Product category:
Safety and Safety Systems
News Release from: IChemE (Institution of Chemical Engineers) | Subject: Loss Prevention Bulletin (LPB)
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 20 December 2004
30 years of incidents and accidents with
LPB
IChemE celebrates three decades of incident and accident reporting this week with the release of a special commemorative issue of the Loss Prevention Bulletin (LPB)
IChemE celebrates three decades of incident and accident reporting this week with the release of a special commemorative issue of the Loss Prevention Bulletin (LPB) The journal is a respected source of industrial case studies and practical articles published with the aim of helping organisations and individuals to learn from the experience of others
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 2 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The December edition features a foreword by the renowned safety author Trevor Kletz.
Kletz takes a look at some of the key incidents over the last thirty years offering more of the pithy comment and analysis for which he has become famous.
The special issue reprints celebrated articles on water hammer - reproduced from the very first LPB in 1974, electrostatic hazards - from 1981 and the sobering account of a directors experience following a fatal blast at an explosives factory, which first appeared in LPB in 2003.
The issue also features anniversary messages from the European Process Safety Centre, the Chemical Industries Association and the European Federation of Chemical Engineering Working Party on Loss Prevention.
"Very few accidents occur because we don't know how to prevent them," says Kletz, "Almost all have happened before, frequently in the same factory or organisation".
" It's generally the case that if you look hard enough, you'll find someone who would have known how to prevent the accident - even if the current management and workforce didn't, hence the importance of learning from previous incidents and retaining those lessons within the corporate memory." LPB provides a valuable source of reference material on a wide range of situations, from the minor to the catastrophic.
Its birth was founded in one of the many discussions that followed the devastating explosion at Flixborough in 1974.
Ted Kantyka, then a vice-president of IChemE, proposed that the Institution should produce a publication within which, subscribing companies could share information on accidents and ways of preventing them.
The suggestion proved a popular one and thirty years on, LPB goes from strength to strength.
Kletz concludes, "For thirty years LPB has been publishing accounts of accidents around the world".
" Those accounts have been read in companies big and small and I am sure that lives have been saved and plant damage has been prevented as a result".
" Long may this continue ".
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