Quantitative assessment of explosion risk in workplaces

The Directive 99/92/EC deals with the safety and health protection of workers potentially exposed at explosive atmospheres. The application of this Directive requires the assessment of specific risks due to the presence of potentially explosive atmospheres. These can generally be originated by releases of flammable substances typical of industries classified at major hazard, but they often could be generated also in all other industries where flammable materials are handling. Risk assessment of explosive atmospheres is required in both the cases, to this purpose, in this article a quantitative approach has been proposed. The paper describes the main aspects of the methodology, based on a probabilistic risk assessment, and finally its application to a case-study.