Chemical industry safety groups are pushing back against advocates’ calls for EPA to expand its Risk Management Plan (RMP) chemical facility safety rule to include the substance ammonium nitrate and to account for climate change impacts, charging that such changes would be statutorily unworkable, redundant and could worsen supply-chain issues.
Environmentalists are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “act now” to expand its chemical facility safety rule, particularly to include ammonium nitrate, arguing that a recent fire at a North Carolina fertilizer plant serves as a “wake up call” for the need to bolster protections against future disasters.
Katherine Lemos, chair of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), said at a recent meeting that she would delay votes on “the mounting number of recommendations” before the board until its two new members who won Senate confirmation in December are formally sworn in -- a step she said could come as soon as this week.
OSHA has quietly resumed development of an emergency response standard intended to bolster protections for first responders after pausing the process late in the Obama administration, but stakeholders are warning that the eventual rule may exclude much of the sector as it is dominated by public-sector and volunteer workers outside OSHA’s purview.
The Senate has confirmed by voice vote two of President Joe Biden’s three nominees to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), moving the panel, which investigates industrial incidents and advises OSHA and other agencies, closer to full strength after it spent more than a year with a single member.
Employers’ attorneys say OSHA officials have told them the agency intends to update its 1992 process safety management (PSM) standard during President Joe Biden’s current term and could release a formal proposal as soon as next year, after the Trump administration halted an Obama-era push to rework the rule.
EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s annual report on management challenges facing the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) once again finds that the panel cannot function properly with just one Senate-confirmed member, even after reworking its governing rules to better fit the current “quorum of one."
The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is ramping up its calls for OSHA to broaden its process safety management (PSM) standard to cover additional “reactive hazards,” along with a parallel push for EPA to bolster its chemical-safety rules, after a recent investigation blamed the current policies for failing to prevent a fatal hydrogen gas explosion.
Katherine Lemos, chair and sole member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), told a House committee Sept. 29 that she plans to introduce new approaches for its incident investigations and reports that would take less time to complete, in order to address a years-long slowdown in CSB’s work.
Republican senators at a July 29 hearing suggested President Joe Biden’s three nominees to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) appear to lack the qualifications to investigate chemical industrial accidents, echoing industry concerns that they have no specific experience in the field and potentially foreshadowing a confirmation battle.