Inherent occupational health concept for chemical processes: A new perspective

Abstract

The concept of inherent safety was known since the last few decades. The idea was quickly spread from the origin UK to the USA and later, to the other parts of the world. The idea was then extended to environment and subsequently health aspects. Various works have been done related to inherent safety and environmental friendliness in chemical process industries. Such works on occupational health however, are lacking. Unlike the other aspects, the term inherent occupational health has never been defined in literatures. This paper proposes a definition of the inherent occupational health concept as well as the background of inherent health studies, which was designed for chemical processes. The definition, which was carefully developed based on deep understanding and extensive works in this research area will have a huge impact on the chemical process industry (CPI) especially related to their efforts in considering occupational health aspect early in process development and design.