As we look at the impact and legacy of incidents, ranging from the Seveso disaster five decades ago to more recent deadly incidents, it’s clear that while significant progress has been made in safety culture and regulation, the inherently hazardous nature of many chemical processes means that we are still seeing regular incidents leading to injuries and deaths of plant workers.
US non-profit organisation Peer (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) has highlighted the number of serious chemical incidents across the US in recent years, aiming to stress the risks attached to the US government’s proposals to reduce incident prevention requirements. Peer also emphasises the important role of the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), which president Donald Trump’s administration is trying to eliminate.
Peer’s analysis is based on the CSB’s public reporting of serious incidents, with figures available since 2021. Peer says the data show a 50% overall increase in incidents between 2021 and 2025 (83 to 133 incidents), with a 20% increase in incidents involving injuries or fatalities from 2024 to 2025. However, a more comprehensive look into that same dataset provides a more nuanced picture.
| Year | Incidents | With fatality | With serious injury |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 83 | 17 | 52 |
| 2022 | 108 | 8 | 56 |
| 2023 | 122 | 19 | 63 |
| 2024 | 110 | 22 | 62 |
| 2025 | 133 | 22 | 77 |
| 2026 (to 1 June) | 56 | 8 | 26 |
As might be expected, overall incident numbers show significant variability, rather than an abrupt jump last year. However, even in this relatively short timescale there does appear to be an upward trend – both in the overall number of incidents, as well as the number that involve serious injuries and fatalities.
Identifying the cause of such an increase is very difficult. The impact of regulatory changes tends not to become visible until years after they are implemented. Meanwhile, there are many other factors putting pressure on safety, such as competitive pressures across the global industry leading to lower investment, and climate change leading to increased risks from events like hurricanes and periods of extreme heat or cold weather, for which plants are not properly prepared.
However, given that the frequency of severe and deadly incidents is certainly not decreasing, one thing is clear: now is not the time to be relaxing safety regulations and dismantling the mechanisms that allow companies to understand the causes of incidents across the industry and learn from them.
