4.6 Postscript
After I had completed this chapter I came across a memorandum on
‘Safety Precautions on Plants Handling Ethylene’, issued thirty years
before the explosion, by the predecessor company, when they started
to use ethylene. It said, ‘In all the considerations that have been given
in the past to this question, it has always been felt that excellent ventilation
is a sine qua non. Not only does it reduce the danger of explosive
concentrations of gas occurring, but it also protects the operators
of the plant from the objectionable smell and soporific effects of
ethylene’.
During the thirty years this sound advice was forgotten and ignored.
Chapters 5 and 13 and reference 8 describe other accidents which occurred
because knowledge was lost.
Figure 30.2 shows another way of representing the events leading up to
this accident.