Managing major chemical accidents in China: Towards effective risk information

Abstract Recent analyses in the USA, Europe and Asia show that the accident rate in the chemical process industry is not decreasing. In Malaysia, one of the latest major accidents occurs at the jetty of Petronas Chemicals Methanol Sdn Bhd on July 26, 2012 involving an oil tanker which caught fire and exploded. An earlier study shows that similar causes of accident are being estimated to recur within a five-year interval. This scenario shows that the CPI is very slow in learning from accidents. This paper discusses the current issues of learning from accidents from the loss prevention standpoint. So far, considerable resources have been used to investigate and analyze the accident cases for better understanding of causes of accidents. In fact, it has been claimed that almost all of the causes are known and accidents could be prevented by using the existing safety knowledge. This paper identifies the reasons why major accidents kept on happening in the CPI