Federal chemical safety experts are blasting a major petrochemical company for allegedly blocking a crucial investigation of a sulfuric acid release at a California refinery that they say seriously injured two workers, but the company refutes the suggestion it is improperly preventing a probe and says the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) lacks jurisdiction in the matter.
OSHA has reached a settlement with the petroleum industry and unions following 21 months of complex negotiations in a hazardous communication case challenging the agency's enforcement of its March 2012 Global Harmonization Standard amendment, according to sources and documents obtained by Inside OSHA Online.
The federal Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is faulting voluntary oil industry safety standards for failing to prevent fires at refineries that killed or endangered workers and is reiterating a call for the Environmental Protection Agency to require inherently safer technologies (IST), such as use of less-toxic chemicals or other engineering changes to curb such industrial incidents.
As OSHA is under fire from industry for allegedly downplaying the cost of its recent silica rulemaking, another federal agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is asking its scientific advisors how the agency could better use "economy-wide" modeling to determine the costs and benefits of its regulations.
Key House and Senate lawmakers are choosing different laws under which to create a new environmental chemical response program to address gaps highlighted by the recent West Virginia spill, with the Senate bill proposing to use the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the House proposing to use the Clean Water Act (CWA).
Chemicals, petroleum and other industry groups are urging President Obama and other officials to drop consideration of a federal mandate requiring use of inherently safer technologies (IST), such as benign chemicals, in any upcoming proposal on facility security, saying it will create an impossible burden and derail the president's effort to improve safety at the nation's industrial plants.
An umbrella group of health and safety advocacy groups decried what it termed major “shortcomings” in federal and state oversight following the recent West Virginia chemical spill that left hundreds of thousands without usable water as the substance infiltrated a regional water supply.
It was revealed soon after the spill that the chemical plant involved in the massive pollution of the Elk River had no OSHA inspection history (see related blog).
The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, an alliance of consumer and public interest groups, small businesses and individuals that generally favors more federal regulation including by OSHA, issued a statement Jan. 14 calling the spill near Charleston, WV, “the latest in a series of environmental and safety disasters” related to a lack oversight that is often “driven by vociferous, industry-funded anti-regulatory campaigns.”
“From the BP explosion and oil spill to the West, Texas, refinery explosion to the new spill in West Virginia, we’ve seen that the public pays the price when regulatory agencies don’t have the legal tools and funding to do their jobs,” the group said. “If this facility had been required to meet some basic standards and had been inspected regularly, some critics surely would have called it red tape. But such protections are crucial. Standards and safeguards save lives and protect people from corporate bad actors who, left to their own devices, put profits over people’s health.”
The coalition argued that while there has been progress over several decades in making the environment and workplaces healthier and safer, “[i]t’s time to reform our chemical safety laws -- both at the state and federal levels -- to prevent the next dangerous accident or spill.”
The chemical plant where a storage tank leak led to massive pollution of the Elk River near Charleston, WV, over the weekend, causing a widespread water crisis, had no OSHA inspection history, according to regional agency officials. OSHA has deployed to the site of Freedom Industries to investigate the disaster. Occupational health advocates also expressed dismay at a lack of overall regulatory oversight by state and federal agencies at the plant.
The agency's enforcement database shows that compliance officers tried to inspect the facility in 2009 but the inspection did not take place. A regional OSHA spokeswoman said the inspection would have fallen under an OSHA national emphasis program (NEP) on amputation hazards, but when arriving on site, inspectors learned that the industrial code for the plant was not among those targeted under the NEP.
OSHA does not have an exposure limit for the chemical but does require a material safety data sheet for it.
A release of 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol into the river, just upstream from the intake of a major water supplier, caused the disaster, which cut off water to hundreds of thousands of residents and shut down numerous businesses. The OSHA spokeswoman said the incident did not cause any known worker injuries, however.
A federal working group of OSHA and other agencies is floating a broad set of policy options to improve chemical facility safety, including controversial measures such as first-time rules requiring the use of "safer" technologies, prompting concern from industry groups over the sweeping range of new mandates that the group is considering.
OSHA regulators are taking a close look at removing from the agency's process safety management (PSM) standard a longtime exemption for flammable liquids kept inside atmospheric storage tanks, a move they believe would override a 1997 administrative law judge ruling that OSHA says has allowed companies to skirt the PSM requirements even when the tanks are connected to a process covered by the safety standard.