English Corpus

The chemical industry is one of the high-risk sectors in terms of health and safety. Any untoward incident can not only jeopardise the safety of the workers, but also put the lives of people residing near the plant in grave danger, as has been proved by several incidents in the past.

It seems though that despite the dangers, many chemical companies are still not taking health and safety issues seriously. After the prosecution of a company in one such case of a glaring lack of safety measures, the HSE has warned the chemical industry to get its act together and ensure the safety of the workers as well as the general public.

The incident that led to the prosecution of Millennium Inorganic Chemicals Ltd. took place in October 2006. During routine vessel draining, a dangerous chemical, titanium tetrachloride or TiCl4, got leaked into the atmosphere. The leak was stopped by an attentive operator, when only about 80 litres of the chemical had been released. TiCl4, when it comes in contact with moisture, can turn into a highly toxic substance and a greater amount of leakage would have almost certainly put the lives of nearby residents in danger.

Employers need to keep themselves up to date with health and safety developments to avoid potential legal action from employers by taking a health and safety courses such as the nebosh distance learning course from Workplace Law Training.

The company is involved in the manufacture of titanium dioxide, a material often used in the aerospace, plastics, and paper industries. TiCl4 is an intermediate product that is formed during the production of titanium dioxide.

A subsequent investigation into the incident revealed that the company had been guilty on several counts, including, insufficient risk management, design faults, and poor supervision.

Mike Nind, the HSE inspector who led the investigation, said after the verdict that the incident could have been averted by following proper safety measures. He said the company should have shown more concern for safety and should have been more careful with such dangerous substances.