The Bhopal tragedy was a defining moment in the history of the chemical industry. On December 3, 1984, a runaway reaction within a methyl isocyanate storage tank at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant released a toxic gas cloud that killed thousands and injured hundreds of thousands. After Bhopal, industrial chemical plants became a major public concern. Both the public and the chemical industry realized the necessity of improving chemical process safety. Bhopal served as a wake-up call. To prevent the same event from occurring in the United States, many legislative and industrial changes were invoked-one of which was formation of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). The ultimate goal of CSB is to use the lessons learned and recommendations from its investigations to achieve positive change within the chemical industry-preventing incidents and saving lives. Although it seems clear that the lessons learned at Bhopal have improved chemical plant safety, CSB investigations indicate that the systemic problems identified at Bhopal remain the underlying causes of many incidents. These include: center dot Lack of awareness of reactive hazards. center dot Lack of management of change. center dot Inadequate plant design and maintenance. center dot Ineffective employee training. center dot Ineffective emergency preparedness and community notification. center dot Lack of root cause incident investigations and communication of lessons learned. The aim of this paper is to present common themes from recent cases investigated by CSB and to discuss how these issues might be best addressed in the future. This paper has not been independently approved by the Board and is published for general informational purposes only. Any material in the paper that did not originate in a Board-approved report is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent an official finding, conclusion, or position of the Board. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.