Loss Prevention: Why all that trouble about SHE?

On the basis of an historical account the fundamentals of process safety and in its wake occupational health and environmental protection will be reviewed. After looking at the improvements in the chemical industry over the past 50 years, the main contributing developments will be analysed. Focus will be on safety, just for practical reasons. To be able to judge a situation and monitor progress the first need to be fulfilled is the availability of reliable indicators. This appeared to be not that simple. The most popular, so called lost time indicator for example appeared to be not quite representative for the occurrence of process safety incidents, but over time more adequate measures developed. Safety is maintained by technological and organisational measures. The last 10-15 years in particular the organisational part got much attention and formidable progress has been made. The importance of safety culture emerged. The principles of the safety management system will be considered as well as the main factors of influence when one tries to get a feel for the risks of loss of containment in a refinery, chemical plant, storage depot or bulk transportation by rail, road or ship. An overview will be given of risk assessment methods, the purpose these serve and criteria of risk acceptance. Finally, the currently most important management tool to examine risks in a running operational process, the layer of protection analysis, will be briefly described including the efforts needed, and its potential merits will be summarised.