Ammonia safety irregularities

[Nh34life]

I watched a induction video on a new customers site the other day depicting ammonia as near enough urainium. the video had commentary from some plant operators who experianced violent episodes of vomiting on numerous occasions as well as a fatality on the same site.
From my experiance i have never vomited from overexposure, and according to all records i have been able to find. only one person has died in my country in the last thirty years due to ammonia over exposure?
To my knowledge ammonia has killed less people than lighting? is this just the petrochemical companies trying to promote their crappy hydrocarbon refrigeration products indirectly though Ammonia slagging?
Ammonia is by far the safest refrigerant next to water and air. why has it got such a bad rap?
Every company i have done work for has never provided a proficiant emergency response plan anyway. surely if they a so concerned this would take priority over "the staff slipping down the stairs problem"( if there is an ongoing issue with the stairs, fix the stairs!) but if a pipe is almost ready to unleash fury on the neighbouring properties and the, wait til next months budget! ,jnbxckjxhdavk! WTF!
confused?

[Josip]

Hi, Nh34life, :)


I watched a induction video on a new customers site the other day depicting ammonia as near enough urainium. the video had commentary from some plant operators who experianced violent episodes of vomiting on numerous occasions as well as a fatality on the same site.
From my experiance i have never vomited from overexposure, and according to all records i have been able to find. only one person has died in my country in the last thirty years due to ammonia over exposure?
To my knowledge ammonia has killed less people than lighting? is this just the petrochemical companies trying to promote their crappy hydrocarbon refrigeration products indirectly though Ammonia slagging?
Ammonia is by far the safest refrigerant next to water and air. why has it got such a bad rap?
Every company i have done work for has never provided a proficiant emergency response plan anyway. surely if they a so concerned this would take priority over "the staff slipping down the stairs problem"( if there is an ongoing issue with the stairs, fix the stairs!) but if a pipe is almost ready to unleash fury on the neighbouring properties and the, wait til next months budget! ,jnbxckjxhdavk! WTF!
confused?

agree with you, I'm ammonia guy too ...., but all is very simple .... business, dirty business .... similar like selling medicine .... first they found a dreadful sickness and then they offer extremely good (many times only kind of snake oil and of course very expensive too) medicine to cure it .... how .... with bombastic advertising over mass media .... we know on that way even lie became the truth ... silly but real .... with all my respect, the world is full of ignorant people driven by mass media ... so that seed/lie fall onto fertile soil ... known scenario ;)

The same is with ammonia ... repeating the lies regarding danger, poisoning and dead persons i.e. all bad things .... here starts transformation of one of the best natural refrigerant and human helper into public enemy .... noone wants to install ammonia plant due to extremely dangerous refrigerant .... on that way manufacturers of "green HCFCs" need to collect the cream/profit and spit against other refrigerants more and more ... seems, it is in human nature to be self-destroying ... or just greedy :confused:, or .....

Best regards, Josip :)

[Nh34life]

Yep , marketing monkeys etc, thats why i dont own a tv. Something will change this year i think people will adopt better thinking methods and steam roll coruption in politics and big business.

[Magoo]

Hi NH34life.
I totally agree, for multi decades the whole thing was managed by a govt department, everything was over engineered massively, then they absolved themselves of responsibility and then let loose all the doomsday merchants to sell themselves and make money. Similar situation at around the same time with apprentice training systems. It was called rogernomics, sell everything and save govt spending.

[brian_chapin]

In the US we've lost about 90 people since 1984 from Ammonia - About half of these were agricultural.

Considering we apply 85 million metric tons a year to the soil and we operate over 7,000 industrial NH3 processes in the US that's not a bad safety record at all.

Ammonia can kill you - but so can damn near anything else if you don't respect it and treat it with the proper caution.

[aramis]

I don't know about agricultural applications.

In refrigeration the problem is not ammonia itself, it's the people who fail to observe rules like: "Minimum safety criteria for a safe ammonia refrigeration system. Bulletin 109. International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration"

How many times have you walked into an ammonia plant and smelled it?

That's something that nobody that works with ammonia should get used to!

[Tycho]

When people ask me what I think about ammonia, I tell them I would rather be a machinist on a ship with 20 tons of ammonia on board, than on a ship with 2 tons of *****...


Also on another note, Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time, so be careful out there

[aramis]

When people ask me what I think about ammonia, I tell them I would rather be a machinist on a ship with 20 tons of ammonia on board, than on a ship with 2 tons of *****...


Good choice! I'd do that too. Bigger ship, larger installations = better pay!


Also on another note, Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time, so be careful out there

I don’t swallow this though!