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Environmental Safety and Industrial Hygiene

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Handbook of Chlor-Alkali Technology

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Abstract

Safety considerations are inseparable from the principles of good design and operation and so have been a constant theme in our discussion of the chlor-alkali process. The preceding chapters deal with the practical details of direct protection of personnel in the workplace. They refer frequently to the programs and publications of various organizations with special interest in industrial safety. Other publications [1, 2] also discuss operating safety and provide guidance in design and operation. In this chapter, we consider safety more generally and also provide more quantitative information on hazard levels. To put those hazards in perspective and show the degree of success the industry has had in coping with them, consider the following [3]:

  1. 1.

    In 40 years of production, transport, and use in Western Europe, the number of fatalities caused by exposure to chlorine is equal to the number of road fatalities on a typical weekend in Belgium

  2. 2.

    A chlorine plant worker faces the following relative risks of accidental death

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Consultant Media, Pennsylvania, USA

    Thomas F. O’Brien

  2. Independent Consultant Grand Island, New York, USA

    Tilak V. Bommaraju

  3. Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya, Japan

    Fumio Hine (Professor Emeritus)

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  1. Thomas F. O’Brien
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  2. Tilak V. Bommaraju
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  3. Fumio Hine
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O’Brien, T.F., Bommaraju, T.V., Hine, F. (2005). Environmental Safety and Industrial Hygiene. In: Handbook of Chlor-Alkali Technology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48624-5_16

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