15 May 2018, China Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM) released a Notice concerning the Issuance of Guidance Documents for the Assessment of Safety Risks and Grading for Hazardous Chemical Production and Storage Enterprises. In accordance with the requirements of the Notice, local safety supervision departments shall carry out safety risk assessment for enterprises manufacturing and storing hazardous chemicals and grading the risks.
Initially, all enterprises subject to assessment have 100 points. Then, they may lose points due to the safety risks or gain extra points for their compliant behaviors. All the hazardous chemical enterprises will be classified into one of the following four categories:
- Red (lower than 60)
- Orange (60≤ score<75)
- Yellow (75≤ score<90)
- Blue (90 or above)
The higher the points are, the lower the risks will be.
Enterprises will be directly classified as red (lower than 60) in case they meet one of the following four circumstances:
- The newly developed hazardous chemicals are directly put into manufacture without small tests, pilot tests, or industrial tests;
- The existing chemical engineering facilities are not designed by a qualified institute and haven’t been assessed for safety design;
- The operating staff of hazardous chemicals haven’t obtained valid qualifications or don’t have high school degree or above; and
- The enterprises had a major
accident or an extremely big accident within 3 years; or had 2 or more large
safety accidents within 3 years; or had 2 or more ordinary safety accidents,
which cause death, within a year.
Local safety supervision departments will grade the enterprises in the following aspects:
- The inherent risks (major hazard sources, hazards of substances, risk of fire and explosion, etc.)
- The surrounding environment;
- Design and evaluation;
- Equipment;
- Automatic control and safety facilities;
- Personnel qualifications;
- Safety management systems;
- Emergency management; and
- Safety management performance
The local safety supervision departments shall complete the safety risk assessment and grading for related enterprises before Sep. 2018 and provincial safety supervision departments shall report the grading status to Ministry of Emergency Management before the end of Oct. 2018.
Reference
Guidance Documents for the Assessment of Safety Risks and Grading for Hazardous Chemical Production and Storage Enterprises