Text For Citation: 01 Item/Group: 001 Hazard: CHEMICAL

Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970: The employer did not furnish employment and a place of employment which were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees in that employees were exposed to: ... The hazard of fires and explosions at ISP Fine Chemicals Inc. as a result of system upset and/or equipment failure; including: a.The Distillation Still S-4 and associated rupture disk relief system were not adequate to safely contain the 1-Ethynylcyclohexene (ECH) distillation process during potential upset conditions, such as the temperature and pressure created during a runaway polymerization reaction that occurred on 8/7/95 when ECH was contained in S-4. S-4 could not safely relieve the runaway reaction, and it ruptured, causing an explosion. Feasible and useful methods of correcting these hazards include, but are not limited to, the following: a.Follow accepted industry guidelines and engineering standards to design and control a vessel system/unit to safely handle ECH distillation and potential upset conditions. This would include a relief system that was adequately designed and sized to safely relieve the pressure in the event of a credible worst-case upset scenario, such as a runaway polymerization reaction.