to NaTS and accompanying increase of urinary NaSCN excretion. However, periodic clinical recurrences and relapses pointing towards ‘chronic cyanide toxicity’ remained enigmatic.

Specific changes the 2–3 DPG levels and Blood Gases were explained on the basis of N-carbamoylation of end-terminal valine residues of Hb. Soon, several other end-terminal -amino groups of tissue proteins were also found to be N-carbamoylated. Had the attempts at demonstrate S-carbamoylation of glutathione and other SH radicals of tissue enzymes like rhodanese succeeded, perhaps the underlying mechanism of chronic cyanide toxicity due to MIC might have been resolved.

Based on the practical lessons learnt in Bhopal, an attempt will be made to present the salient pathological and toxicological findings, followed by a brief outline of the principles of planned laboratory management for alleviation of human suffering from future chemical disasters.     

The Bhopal gas leak: Analyses of causes and consequences by three different models

The Bhopal Gas Leak, India 1984 is the largest chemical industrial accident ever. Haddon's and Berger's models for injury analysis have been tested, together with the project planning tool Logical Framework Approach (LFA).

The three models provide the same main message: That irrespectively of the direct cause to the leakage, it is only two parties that are responsible for the magnitude of the disaster: Union Carbide Corporation and the Governments of India and Madhya Pradesh. The models give somewhat different images of the process of the accident.

Models developed for analysis of injuries can be used for analysing a complicated mega accident like the Bhopal gas leak, although different models might stress different aspects.     

Literary and economic impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy

The 1984 Bhopal disaster is widely regarded as a watershed event in the field of process-safety and has been largely responsible for a paradigm shift in the outlook of both industry and the public towards risk management within the processing industries. The Bhopal disaster has led to increased regulations and awareness for process-safety related activities across the globe. This paper reports the effect of the infamous Bhopal incident on the research community and examines the performance of manufacturing industries following the disaster.

For this paper, databases of scientific publications were used to investigate research trends in the safety area following the 1984 Bhopal disaster. Our analysis focuses on prominent safety-related research fields that have emerged following the gas tragedy as well as economic indicators of the processing industries. The study reveals that the process industry has consistently progressed over the years, in spite of added regulations and a worsened public image following the Bhopal disaster, and promises to be a stable economy in the future.     

The legacy of Bhopal: The impact over the last 20 years and future direction

Chemical process safety was not a major public concern prior to 1984. As far as chemical hazards were concerned, public fears focused on disease (cancer) and environmental degradation. Even a series of major process incident tragedies did not translate into widespread public concerns about major incidents in chemical plants that might disastrously affect the public. This situation changed completely after the December 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Not only was the public's confidence in the chemical industry shaken, the chemical industry itself questioned whether its provisions for protection against major incidents were adequate.

The recognition of the need for technical advances and implementation of management systems led to a number of initiatives by various stakeholders throughout the world. Governments and local authorities throughout the world initiated regulatory regimes. Has all that has resulted from the legacy of Bhopal reduced the frequency and severity of incidents? How can we answer this question? As we move into more and more globalization and other complexities what are the challenges we must address? According to the authors, some of these challenges are widespread dissemination and sharing of lessons learned, risk migration because of globalization, changing workforce, and breakthroughs in emerging areas in process safety.     

The Bhopal tragedy: its influence on process and community safety as practiced in the United States

The chemical accident at 12:45 AM on December 3, 1984 in Bhopal India had a profound effect on the practice of chemical process safety in the United States. Fearing the possibility of similar events occurring in the United States, the United States Congress convened several hearings and investigations into the causes of the disaster. The inquiries focused both on the state of process safety within the US chemical industry and on the readiness of communities located near chemical operations to respond to sudden and dangerous toxic discharges. Of equal significance were concerns over the safety of workers in chemical plants. This paper reviews the major legislative, academic, and industrial changes initiated in the area of process safety after the event, their influence on saving lives, and on improving living conditions surrounding chemical complexes in the United States.     

Exploratory analysis of the safety climate and safety behavior relationship

Problem: Safety climate refers to the degree to which employees believe true priority is given to organizational safety performance, and its measurement is thought to provide an “early warning” of potential safety system failure(s). However, researchers have struggled over the last 25 years to find empirical evidence to demonstrate actual links between safety climate and safety performance.Method: A safety climate measure was distributed to manufacturing employees at the beginning of a behavioral safety initiative and redistributed one year later.Results: Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that perceptions of the importance of safety training were predictive of actual levels of safety behavior. The results also demonstrate that the magnitude of change in perceptual safety climate scores will not necessarily match actual changes (r=0.56, n.s.) in employee's safety behavior.Discussion: This study obtained empirical links between safety climate scores and actual safety behavior. Confirming and contradicting findings within the extant safety climate literature, the results strongly suggest that the hypothesized climate-behavior-accident path is not as clear cut as commonly assumed.Summary: A statistical link between safety climate perceptions and safety behavior will be obtained when sufficient behavioral data is collected.Impact on Industry: The study further supports the use of safety climate measures as useful diagnostic tools in ascertaining employee's perceptions of the way that safety is being operationalized.     

Trespassing on the tracks: a review of railway pedestrian safety research

INTRODUCTION: Train-pedestrian collisions have been shown to be the leading cause of fatality in train-related accidents worldwide, yet there is remarkably little research in this area. METHOD: In this paper, the major types of railway transportation accident research are briefly highlighted to indicate the general context of research concerning train-pedestrian collisions, which are then reviewed. Themes emerging from the diverse research are identified, the various strategies that have been proposed for prevention of railway pedestrian accidents are discussed, and the empirical evidence for their efficacy examined in the light of the much more extensive literature on road pedestrian accidents. Finally, it is proposed that application of current theory in behavioral and cognitive psychology may usefully inform future research in transportation safety.     

Injury severity analysis of accidents involving young male drivers in Great Britain

Introduction

Young male drivers are over-represented in traffic accidents; they were involved in 14% of fatal accidents from 1991 to 2003 while holding only 8% of all drivers licenses in the UK. In this study, a subset of the UK national road accident data from 1991 to 2003 has been analyzed. The primary aim is to determine how to best use monetary and progressive resources to understand how road safety measures will reduce the severity of accidents involving young male drivers in both London and Great Britain.

Method

Ordered probit models were used to identify specific accident characteristics that increase the likelihood of one of three categorical outcomes of accident severity: slight, serious, or fatal.

Results

Characteristics found to lead to a higher likelihood of serious and fatal injuries are generally similar across Great Britain and London but are different from those predicted to lead to a higher likelihood of slight injuries. Those characteristics predicted to lead to serious and fatal injuries include driving in darkness, between Friday and Sunday, on roads with a speed limit of 60 mph, on single carriageways, overtaking, skidding, hitting an object off the carriageway, and when passing the site of a previous accident. Characteristics predicted to lead to slight injuries include driving in daylight, between Monday and Thursday, on roads with a speed limit of 30 mph or less, at a roundabout, waiting to move, and when an animal is on the carriageway.

Impact on Industry

These results aid the selection of policy options that are most likely to reduce the severity of accidents involving young male drivers.     

Causal attributions of Ghanaian industrial workers for accident occurrence: miners and non-miners perspective

Problem: Reports from the accident literature indicate that accident rates tend to vary with type of occupation. The mining industry has been recorded as the most dangerous with a high disabling injury rate. This observation has been attributed to the extremely stressful conditions under which miners work. Besides, the intimidating work environment in the mines has been insinuated to invoke a sense of helplessness, fatalism and hence defensive causal attributions for accident occurrences. Method: This study compared causal attributions between accident victims in Ghana's mining industry with their counterparts in textile factories. T values and Chi-square were employed to test for statistically significant differences between the two groups of accident victims. Results: Findings indicate that there is no difference between the causal attributions for miners and non-miners. Impact on Industry: Accident frequency and occupational type have no impact on causal attributions.     

工业管道首次定期检验弯头壁厚减薄分析及检验对策

弯头壁厚减薄在工业管道首次定期检验过程中经常遇到,然而对其进行安全状况等级评定时经常评为4级,与实际不符.本文通过两个检验案例分析产生这种现象的原因,认为弯头的减薄并不都是由使用过程中造成的,而是弯头制造时产生的减薄,这种现象对工业管道的安全状况等级评定产生干扰,最后依据相关规范给检验人员提供解决措施,并有针对性的提出...     

安全控制论原理和应用

以系统论、信息论、控制论为指导思想,结合安全系统工程现场实践,对开发、完善安全控制论的理论体系及其应用等方面研究成果作了简要介绍,包括安全控制论的数学模型,安全系统的控制方式,安全计量及其在安全评价等方面的应用.     

Measurement of machinery safety level in the European market: A real case based on market surveillance data

This article aims to highlight the current status of compliance to Machinery Directive 98/37/EC (transposed to Spanish regulation as RD 56/1995, of 20th January) (a new directive numbered as 2006/42/EC [Directive 2006/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 may 2006 on machinery, and amending Directive 95/16/EC (recast). OJ L157/24-86, 9.6.2006.], that recasts and replaced 98/37/ED directive and its amendments, came into force on 29 June 2006; it will not be applied until 29th December 2009. European Member States have a lead-time of two years to adopt and publish the national laws and regulations transposing the provisions of the new Directive into national law. Latest 10th October, Spain transposed Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC to national regulation as Real Decreto 1644/2008 [Real Decreto 1644/2008, de 10 de octubre, por el que se establecen las normas para la comercialización y puesta en servicio de las máquinas. BOE 246/2008, de 11 octubre 2008. Páginas 40995–41030]) of a particular family of machinery (hand-held, medium and small-size, deeply introduced in the market, of low-medium cost), that any user, professional or non-professional, can acquire as first-hand in any of the sales points (whether or not experts in these kind of products).At the same time, it emphasises the most significant shortcomings and non-conformities found, after analyzing the results of five consecutive Campaigns of Control of Industrial Products performed by one of the labs (placed in Spain) involved in the market surveillance European Program.     

LNG供气站重大事故风险及定量评价

为对LNG供气站进行综合评价,分析了LNG站的事故因素及其来源.根据事故特征,采用冲击波超压和火球热辐射评估模型.采用蒙特卡罗随机模拟方法(Monte-Carlo)确定模型中源项的数据分布及概率.编制事故危害程度和危害范围的计算程序,并对某LNG站进行了定量风险评价(QRA)计算.计算确定了空间各点的事故概率分布、风险等级及LNG供气站的综合风险指数.计算结果表明,某LNG站的死亡事故率为6.94人,平均个人风险为0.609×10-3人·次/a,符合风险标准.     

The impact of organizational climate on safety climate and individual behavior

Relatively little previous research has investigated the meechanisms by which safety climate affects safety behavior. The current study examined the effects of general organizational climate on safety climate and safety performance. As expected, general organizational climate exerted a significant impact on safety climate, and safety climate in turn was related to self-reports of compliance with safety regulations and procedures as well as participation in safety-related activities within the workplace. The effect of general organizational climate on safety performance was mediated by safety climate, while the effect of safety climate on safety performance was partially mediated by safety knowledge and motivation.