The Environmental Protection Agency is boosting its procedures for how to inspect chemical facilities to ensure they are complying with security rules, as well as sharing data and coordinating inspections with OSHA, as steps in meeting President Obama's executive order (EO) to bolster plant security, according to an EPA-devised plan.
September 16, 2026
A technical report from federal chemical safety investigators into February's Tesoro Refinery sulfuric acid spill that injured two workers in California concludes in part that many of the nation's chemical facilities need to beef up their process safety management (PSM) activities to avert such accidents, a recommendation aligned with their push for more federal regulation and OSHA oversight on the issue.
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NIOSH has backed off its relatively aggressive call earlier this year for OSHA to consider two approaches -- one, called the “safety case” model, which has drawn apprehension in both management and labor circles, and the other known as “inherently safer design” -- as OSHA casts a wide net for information about possible future changes to its process safety management (PSM) and related regulations.
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The Obama administration is putting new pressure on Congress to increase OSHA penalties, leveraging a new federal interagency report on chemical safety and security to push in vague terms a highly controversial proposal earlier written into OSHA reform legislation, which gained tentative momentum early on in the Obama presidency but long since receded as a viable issue after Republicans seized control of the House in 2010.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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