Historical analysis of accidents in the Mexican chemical industry

An analysis of accidents that occurred mainly in the chemical industry within the Mexican Republic throughout the last century was made. The country's industrial growth has boosted its economic development, increasing the occurrence of high-impact accidents inside and outside chemical plants. The main purpose of this work was to create a database that contained information related to the accidents that occurred in the Mexican chemical industry. For this extensive investigation, it was necessary to obtain information from news, reports and articles related to this topic. In the database, 267 accidents were collected from 1900 until 2019. A statistical analysis showed that Petroleos Mexicanos, PEMEX, is the company with the highest accidents rate, because this company was a monopoly in the Mexican petrochemical industry until 2013. The types of accidents that occurred the most were explosions and fires, 122 and 55 of these reported accidents, respectively. The most frequently reported substances were diesel and gasoline with a 20% of the total accidents, followed by hydrocarbons and their derivatives with 18.7%. Finally, the importance of creating databases like this one is remarked, with the objective of implementing better safety measures and improving the regulations that govern the nation.

Keywords: chemical industry, hazardous substances, accidents, Mexico, statistics.