Abhishek Nandan

Risk and Environmental Assessment of an Indian Industry Through Active Monitoring—Case Study

Work involves that human are always prone to risk, so risk assessment is one of the key factors in health safety and environment management system for optimum work in an organization. The engineering or steel fabrication industry has various hazardous activities that might lead to accidents and thereby causing lost time injuries to the workers. The main objective of the recent study was to find out various hazards present in a steel fabrication industry by active monitoring methods, for instance, risk assessment and environmental aspect impact assessment (EIA). With the help of risk priority number, it is possible to determine if the existing controls are enough to prevent damage to workers and environment. Environmental aspect impact assessment is carried out since certain operations have an enormous effect on surroundings. The assessment reveals that the main factors affecting safety performance include inadequate training, reluctance to ensure safety by top management, safety as their least priority, and the major health effects occur due to inhalation of welding fumes, noise, and material handling.

Case Study on Vapour Cloud Explosions (Buncefield and Jaipur Explosion)—A Review

Fire being an essential element in man’s life has not only helped in building up lives but also have taken up a lot of lives. Since 1966 and before that, there had been a lot of fire accidents reported till date. Many of those fires have had engulfed a lot of peoples’ lives. Two such accidents that happened in the oil terminals four years apart gained greater significance worldwide. First is the Buncefield incident in 2005, followed by IOC Jaipur fire in 2009. Huge monetary losses were incurred, with complete destruction of major areas of the installations. The similarity in both these incidents is that they resulted from vapour cloud explosions. In Buncefield, the vapour cloud formed due to the spillage of 300 tonnes of winter grade MS followed by the overfilling of the storage tank 912, which found an ignition source in a nearby car park leading to the first explosion, followed by a series of explosions that engulfed over 20 storage tanks. This giant and the biggest storage tank explosion surprisingly did not kill anyone but injured 43 employees [1]. In Jaipur, accidental spillage of MS during a hammer blind reversal job created a vapour cloud which exploded, resulting in an uncontrollable fire engulfing 12 tanks. Unfortunately, the explosion killed 12 people and injured over 200 workers. The MET department had recorded a tremor of 2.3 on Richter scale while the explosion caused the shattering of glass window around 3 km from the terminal. Both terminals had burned for days, making it a daunting task for the fire fighters to extinguish the intense fire. As such accidents are on a rise, globally, it shows the lack of implementation of existing safety standards. This paper aims at discussing the potential causes and consequences resulting from both these accidents and further talks about the personal views in preventing and mitigating similar accidents in future.

Hazardous area map: an approach of sustainable urban planning and industrial development—a review

Abstract A hazard map is a map which shows about all the vulnerable regions present in any country or at any specific place or location which is affected or will be affected by natural disaster, i.e., by earthquakes, landslides and flooding. It is also used in industries for locating and zoning the hazardous areas inside the premises as per the level of hazards. Hazard maps are used mainly for land management, hazard identification, geological surveys for insurance rate adjustments and hazard mitigation. In concern with its industrial and urban planning, hazard mapping is done by all the authority and workers to identify hazard at a particular place, and thus, they learn to develop maps for every hazardous location for identifying and mitigating potential hazards with special emphasis on economic and social parameter. This work is perhaps an attempt to catalogue all the hazardous map systems and techniques for developing hazardous maps associated with sustainable urban planning and industrial development, and suggestions to use hazardous maps for sustainable development have also been touched upon.

Assessment of environmental and ergonomic hazard associated to printing and photocopying: a review

Abstract“Knowledge is power” and distribution of knowledge is fueled by printing and photocopying industry. Even as printing and photocopying industry have revolutionized the availability of documents and perceptible image quickly at extremely inexpensive and affordable cost, the boon of its revolution has turned into a bane by irresponsible, uncontrolled and extensive use, causing irreversible degradation to not only ecosystem by continuous release of ozone and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) but also the health of workers occupationally exposed to it. Indoor ozone level due to emission from different photocopying equipment’s increases drastically and the condition of other air quality parameters are not different. This situation is particularly sedate in extremely sensitive educational and research industry where sharing of knowledge is extremely important to meet the demands. This work is an attempt to catalogue all the environmental as well as health impacts of printing or photocopying. It has been observed that printing/photocopying operation is a significant factor contributing to indoor air quality degradation, which includes increase in concentration of ozone, VOCs, semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) and heavy metals such as cadmium, selenium, arsenic, zinc, nickel, and other pollutants from photocopy machines. The outcome of this study will empower the manufactures with information regarding ozone and other significant emission, so that their impact can be reduced.

Assessment of Ambient Air Quality Parameters in Various Industries of Uttarakhand, India

Industrial revolution of 1700s resulted in rise in living standard through availability of modern amenities at affordable price. The boon of industrial revolution has turned into a bane by irresponsible consumption which is causing irreversible damage to the ecosystem. The current atmospheric CO2 level (403.26 ppm) has increased by 44 % since 1700s and the plight of other air quality parameters is no different. This situation is particularly grave in ecologically sensitive Uttarakhand, India, where a number of hard-core manufacturing and processing industries have come up and are growing rapidly to meet the demands of growing population. Assessment of the air quality parameters of these industries is extremely important because of the environmental, health and safety concerns of the employees and also for the society at large. This study focuses on air quality assessment of 13 different industries in Uttarakhand. Four major air pollutants, i.e. respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM), Sulphur dioxide (SO2), suspended particulate matter (SPM) and Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were considered for the assessment. Assessment of the collected data shows that air quality parameters meet the set standards by CPCB suggesting good industrial practices. Suggestions to industries, to ensure sustainable development, are also given in the paper.

Water-Neutral Concept for a Manufacturing Industry

Water Neutrality is that one reduces the water footprint of an activity as much as reasonably possible and offsets negative externalities of the remaining water footprint. ‘Water Neutral’ generally does not mean that water use is brought down to zero, but that the negative economic, social and environmental externalities are reduced to much extent and that the remaining impacts are fully compensated. The idea of the concept is to stimulate individuals and corporations that undertake water consuming or polluting activities to make their activity ‘water neutral’ by reducing water consumption and pollution and by compensating the negative impacts of remaining water consumption and pollution through investing in projects that promote the sustainable and equitable use of water within the environment and community that is affected. An increasing number of businesses recognize that not only their operations, but also their supplies depend and impact on natural water systems. Hence, this approach offers a great opportunity to translate water footprint impacts into action to mitigate those impacts within both communities and business. In this Paper the concept of water neutrality is discussed in detail and the concept is applied to a bearing manufacturing industry.

Greenhouse Gases Life Cycle Assessment for Evaluation of Composting as Selected Management Technique of Food and Garden Waste Generated at an Indian Metropolitan Transport Hub

The dumping and subsequent decomposition of organic wastes in unmanaged landfills, a common practice in developing countries like India, leads to emission of greenhouse gases and contamination of soil and groundwater. To improve environmental footprint, the operator of the transport hub under consideration will be installing an Organic Waste Converter for composting the food and garden waste generated at its premises. In this paper, Version II of the estimation tool for Greenhouse Gas emissions developed by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies was used to quantify emissions of the waste stream components based on a life cycle inventory approach. The baseline of dumping was compared against composting with three different types of organic waste converters and a selected anaerobic digester. Both composting and anaerobic digestion offered reduction in greenhouse gases emissions. Thus diverting food and garden waste from dumping will decrease the carbon footprint of the transport hub and will not contribute to the health effects suffered by people residing in the vicinity of the dumping ground. The organic waste converter generating the most amount of compost was found to have the most reduction in emissions, followed by anaerobic digestion. However, the preferred choice of converter is dependent on an economic assessment to fulfil the sustainability criteria as economy, environment and society serve as mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainability.