Historical background
The management of safety in fertilizer production has changed over time, with recent decades focusing on different approaches:
1. the 1960s focused on engineering and education;
2. the 1970s aimed to strengthen regulation;
3. the 1980s ushered in the development of management systems;
4. the 1990s sought to optimize employee behaviour;
5. and today the focus is very much on risk management.
By and large, the fertilizer industry's safety record is good: the experience from some major accidents in the 1940s led to preventative measures that avoided any accident of a major dimension until September 2001.