Process Safety Analysis

After the Bhopal accident in 1984, OSHA started work on a new standard, Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals, 29 CFR Part 1910.119. The U.S. government had determined that the current OSHA standards and the General Duty Clause did not adequately cover the chemical process industry. Much of the earlier work done by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) formed OSHA’s baseline of how to treat process safety hazards. The CCPS published their 1992 landmark publication Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures (3rd edition was published in 2008) and set the new international standard for process safety. And so on May 26, 1992, the OSHA Process Safety Management standard was enacted. The purpose of the standard is to promulgate a proactive and comprehensive approach to safety management in the chemical process industries. Since then, many countries and industries have developed their own regulations that are derivations of the CCPS guidelines and OSHA standard or specified it for the unique applications of a particular industry or industrial activity.