Erick Galante

Hazard Matrix Application in Health, Safety and Environmental Management Risk Evaluation

In occupational safety one of the most complicated and harder to achieve goals is to prioritize actions towards risk prevention and mitigation. There are several methodologies to do that. Some of them are expensive; demand some extensive structure for its application and so on. Some others are either weak in results or lack technical or scientific basis. (Haddad et al, 2008). The research presented in this chapter emerged in between these methodologies for being not expensive and requiring resources, most of the time, already available in a company’s documentation.

Environmental Management System: Risk Evaluation Integrated to Life-Cycle Assessment

In order to consider environmental impacts of a product’s life cycle systematically, the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been developed. From this background, this present paper aims to discuss and analyze the interdependencies between risk assessment and evaluation and a process LCA. From this study, it is possible to conclude that risk assessment is a powerful tool in providing information about environmental impacts, which is used in the LCA. Furthermore, one can conclude that integration risk assessment tools (mostly vulnerability studies) with LCA help to ensure a more accurate information for the intensity of the environmental impacts, which in turn ensures a more reliable information for the overall LCA.

Exposure Limits and its Applications in Chemical Warfare

The technical literature provides to health and safety personnel several exposure limits, while more specific handbooks provide another set of reference exposure limits for chemical warfare agents. Furthermore, biology handbooks provide different data for safe and lethal doses. A researcher or a chemical response team member, who deals with chemical defense, needs to face these data carefully and knows correctly which are the limitations and the proper meaning of the values in a given table. Therefore this paper review the threshold values available, discusses their representation in the Brazilian legislation and analyses how they can be of use in chemical defense.

Life Cycle Inventory of a Biodiesel Production Unit

Carbon dioxide is one of the main compounds pointed as a cause for climate changes, mainly due to the accelerated use of fossil fuels. In order to measure the consumption of the resources that generate carbon dioxide and verify these compounds emissions, quantitative studies aren’t sufficient, but it is needed a proportion relation with the environmental impact. Life cycle analysis studies are used to establish parameters to this relation, orientating which is the best way to be followed and also estimating, as close as possible to the reality, the degree of impacts that can be caused. This paper studies a biodiesel plant in Brazil, using the model described in ISO’s 14040 group to perform a life cycle inventory. Biodiesel is an alternative renewable fuel to the common diesel. The biodiesel has been considered a “clean” fuel, however its fabrication process involves environmental impacts. Hence, the objective of this study is to address those impacts, from a theoretical biodiesel plant data, and provide background information, in the form a life cycle inventory (LCI), to allow further comparisons between biodiesel production and other fuels. Finally, a full LCI for biodiesel is completed and it is concluded that, qualitatively, the environmental impact generated are similar to other commonly used fuels.

Risk Assessment Study for a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading Vessel (FPSO) in Deep Waters

This paper presents a quantitative risk assessment study on a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading Vessel that operate in Brazilian offshore oil and gas production waters. In particular a study of the risks applied to a Storage Unit and Transfer Oil, focusing on the physical, especially in operations involving storage and handling of flammable liquids. The results showed that the unit must take safety measures process, because a failure in the system can affect other units; the level of security for the population of the ship is within the acceptable.