Introduction: Industrial development is the result of changes in methods and development of new machines that have been created in order to provide the needs of human societies, failure to impact assessment of these issues can leads to serious risks for humans and environment. Therefore, it is necessary and essential to achieve management and purposeful tool that accurately identifies and effectively controls potential and actual threats to health, safety, and the environment. Among various industries, the pulp and paper industry are a growing industry due to the high per capita production of paper to provide the needs of society and has been identified as the sixth most polluting industry in the world. In addition to environmental impacts, this industry may pose many risks to the workforce that are working in it, which has led to greater attention to the issue of health-safety and especially environmental risk assessment. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the risks that threaten human resources and the environment and to propose solutions to reduce these risks to this industry.
Material and Methods: In this study, the EFMEA (Environmental Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) method, which is an efficient method of the environmental risk assessment, was used to identify and assess the environmental risks of the Golestan Persia Paper Company. Initially, the risks of process units (including the pulping unit, production line, and steam boiler unit) were identified. In the next step, the impacts of the identified risks were evaluated using the components of consequence severity, probability of occurrence, and probability of detection and identification. After determining the confidence limit, environmental risks were classified and finally control/corrective measures were proposed to eliminate or reduce the risks. In the final step, a secondary assessment of environmental risks was conducted after corrective actions, and the priority of implementing the corrective measures was determined according to the degree of feasibility.
Results: Of the 16 environmental risks identified, 3 were at high risk level, 11 at medium risk level, and 2 at low risk level. The highest risk level is related to the formation of sediment in the steam boiler, which leads to higher fuel consumption and air pollution. soil contamination resulting from the entry of wastewater from the production line and pulping unit into a soil pond for sedimentation before treatment is performed as well as Condensate flashing (conversion of the liquid phase to vapor) are also considered to be other major risks of the plant under study. By providing corrective solutions, all risks were reduced to a low-severity risk level.
Discussion: The results of the present study and a review of similar research conducted in different industries showed that conducting risk assessment studies and providing corrective actions can significantly reduce risk levels. Combining of the methods of health, safety, and environmental risk assessment by systematizing the process of identifying aspects can increase the accuracy and precision of risk assessment results. And finally, the identified solutions can be used in the form of risk management guidelines in the study area. After identifying solutions and adopting the desired strategy to control each of the risks, it will be possible to design operational scenarios appropriate to each of these strategies and in accordance with the crisis management guidelines.