A Course on Health, Safety Accident Management

摘要

The rapid growth and expansion of the chemical industry has been accompanied by a spontaneous rise in human, material, and property losses because of fires, explosions, hazardous and toxic spills, equipment failures, other accidents, and business interruptions. Concern over the potential consequences of catastrophic accidents, particularly at chemical and petrochemical plants, has sparked interest at both the industrial and regulatory levels in obtaining a better understanding of the subject of Health, Safety and Accident Management (HS&AM). The development of a course in this area was undertaken, in part, as a result of this growing concern. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) requires that engineering graduates understand the engineer's responsibility to protect both occupational and pubic health. Traditionally, engineering schools have done a superb job of educating their students on the fundamental laws of nature governing these fields and on the application of these laws to engineering problems. Unfortunately, they have been less successful in conveying to the students the importance of occupational and environmental safety in the design of chemical processes. This concern also served as a driving force for the development of this course. This course is divided into five parts: the HS&AM problem, accidents, health risk, hazard risk, and hazard risk analysis. In addition to a detailed course outline, the paper is complimented with three illustrative examples and a "homework" problem set. The course has been successfully offered at Manhattan College six times as either a graduate course (700-level) or a combined undergraduate senior-graduate course (500-level). It is traditionally populated by chemical engineering students but graduate mechanical and environmental engineering students have also registered for the course. In addition, the course was presented to engineering faculty through a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in 1992; that effort resulted in the publication of a text titled "Accident and Emergency Management: Problems and Solutions". The course was also offered twice to USEPA regulatory personnel through the USEPA's Air Pollution Training Institute (APTI).