North South University

Assignment on:

Industrial Hazards
Course Name: Public Health
Course Name: PBH 101
Sec: 12
Submitted to:

Dr. Sharker Md. Numan

Initial: SMN1
Submitted by:
Introduction
Hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life,
health, property or environment. Industrial Hazard may be
defined as any condition produced by industries that may
cause injury or death to personnel or loss of product or
property. Safety in simple terms means freedom from the
occurrence of risk or injury or loss. Industrial safety refers to
the protection of workers from the danger of industrial
accidents.
Types of Industrial Hazards

 Physical: noise, vibration, heat, cold, pressure, radiation,

fibers, etc.
 Chemical: flammable or explosive materials, toxics,
sensitizing agents, etc.
 Biological: dust, Pathogens, etc.
 Psychological: work place practices and systems, payment
systems, etc.

General Hazards in Industries

 FIRE HAZARDS
 MECHANICAL HAZARDS
 ELECTRICAL HAZARDS
 CHEMICAL HAZARDS
 PHARMACEUTICAL HAZARDS
Fire Hazards
Fire is an exothermic chemical reaction between oxygen and
fuel also known as combustion. Combustion can be classified
in three types: Slow, Rapid and Spontaneous combustion. For
example; cotton waste burning is a slow combustion process,
petroleum product burning is a rapid combustion process
and paint or scrap burning is a spontaneous combustion
process. The effect
of fire on people
take the form of
skin burns. Fire
can take several
different forms
including jet fires,
pool fires and
boiling liquid
expanding vapour
explosion.

Sources of Fire Hazards

 Hot surfaces
 Combustible and flammable liquids
 Heat utilization equipments (over heating)
 Lightening
 Gas cylinders
 Ovens and furnaces
 Reactor
 Welding and cutting
 Spark from metal to metal contact
 Carelessness

Control of Fire Accidents

Fire protection is an important part of good housekeeping.

Smoking must be prohibited. Oxygen present in atmosphere
may be reduced by dilution with gases such as nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, etc. Identification and control of ignition
sources in areas where flammable chemicals are stored or
handled or transferred must be maintained. Fire resistant
brick walls or
reinforced concrete
walls must be
ensured. Suitable fire
exit should be
provided with
adequate ventilation
facility. Finally,
sprinkler with reliable
water supply and fire
alarms must be
installed.
Mechanical Hazards
Mechanical hazards are most common in metal industries
and construction sites. It occurs due to large number of
equipments, crowded work place conditions, insecurely fixed
machines, worn and teared parts, negligence and improper
maintenance of equipments. Thus, all the machinery must be
fenced and also
be fitted with an
emergency shut
down system.
Control system
override should
be monitored and
operators must
strictly follow
SOP.

Preventive Measures

 BUILDING PLANNING:
o floors must be non-slippery type
o enough space to move easily
o easy access of workers to the safety switches
 SAFE MATERIAL HANDLING:
o all material handling equipments should be repaired
and maintained properly
 PERSONNEL PROTECTIVE DEVICES:
o protection of head by using hard hats and helmets
o ears by using ear muffs and plugs
 o face by using face masks

Electrical Hazards
Electricity is the flow of electrons through a substance which
allows transfer of electrical energy from one position to
another. Most electrical injuries or deaths in industries occur
due to contact with
power lines, path to
ground missing or
discontinuous,
equipment not used
in a manner
prescribed, improper
use of extension or
flexible chords,
wiring faults and
improperly wired
equipments.

Safety and Preventive Measures

 Design a safer system

 Implement a safe electrical work program
 Observe work practice
 Use protective equipment
 Use warning labels
 Recheck the equipment daily
 Overhead electrical wire should have extra care
 Proper training to workers
 High voltage equipment should be properly enclosed
 Indication of danger sign at every high voltage terminal
 Safe work project
 Insulation, guarding, grounding and electrical protective
devices
 Worker should avoid working in wet clothes and shoes
 Water supply should be far away from electrical circuits

Chemical Hazards
Chemical hazards are toxic, corrosive, irritant, carcinogenic,
flammable and mutagenic. Chemical reactions may get out of
control due to wrong or impure raw materials, changed
operating conditions, time delay and equipments failures. An
example of chemical hazard is the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in
India. It is considered as one of the world’s worst industrial
chemical hazards.
Water containing
42 tons of methyl
isocyanate entered
the tank and
escaped into the
atmosphere. This
leak caused 8000
deaths and
5,58,125 injuries.
Effects of Chemicals on Exposure

 Skin burn
 Ache
 Ulcer in hand, nose etc
 Cancer
 Irritation on wind pipe

Preventive Measures

 Solvents used in extraction, purification of synthetic drugs

and chemical analysis should be handled with care
 Flammable and explosive chemicals should be kept at
proper distance
 Tolerance level for toxic chemicals set by federal
regulation have to be followed
 Suitable labels to the chemicals for proper handling
 Personal protective cloth
 Application of cream before commencement of work
 Use of goggles
Pharmaceutical Hazards
Some general health hazards in manufacture of
pharmaceuticals include:
 Dust and noise exposures
 Exposure to UV radiation
 Exposure to formaldehyde – may cause lung cancer,
prostate cancer. Acute exposure may cause pulmonary
edema and pneumonia leading to death. Also causes
allergic dermatitis.
 Repetitive motion disorders – motion associated with
packing and filling could lead to Carpal tunnel syndrome
or Tendonitis.
 Hazards from handling crude drugs and it’s extracts, eg:
Ipecacunha
 Solvents, eg: benzene
 Alkaloids, eg: emetine
 Toxic intermediate
 Final product, eg: Local anaesthetic
 Radiant energy
 Bacteria and viruses
Dust Explosion

The term dust is used if the maximum particle size of the

solids in the mixture is 500 mm. Dust explosion is a rapid
combustion of dust cloud. Drying milling and blending
operations generate atmospheric and fugitive dust emissions.
During wet granulation, compounding and tablet coating,
hazardous air pollutants may be released to the atmosphere
or in the workplace as process or fugitive emissions.
Examples of World’s Industrial Hazards:
1. Texas City Refinery explosion

The Texas City Refinery explosion occurred on March 23,

2005, when a hydrocarbon vapor cloud was ignited and
violently exploded at the ISOM isomerization process unit at
BP's Texas City refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15
workers, injuring 180 others and severely damaging the
refinery. The direct cause of the accident was heavier than air
hydrocarbon vapors combusting after coming into contact
with an ignition source, probably a running vehicle engine.
The hydrocarbons originated from liquid overflow from the
F20 blowdown stack following the operation of the raffinate
splitter overpressure protection system caused by overfilling
and overheating of the tower contents.
2. Buncefield Fire

The Buncefield fire was a major fire at an oil storage facility

on 11 December 2005 at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage
Terminal, located near the M1 motorway, Hemel Hempstead,
in Hertfordshire, England. The terminal was the fifth largest
oil-products storage depot in the United Kingdom, with a
capacity of about 60 million Imperial gallons (273 million
litres) of fuel. The first and largest explosion occurred at
06:01 UTC near tank 912, which led to further explosions
which eventually overwhelmed 20 large storage tanks. The
emergency services announced a major emergency at 06:08
and a firefighting effort began. The cause of the explosion
was a fuel-air explosion in a vapour cloud of evaporated
leaking fuel. The British Geological Survey monitored the
event, which measured 2.4 on the Richter scale. News
reports described the incident as the biggest of its kind in
peacetime Europe and certainly the biggest such explosion in
the United Kingdom since the 1974 Flixborough disaster. The
flames had been extinguished by the afternoon of 13
December 2005. However, one storage tank re-ignited that
evening, which firefighters left to burn rather than
attempting to extinguish it again.

3. Piper Alpha

Piper Alpha was an oil production platform in the North Sea

approximately 120 miles (190 km) north-east of Aberdeen,
Scotland, that was operated by Occidental Petroleum
(Caledonia) Limited. It began production in 1976, initially as
an oil-only platform but later converted to add gas
production. An explosion and resulting oil and gas fires
destroyed Piper Alpha on 6 July 1988, killing 167 men,
including two crewmen of a rescue vessel; 61 workers
escaped and survived. Thirty bodies were never recovered.
The total insured loss was about £1.7 billion, making it one of
the costliest man-made catastrophes ever. At the time of the
disaster, the platform accounted for approximately ten
percent of North Sea oil and gas production, and the accident
is the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost and
industry impact.
4. Bhopal Gas Disaster

The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas

tragedy, was a gas leak incident on the night of 2–3
December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL)
pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is
considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster. Over
500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC)
gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around
the small towns located near the plant. Estimates vary on the
death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. In
2008, the Government of Madhya Pradesh had paid
compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed
in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A
government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused
558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries
and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling
injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks,
and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related
diseases. The cause of the disaster remains under debate.
The Indian government and local activists argue that slack
management and deferred maintenance created a situation
where routine pipe maintenance caused a backflow of water
into a MIC tank, triggering the disaster. Union Carbide
Corporation (UCC) argues water entered the tank through an
act of sabotage.

5. Chernobyl Disaster

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred

on Saturday 26 April 1986, at the No. 4 reactor in the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the
north of the Ukrainian SSR. It is considered the worst nuclear
disaster in history and is one of only two nuclear energy
disasters rated at seven the maximum severity on the
International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. The accident
started during a safety test on an RBMK-type nuclear reactor,
which was commonly used throughout the Soviet Union. The
test was a simulation of an electrical power outage to aid the
development of a safety procedure for maintaining reactor
cooling water circulation until the back-up electrical
generators could provide power. This gap was about one
minute and had been identified as a potential safety problem
that could cause the nuclear reactor core to overheat. It was
hoped to prove that the residual rotational energy in a
turbine generator could provide enough power to cover the
gap. Three such tests had been conducted since 1982, but
they had failed to provide a solution. On this fourth attempt,
an unexpected 10-hour delay meant that an unprepared
operating shift was on duty. During the planned decrease of
reactor power in preparation for the electrical test, the
power unexpectedly dropped to a near-zero level. The
operators were able to only partially restore the specified
test power, which put the reactor in a potentially unstable
condition. This risk was not made evident in the operating
instructions, so the operators proceeded with the electrical
test. Upon test completion, the operators triggered a reactor
shutdown, but a combination of unstable conditions and
reactor design flaws caused an uncontrolled nuclear chain
reaction instead. A large amount of energy was suddenly
released, vaporising superheated cooling water and
rupturing the reactor core in a highly destructive steam
explosion. This was immediately followed by an open-air
reactor core fire that released considerable airborne
radioactive contamination for about nine days that
precipitated onto parts of the USSR and western Europe,
before being finally contained on 4 May 1986. The fire
gradually released about the same amount of contamination
as the initial explosion. As a result of rising ambient radiation
levels off-site, a 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) radius exclusion zone
was created 36 hours after the accident. About 49,000
people were evacuated from the area, primarily from Pripyat.
The exclusion zone was later increased to 30 kilometres (19
mi) radius when a further 68,000 people were evacuated
from the wider area.

6. The Rana Plaza Disaster

The 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse (also referred to as

the 2013 Savar building collapse or the Rana Plaza collapse)
was a structural failure that occurred on 24 April 2013 in the
Savar Upazila of Dhaka District, Bangladesh, where an eight-
story commercial building called Rana Plaza collapsed. The
search for the dead ended on 13 May 2013 with a death toll
of 1,134. Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued
from the building alive. It is considered the deadliest
structural failure accident in modern human history and the
deadliest garment-factory disaster in history. The building
contained clothing factories, a bank, apartments, and several
shops. The shops and the bank on the lower floors were
immediately closed after cracks were discovered in the
building. The building's owners ignored warnings to avoid
using the building after cracks had appeared the day before.
Garment workers were ordered to return the following day,
and the building collapsed during the morning rush-hour. On
the morning of 24 April, there was a power outage, and
diesel generators on the top floor were started. The building
collapsed at about 08:57 am BST, leaving only the ground
floor intact. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and
Exporters Association president confirmed that 3,122
workers were in the building at the time of the collapse.
Strategies to Prevent Industrial Disasters

Industrial jobs are some of the most hazardous because of

the circumstances the workers are in every day. Industrial
workers use heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals that
can cause serious injury should anyone be negligent in any
way. The Law Office of James M. Stanley has compiled five
tips to help you prevent accidents in your workplace. Have
you been in a serious work accident? Contact us today for a
free consultation with a Fort Worth injury attorney.

1. Obey Safety Requirements

One of the main causes of injuries and accidents on the job is
failure to comply with safety regulations. If you are an
employer, then be sure to provide proper safety training for
your employees and post warnings and instructions
throughout the workspace to ensure that your employees
know what they should and shouldn’t be doing. If you are an
employee, make sure you know what the rules are and that
you follow them – because even when a safety precaution
seems ridiculous, it’s in place because it has prevented injury
(or death) in the past.
2. Communicate
Another way to help prevent accidents on the job is to be in
constant communication with other workers in your area. If
you are working with heavy machinery, make sure everyone
knows what you’re planning to do. If you need to walk
through a hard hat zone, make sure you talk to someone and
know what work is being done in the area so that you are on
the alert.

3. Provide/Get Proper Training

As an employer, make sure your workers know what they are
doing. Provide proper training to anyone who is going to use
heavy machinery, chemicals, or dangerous products of any
kind. As an employee, make sure you know how to properly
use a machine, a chemical, or any other dangerous product –
never assume you can figure it out yourself.

4. Keep Machinery & Equipment in Working Order

When was the last time your machine got a tune-up? Does it
have any parts that need replacing? Is there damage that you
don’t know about? Always make sure you are using a
machine that has been recently inspected and has received
proper maintenance and repairs before you take it out on the
job.
5. Don’t Take Shortcuts
Faster isn’t always better, especially when safety can be
jeopardized. Do your work the right way and always make
sure to keep safety your number one priority, even if it takes
a little longer. You could save a life – possibly even yours.

Classifications of Signs according to Use:

1. Danger Signs

The DANGER header is used when there is a hazardous

situation which has a high probability of death or severe
injury. It should not be considered for property damage
unless personal injury risk is present.
 2. Caution Signs

The CAUTION header is used to indicate a hazardous

situation which may result in minor or moderate
injury. However, Caution should not be used when
there is a possibility of death or serious injury.
 3. Safety Instractions Signs

General Safety Signs (SAFETY FIRST, BE CAREFUL, THINK)

should indicate general instructions relative to safe work
practices, reminders of proper safety procedures, and the
location of safety equipment.
 4. Biological Hazards Signs

The biological hazard warning shall be used to signify the

actual or potential presence of a biohazard and to identify
equipment, containers, rooms, materials, experimental
animals, or combinations thereof, which contain, or are
contaminated with, viable hazardous agents.
5. Pictogragh

Pictograph means a pictorial representation used to identify

a hazardous condition or to convey a safety instruction.
Conclusion

In all places of employment; passage ways, store rooms and

service rooms shall be kept clean and orderly in a sanitary
condition. Every structure is required to have load bearing
when using for storage. Floor of every work room shall be
maintained clean, dry condition. Floor hole into which
persons can accidentally walk shall be protected by a cover
that leaves no opening more than 1 inch wide. Treads on all
stairs shall be reasonably slip resistant. Employees must be
able to open an exit door from inside at all times without
keys or special knowledge even in the dark.