The first Process Plant Safety Symposium (PPSS) was a regional conference held in 1992 in Houston, TX, which has the largest concentration of chemical process plants in North America. The symposium was organized to provide perspectives, methods, and tools that could be readily practiced at the plant level. The first conference was organized by the South Texas Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and cosponsored by the AIChE Center for Chemical Process Safety and a number of other engineering and scientific organizations. The PPSS has evolved to an international symposium, part of the Global Congress on Process Safety, held annually in conjunction with the AIChE Spring Meeting. This article is a brief history of the PPSS. (c) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012