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摘要

There were many wake-up calls in past decades right from the early industrialized Europe to the present century, from the Americas and to Asia. In Asia, the most prominent process safety incident was the 1984 Bhopal accident in India that greatly impacted the chemical industry. Today, it is the prerequisite for the management of major hazards installations (MHIs) such as petroleum refining, petrochemical manufacturing facilities, and chemical processing plants to be fully aware of their responsibility to ensure meeting safety, health, and environment requirements. Any MHI failure would not only lead to operation slowdown that result in financial loss, but also to worst-case scenarios. One typical example is hazardous material release to the atmosphere as occurred in Bhopal which can result in catastrophic consequence. We must always maintain a sense of vulnerability, learning from past incidents, adherence to code of practices, and standards for new as well as existing equipment. Such a proactive approach will definitely reduce the risk of MHI to as low as reasonably applicable.