MAJOR INDUSTRIAL DISASTERS (CASE STUDIES)
CASE 1 - FLIXBOROUGH DISASTERS, 1974
CASE 2 - SEVESO DIOXIN DISASTER, 1976
CASE 3 - MEXICO LPG TANK FARM FIRE AND EXPLOSION 1984
CASE 4 - BHOPAL DISASTER 1984
CASE 5 - THE SANDOZ SPILL, 1986
CASE 1 - FLIXBOROUGH DISASTERS, 1974
•The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant close to the village of Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, England on Saturday, 1 June 1974.
•It killed 28 people and seriously injured 36 out of a total of 72 people on site at the time.
•The chemical works, owned by Nypro UK (a joint venture between Dutch State Mines (DSM) and the British National Coal Board (NCB)) had originally produced fertiliser from by-products of the coke ovens of a nearby steelworks.
•Since 1967, it had instead produced caprolactam, a chemical used in the manufacture of nylon 6. The caprolactam was produced from cyclohexanone.
•This was originally produced by hydrogenation of phenol, but in 1972 additional capacity was added, built to a DSM design in which hot liquid cyclohexane was partially oxidised by compressed air.
•The plant was intended to produce 70,000 tpa (tons per annum) of caprolactam but was reaching a rate of only 47,000 tpa in early 1974.
CASE 2 - SEVESO DIOXIN DISASTER, 1976
•The Seveso disaster was an industrial accident that occurred around 12:37 pm on July 10, 1976, in a small chemical manufacturing plant approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Milan in the Lombardy region of Italy.
•It resulted in the highest known exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) in residential populations, which gave rise to numerous scientific studies and standardized industrial safety regulations.
•The EU industrial safety regulations are known as the Seveso Directive.
Location of disaster
•The Seveso disaster was named because Seveso, with a population of 17,000 in 1976, was the community most affected.
•Other affected neighbouring communities were Meda(19,000), Desio (33,000), CesanoMaderno (34,000) and to a lesser extent Barlassina (6,000) and Bovisio-Masciago (11,000).
•The industrial plant, located in Meda, was owned by the company ICMESA (IndustrieChimicheMedaSocietàAzionaria), a subsidiary of Givaudan, which in turn was a subsidiary of Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche Group).
•The factory building had been built many years earlier and the local population did not perceive it as a potential source of danger.
•Moreover, although several exposures of populations to dioxins had occurred before, mostly in industrial accidents, they were of a more limited scale.
