China China publishes mandatory national standard related to safety specifications in hazardous chemicals enterprises

China publishes mandatory national standard related to safety specifications in hazardous chemicals enterprises

On March 15, 2022, the National Standardization Administration of the P.R.C. released the “Safety specifications of special work in hazardous chemicals enterprises” (GB 30871-2022) (referred as 2022 Version Standard hereafter). This standard is a replacement for GB 30871-2014 (referred as 2014 Version Standard hereafter), and will come into force on October 1, 2022. As the standard is a mandatory national standard, enterprises are obligated to comply with it. The standard stipulates requirements for special work of hazardous chemicals enterprises, and templates of safe production work certificate for 8 types of special work are attached as appendixes of the standard. The 2014 Version Standard can only be applied to equipment inspection and repair at the hazardous chemical enterprises, while the application scope is expanded in the 2022 Version Standard.

Application scope

The application scope of 2022 Version Standard is expanded from equipment inspection and repair of 2014 Version Standard to special works such as work using fire, operation at confined space, work at height, and work using temporary electricity in the production processes of hazardous chemicals enterprises. This standard can be also referred to similar work in other industries.

Main safety requirements

Although the standard stipulates various safety requirements for the abovementioned individual types of work, it regulates concentratedly the work that is prone to accidents, such as hot work, operation at confined space. For example, the standard clearly stipulates that enterprises shall establish a permit management system prior to work, develop key risk management measures, and strengthen approval and operational requirements at each management level. Moreover, it also specifies that safety control for operation process, responsibilities of approvers and supervisors and the implementation of emergency measures shall be strengthened, and video images for hot work shall be collected, and gas concentrations shall also be continuously measured during the operation at confined space.

In the Appendix A, templates of safe production certificate for 8 types of special work are attached. Enterprises shall use the pertinent templates when preparing safe production certificates. In addition, the types of safe production accidents related to 8 types of special work are listed in the Appendix B.

 

For the original text of the above standard, please refer to the following URL (in Simplified Chinese). Please note that the full text of the original document may not be accessible from outside of China.
http://www.gb688.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=561B95121C30853A6B45CA9471F39239

Author / Responsibility

LIU Yake

Researcher, Research & Consulting Dept. EnviX Ltd.

Business Performance

worked as a research assistant at Department of Environmental Planning and Management, School of Environment, Tsinghua University for 4 years, and then joint in Envix in April, 2022, currently is mainly responsible for consulting on EHS regulation compliance in East Asia.

Background

MA, Environmental Econimics, Hiroshima University

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