OSHA as part of a federal interagency working group says it would consider an array of measures to strengthen the safety and security of industrial plants in the wake of recent disasters, including pushing facilities to use inherently safer technologies (IST), though agencies continue to oppose a requirement sought by activists for the Environmental Protection Agency to mandate specific IST.
The sudden resignation of a U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) member has exposed deep divisions over both the controversial “safety case” approach that the board's chair is pushing for chemical catastrophe prevention as well as broader concerns over a top-heavy CSB structure that gives rank-and-file appointees less policy influence -- internal tensions detailed in an exclusive conversation Thursday (May 22) between departing CSB member Beth Rosenberg and Inside OSHA Online.
OSHA tells congressional investigators it agrees with strong recommendations in a newly issued report sought by Democrats that the agency step up interagency cooperation and data-sharing to help prevent chemical explosions like the disaster last year in West, TX, and also concurs with a need to reach out to the fertilizer industry on safety issues, but stops short of fully assuring the Government Accountability Office that it will move ahead on a rulemaking effort to cover ammonium nitrate hazards under its process safety standard.
OSHA is exploring whether it can return to a 1990s-era enforcement stance under which the process safety management (PSM) standard applies to oil and gas production facilities – a posture that was voided after the petroleum industry argued the agency had not conducted the required economic feasibility analysis specific to production sites when it first formulated the rule.
Chemical safety investigators are calling on Washington state's OSHA plan to initiate a series of changes designed to beef up oversight of workplace equipment and safety procedures after they reached conclusions from a sweeping investigation of the Tesoro refinery accident that took seven lives and sparked uproar over safety conditions in the refining industry.
Facing competing calls from industry and environmental justice advocates over how to strengthen plant safety, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in order to take comment on whether or how to revise its accidental release prevention program, a move that suggests any changes to the program are likely a long way off.
OSHA standards officials are considering adding new layers of chemical safety oversight to the agency's decades-old rule requiring users of risky chemical processes to develop and put in place “management-system” practices, a concept that could engender opposition down the line as industry argues the performance-based elements of the rule, which already set it apart from most OSHA regulations, have been shown to work.
The chemical industry is likely to push back against new signals by OSHA that regulators may explore revising the process safety management (PSM) standard governing safety requirements in potentially dangerous chemical uses to cover all reactivity hazards, an issue borne out by probes into accidents over the years and which has emerged as a key concern after a massive fertilizer plant explosion in Texas last year.
Federal officials engaged in probing chemical disasters pressured OSHA chief David Michaels and other Obama administration officials in a White House meeting after the West, TX, fertilizer plant explosion to embrace the use of inherently safer technologies (IST) where possible and to revisit a range of longstanding OSHA process safety management (PSM) requirements, and continue to push for tougher regulatory policies, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board chairman told Inside OSHA Online in an interview Tuesday.
The industry coalition American Chemistry Council (ACC) is challenging New Jersey's model chemical facility safety program, arguing in comments to the Environmental Protection Agency that the state incorrectly labels facilities' routine safety upgrades as shifts to inherently safer technologies (IST) and fails to account for changes that shift risks to other parts of production processes -- a dispute that occurs as OSHA comes under increasing pressure to embrace IST.