How to Make Inherent Safety Practice a Reality

In recent years there has been an increased effort to develop inherently safer chemical processes, focusing on changing the process to eliminate hazards, rather than accepting the hazards and developing add‐on features to control them. This paper discusses design approaches to inherently safer processing, including examples of inherent safety principles. The paper also presents a state‐of‐the‐art review of the initiatives taken by various groups and agencies worldwide to promote inherent safety, and the tools developed to measure inherent safety for chemical processes. The discussion concludes with thoughts on why inherent safety is not yet a routine practice for accomplishing risk reduction, and suggestions for ways to make it routine (with reference to a brief case study).