These two requirements mean that all personnel, from the operators in the plant to the engineers and chemists, must be highly qualified. It is often difficult to ensure that such qualification levels are maintained, especially in times of rapid change in both human resources and corporate structures.
- It is only in very rare cases that an incident must be attributed to some previously unknown electrostatic phenomenon. The most recently identified phenomenon with a broad impact on the process industries is the occurrence of the so-called cone discharges in silos. Investigations of this phenomenon date from the 1990s[1].
- Finally, it must also be admitted that, very often in incident investigations, the source of ignition is still frequently attributed to electrostatics purely because no evidence of any other plausible source of ignition can be found. Whilst this type of approach is very dangerous, since any measures taken on the basis of these findings may prove to be neither appropriate nor far-reaching enough, it also reflects the lack of knowledge and helplessness of many technical people in the process industry as far as static electricity is concerned.