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March/April 2023 issue

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Chemicals
News

Essar Oil fined £1.7m after refinery explosion

Open-access content Tuesday 4th April 2017
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Liverpool Crown Court was told that during the start-up of the main distillation unit, highly flammable hydrocarbons entered an unused furnace. Heat from another furnace triggered the blast, which started several fires that the fire service had to bring under control.

No one was injured but the incident, which happened on 14 November 2013, caused more than £20m worth of damage, including collapsed internal structures.

The explosion was reported to the EU as a major accident under schedule 7 of the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) Regulations 1999.

The Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) investigation found that Essar had incorrectly installed a safety critical valve and had failed to properly validate its operation.

The installation of a new safety-critical trip was also inadequately assessed by Essar as it did not note the system had a bypass line which defeated the trip's operation.

Though the company's policy was to isolate main fuel lines to the furnace, a secondary fuel line had not been isolated during shutdown. This allowed the hydrocarbons to enter the furnace, the HSE said.

Essar Oil UK pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 4 of the Control of Major Hazards Regulations 1999 for failing to prevent a major accident. It was fined and ordered to pay costs of £57,645.

HSE principal inspector Joanne Eccles said: "The industry should take notice of this case; there were no injuries but mistakes were made and could have been prevented."

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 *UPDATE* Essar Oil fined £1.65m for Stanlow blast

Friday 21st April 2017
The Stanlow Refinery in Cheshire, north-west England had been shut down for eight weeks in autumn 2013 for planned maintenance work. The explosion occurred in the fractional distillation unit when the plant was being recommissioned. Stanlow was previously owned by Royal Dutch Shell but Mumbai-based Essar Oil acquired it in 2011.
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 Trump proposes axing Chemical Safety Board

Thursday 23rd March 2017
The CSB has been notified that the new administration's budget proposal for 2018 includes no provisions for its work. If the budget is not amended the CSB will be effectively abolished from October this year.The board investigates major chemicals accidents and makes recommendations to prevent recurrences. It has no regulatory power but its investigations and findings are influential, informing the work of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA also faces substantial budget cuts under President Trump's proposals.
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 Employer working group addresses ‘real need’ for new health and safety apprenticeship

Wednesday 5th April 2017
The need for a dedicated apprenticeship programme was raised at the London Health and Safety Directors Forum recently. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has facilitated setting up an employer’s working group – SHE Apprenticeship Trailblazer – to address this gap in the market, while construction and civil engineering firm Costain has volunteered to lead it.
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Tuesday 11th April 2017
One of the challenges of managing “incredibly focused, driven and intelligent people”, such as research scientists, is the need to support their research while impressing on them the importance of complying with a plethora of regulations that govern their work. A delay may let another institute or group seize the initiative and claim the scientific breakthrough. There are no prizes for publishing your research second.
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 Aer Lingus fined after driver’s fatal fall at Dublin Airport

Monday 3rd April 2017
Driver John Murray, who was employed by a logistics company, was collecting packages at an Aer Lingus cargo warehouse at the airport on 5 November 2014. He fell from a loading bay and died of head trauma some days later.   The airline failed to apply its own procedure, the Central Criminal Court was told, which required drivers to enter and leave the warehouse via stairs and a doorway adjacent to the loading bay.
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 Windfarm safety criticised after two workers killed in a fortnight

Thursday 6th April 2017
A 32-year-old Spanish worker was killed on 29 March when he plunged from a wind turbine in East Renfrewshire, Scotland. The turbine, which is part of Scottish Power Renewables’ (SPR) 539MW Whitelee onshore windfarm, was under maintenance by GE at the time of the incident. The fatality came just a fortnight after Portuguese worker Antonio Linares, 37, fell to his death inside a turbine that was being built at SPR’s Kilgallioch onshore windfarm in South Ayrshire.
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Friday 24th March 2023
Morrisons supermarket has been fined £3.5 million for failing to ensure the health and safety of an epileptic employee who died after falling from a shop stairway.
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 IOSH launches new five-year strategy

Tuesday 21st March 2023
IOSH launches its new five-year strategy this spring. It will build and act on the reshaped purpose and ambition gained during WORK 2022, which ran from 2017 to 2022.
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 Risk & Compliance software provider collaborates with HSE and Costain to improve risk management on worksites

Friday 17th March 2023
A Belfast-based Risk & Compliance software provider has been collaborating with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and construction giant Costain as part of an ongoing project to unlock artificial intelligence’s (AI) potential in improving the management of risks on worksites.
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 Chemicals management Q&A

Friday 24th March 2023
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 Akzonobel company fined £800,000 after explosion

Friday 9th December 2022
Akzonobel company fined £800,000 after explosion A worker was left with all-over body scarring, partial blindness and hearing damage after an explosion at a chemicals firm.
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 Safety video of fatal hydrogen sulphide incident released to improve US industry practices

Friday 6th August 2021
The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has released a new safety video to improve practices in the oil and gas sector following the Aghorn Operating waterflood station incident in 2019, which claimed the lives of an employee and his spouse.
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 Director was unfairly dismissed as H&S officer did not raise concerns over cryo-chamber installation

Wednesday 9th November 2022
A director who had installed a cryotherapy chamber was unfairly dismissed, a tribunal has ruled, because the technical director and principal health and safety officer at the business failed to raise concerns about the work undertaken.
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 HSE report highlights risks posed by hazardous atmospheres in freight containers at ports and distribution centres

Friday 4th November 2022
Research published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has identified some weaknesses in the control measures at a number of ports and distribution centres in relation to workers coming into contact with hazardous substances when examining or unloading freight containers.
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 Terminal cancer cases in Grenfell firefighters

Friday 20th January 2023
National media reports have revealed that up to a dozen Grenfell firefighters have been diagnosed with terminal cancer
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 Appeal success for food firm over ‘excessive’ fine

Tuesday 1st November 2022
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 HSE publishes revised construction fire safety guidance

Thursday 1st September 2022
The GB Health and Safety Executive has recently published a revised version of its fire safety in construction (HSG168) document. 
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