• Origins[edit]

• The concept of reducing rather than controlling hazards stems from

British chemical engineer Trevor Kletz in a 1978 article entitled “What
You Don’t Have, Can’t Leak” from the Flixborough disaster,[2] and the
name ‘inherent safety’ from a book which was an expanded version of
the article.[3] A greatly revised and retitled 1990 version[4] mentioned the
techniques which are generally quoted. (Kletz originally used the
term intrinsically safe in 1978, but as this had already been used for the
special case of electronic equipment in potentially flammable
atmospheres, only the term inherent was adopted. Intrinsic safety may
be considered a special subset of inherent safety.) In 2010 the American
Institute of Chemical Engineers published its own definition of IST.