History of the Loss Prevention Symposium: The
First 50 YearsThere Are No Secrets in Safety
Raymond Randy Freeman
S&PP Consulting, 12303 Lake Shore Ridge, Houston, TX 77041; rafree@yahoo.com (for correspondence)
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/prs.11811
This article presents a short history of the AIChE Loss Pre-
vention Symposium (LPS) from its founding in 1967 to the
present. The article gives the reader a general understanding
of the development of the LPS along with published references
to more detailed accounts of various aspects of the history of
process safety efforts in the United States. V
C 2016 American Insti-
tute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 35: 3235, 2016
Keywords: safety management; case histories; LPS; history;
loss prevention
INTRODUCTION
During the 1960s, the chemical industry in the United
States was moving to large integrated production facilities.
For example, the Monsanto Chocolate Bayou Plant Site con-
tained many major process systems (ethylene, acrylonitrile,
and others) all tied together. Also, during the 1960s several
major process accidents occurred. Lenoir [1] tabulated 16
major fire/explosions incidents from January 1, 1960 until
February 6, 1966 that killed a total of 25 people and caused
over 100 million dollars in damage. A short summary of
some major accidents is present directly below:
 A 1961 Lake Charles, LA Refinery fire/explosion from an
alkylation unit that killed two people.
 Another explosion in 1961 at Freeport, TX in a caprolac-
tam facility releasing cylohexane that ignited killing one
person.
 A 1965 explosion in Orange, TX that killed two people
due to the release of ethylene from a polyethylene unit.
 An explosion in 1966 in Scotts Bluff, LA due to the release
of butadiene from a synthetic rubber process unit that
killed three people.
 A confined vapor space explosion in 1966 in LaSalle,
Quebec due to a styrene release within a process plant
building. Employees evacuated; however, 11 were killed
by the blast wave while waiting at the muster point.
Other examples of major process accidents are presented
by Davenport [2] with total damages of 95 million dollars.
FIRST LOSS PREVENTION SYMPOSIUM
In 1965, Dr. Walter Howard (Monsanto), Figure 1, was
named to be chairman of the Technical Program for the
Houston AIChE meeting. As part of the 1965 Houston, AIChE
meeting Dr. Howard arranged for one of the sessions to be
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online ver-
sion of this article.
C 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers
V attendees at the LPS session. Publication of the transcript of
32 March 2016
on the topic of safety [2]. Based on the success of this
technical session on Safety, Dr. Howard proposed to the
AIChE Executive board the concept of a symposium on pro-
cess safety. The executive committee gave their approval
and Dr. Howard approached Russell Miller, Director of Safety
and Loss Prevention at Monsanto with the request that he
and William Doyle, Chief Chemical Engineer at Factory
Mutual, organize this first Loss Prevention Symposium (LPS)
[3]. The first LPS was held in Houston in February of 1967. A
total of 23 technical papers were given on subjects such as:
 Building Design Criteria
 Equipment Design
 Reactive Chemicals
 Process Safety Management
The final session of the first LPS was devoted to a review
of six process incidents. These topics would easily fit in a
current LPS meeting. The cover photo of this issue of Process
Safety is adapted from the first proceedings.
EVOLUTION OF THE LPS
The first LPS was a great success. It was decided that an
LPS would be organized at each AIChE Spring Meeting. An
organization committee was created initially led by Miller
and Doyle. This committee later became the AIChE 11a pro-
gramming committee. See Appendix A presented in on-line
supplementary materials for the membership of the LPS sym-
posia committee (19672013). Since 1967, an LPS has been
organized annually (see Table 1). In 2016, the 50th LPS will
be held in Houston, TX. Over the years, the LPS has
changed. Originally, the question and answer session at the
end of each technical paper was recorded and transcribed as
an addendum to the paper. The formal proceedings were
prepared and sold to the LPS attendees. These proceedings
were published by AIChE under the title Loss Prevention
and Volumes 1 thru 14 were issued. In the Introduction to
the first LPS, Russ Miller and Bill Doyle [4] stated There are
no secrets in safety. This motto is at the core of all of the
subsequent LPS symposia.
In 1982, AIChE began publication of the journal Plant
and Operations Progress (POP) which later in 1993 became
Process Safety Progress (PSP). PSP is one of the outlets for
formal publication of the technical papers presented at the
LPS. The first paper published in POP was by Noronha,
Merry, and Reid entitled Deflagration Pressure Containment
(DPC) for Vessel Safety Design [5]. Following the technical
paper is the transcribed discussion of the paper by the
Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.1)

Figure 1. Walt Howard (January 22, 1916October 30, 2006).
[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
the question and answer period after a LPS presentation
ended in 1987.
On the morning of December 3, 1984, a large release of
toxic material (methyl isocyanate) occurred from a Union
Carbide pesticide facility in Bhopal, India [6]. Over 2,000
people in the surrounding community were killed and
thousands injured. This event came as a major shock to
the chemical industry. As a result, the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers formed the Center for Chemical Pro-
cess Safety in late December 1984 [7]. The emphasis on
process safety became a major topic of research and
discussion.
In 1992, the first Process Plant Safety Symposium was
organized in Houston, Texas to enhance communication of
process safety information to plant engineers and manage-
ment [8]. The Process Plant Safety Symposium (PPSS) contin-
ued having independent meetings every 2 years in Houston,
TX until 2001.
By 2002, there were three major and independent process
safety meetings occurring at a regular frequency in the
United States. These were:
1. LPS every year as part of the Spring National Meeting of
AIChE
2. CCPS annual conference held somewhere in the United
States
3. PPSS meeting in Houston, TX every 2 years
The practicing engineer was faced with competing meet-
ings covering a wide variety of subjects of interest. Some
engineers and management would need to travel up to 3

Table 1. . Summary of AIChE Loss Prevention Symposium meetings since 1967 and Doyle Award Recipients since 1984.]

Meeting William H Doyle

Number Year City Award Recipients Award Paper Title
1 1967 Houston
2 1968 St. Louis
3 1969 New Orleans
4 1970 Atlanta
5 1971 Houston
6 1972 San Francisco
7 1973 New York City
8 1974 Philadelphia
9 1975 Houston
10 1976 Kansas City
11 1977 Houston
12 1978 Atlanta
13 1979 Houston
14 1980 Philadelphia
15 1981 Detroit
16 1982 Anaheim
17 1983 Denver
18 1984 Philadelphia James McQuaid Trials in Dispersion of Heavy Gas Clouds
19 1985 Houston Trevor A. Kletz Inherently Safer Plants
20 1986 New Orleans Laurence G. Britton Thermal Stability for Ethylene at Elevated
Pressures
21 1987 Minneapolis Ian Swift The Performance of Low Pressure Explosion
Vents
22 1988 New Orleans Robert A. Mancini The Use (and Misuse) of Bonding for Control
of Static Ignition
23 1989 Houston Laurence G. Britton Combustion Hazards of Silane and Monosilicon
Chlorides
24 1990 San Diego Daniel A. Crowl Using Thermodynamic Availability to
Determine the Energy of Explosion
25 1991 Pittsburgh Arthur M. Dowell Flashback from Waste Gas Incinerators into Air
Supply Piping

Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.1) Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs March 2016 33
TABLE 1. Continued
Meeting William H Doyle
Number Year City Award Recipients Award Paper Title
26 1992 New Orleans James E.S. Venart To BLEVE or Not to BLEVE: Anatomy of a
Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion
27 1993 Houston Norman E. Scheffler Vapor Suppression of Chemicals Using Foams
28 1994 Atlanta T.C. Hofelich The Determination of Compatibility via
Thermal Analysis and Mathematical Modeling
29 1995 Boston Ronald G. Eierman Improving Inherent Safety with Sealless Pumps
30 1996 New Orleans Francesco Tamanini Modeling of Panel Inertia Effects in Vented
Dust Explosions
31 1997 Houston Norbert Jaeger Determination, Prevention, and Mitigation of
Potential Hazards Due to the Handling of
Powders during Transportation, Charging,
Discharging, and Storage
32 1998 New Orleans Dennis C. Hendershot Peroxide Drum Explosion and Fire
33 1999 Houston 1. Peggy Westfall 1. Lake Human Factors: Preventing Catastrophic
2. Chad V. Mashuga Human Error in 24-Hour Operations
2. Flammability Zone PredictionUsing
Calculated Adiabatic Flame Temperatures
34 2000 Atlanta 1. Angela Summers 1. Using Instrumented Systems for
2. Peter Lodel Overpressure Protection
2. Case History: Steam Line Rupture at
Tennessee Eastman Division 11/3/98
35 2001 Houston Robert Johnson and Combustion Safeguards Test IntervalsRisk
Thomas Oakey Study and Industry Survey
36 2002 New Orleans Dennis C. Hendershot Connections: How Pipe Failure Resulted in
Resizing Vessel Emergency Relief Systems
37 2003 New Orleans Erdem A. Ural Airplane Fuel Tank Explosions
38 2004 Atlanta Peter N. Lodal Distant Replay: What Can Reinvestigation of a
40-Year Old Incident Tell You?
39 2005 Atlanta Erdem A. Ural Dust Explosion Venting through Ducts
40 2006 Orlando Ronald J. Willey The Accident in Bhopal: Observations Twenty
Years Later
41 2007 Houston Lisa Long Vinyl Chloride Monomer Explosion
42 2008 New Orleans William Schmidt Hydrocarbon Haze and Air Separation Unit
Safety
43 2009 Tampa Scott G. Davis Lessons Learned from the 2006 Explosion in
Danvers MA
44 2010 San Antonio Samuel Rogers Practical Issues with Marginally Explosible
Dusts - Evaluating the Real Hazard
45 2011 Chicago 1. Samuel Rogers 1. Application of the NFPA 654 Dust Layer
2. Ronald J. Willey Thickness Criteria Recognizing the Hazard
2. Kinetic Modeling of the Reactions Involved
in the T2 Explosion
46 2012 Houston J. Kelly Thomas Propagation of a Vapor Cloud Detonation from
a Congested into an Uncongested Area
Demonstration Test and Impact on Blast
Load Prediction
47 2013 San Antonio Tom Ferrell Dust Flame Propagation in Industrial Scale
Piping, Parts I and II
48 2014 New Orleans J. Kelly Thomas Are Unconfined Hydrocarbon Vapor Cloud
Explosions Credible?
49 2015 Austin Chris R. Buchwald Suppression of overpressure during a vapor
cloud explosion: A new approach
50 (2016) (Houston)

weeks in a single year to attend all of the meetings. In 2001
and 2003, the LPS and PPSS were held in conjunction at the
Spring National Meeting of AIChE in Houston and New Orle-
ans, respectively. In 2005, the first Global Congress on pro-
cess Safety was held in Atlanta, GA that incorporated the
LPS, CCPS, and PPSS technical programs into one overall
program. Attendance at the GCPS has been excellent with
over 1,000 engineers and managers attending annually from
around the world.
LEGACY OF THE LPS
An often quoted truism by Trevor Kletz is Organizations
have no memory [9]. Only people have a memory and
their memory declines with time. Over 1,200 technical
papers have been presented at LPS meetings since 1967.
Proceedings of the first 14 LPS meetings were published by
AIChE. Due to publication costs, during several years in the
1980s, no proceedings were published by AIChE. Instead the
authors brought paper copies in bulk amounts (250 copies)

34 March 2016 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.1)
to the LPS for distribution. Most of these papers have not
been published in PSP or POP. Reviews of accidents and
incidents are a part of the LPS. These years where no pro-
ceedings were published are referred to as the lost years
by the older members of the process safety community.
In 1998, AIChE published the Process Safety Archives as a
set of CD-ROMs that contained all of the LPS and CCPS
papers and presentations, including the lost years, in a
searchable format using the Folio software system [10]. This
effort went through three editions with the third edition con-
taining all of the papers through to the 2005 LPS and CCPS
meetings. Unfortunately, the CD-ROMs will not run in the
current Windows 71 environments. The Safety and Health
Division is the prime sponsor of the Process Safety Archives
and is investigating methods to convert all of the technical
material into an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. This is an
expensive effort and the Safety and Health Division is look-
ing for industrial sponsors who would help support this
effort. If your organization is interested in supporting this
effort, please contact the author of this article.
Reviews of accidents and incidents are a part of the LPS.
The lessons learned from these incidents would be lost if the
legacy of the LPS technical program is not preserved. As
George Santayana said: Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it [11]. Let us not forget our
process safety past but instead use the knowledge gained to
improve the safety of our ongoing operations.
LITERATURE CITED
1. E.M. Lenoir and J.A. Davenport, A survey of vapor cloud
explosions: Second update, Process Saf Prog 12 (1993), 1233.
Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.1) Published on behalf of the AIChE
2. J.A. Davenport, History of the loss prevention symposia:
Forty years, 1967-2006, Process Saf Prog 25 (2006), 268
273.
3. American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Area 11: Safety
and Health Division Awards Biographies, Available at:
http://www.chem.mtu.edu/org/aiches&h/award_bios.html,
Accessed January 4, 2016.
4. R. Miller and W. Doyle, Introduction, Loss Prevention
Symposium A CEP Technical Manual, Vol. 1, AIChE,
New York, NY, 1967.
5. J.A. Noronha, J.T. Merry, and W.C. Reid, Deflagration
pressure containment (DPC) for vessel safety design,
Plant Oper Prog 1 (1982), 16.
6. S. Mannan, Lees Loss Prevention in the Process Indus-
tries, 3rd Edition, Appendix 5: Bhopal, Vol. 3, Elsevier
Butterworth Heinemann, New York, NY, 2005.
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vention in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers,
Process Saf Prog 28 (2009), 105113.
8. V.H. Edwards, W.F. Early, G.J. Fleming, R. Darby, J.
Cramer, M.S. Mannan, H.D. Kaiser, R. Freeman, K.
Pearson, J. Thompson, P. Myers, J. Chosnek, J.
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9. T. Kletz, Lessons from Disaster - How Organisations
Have No Memory and Accidents Recur, IChemE, Gulf
Publishing, Houston, TX, 1993, ISBN 0-85295-307-0.
10. R. Freeman, Preserving the LPS and CCPS legacy, Process
Saf Prog 26 (2007), 261262.
11. G. Santayana, Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
George_Santayana, Accessed January 9, 2016.
DOI 10.1002/prs March 2016 35