A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
The Chemical Safety Board released its report on the Arkema chemical incident last week. You may recall that during the heavy rains in the Houston area following Hurricane Harvey last year, the Arkema chemical plant was flooded and lost all ability to control the temperature of reactive organic peroxides. The company evacuated the plant and…
Five years ago tonight a fire broke out at the West Fertilizer company in West, Texas. Emergency responders rushed toward the facility which contained 40 to 60 tons of fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate, but twenty minutes later a massive explosion ripped through the building killing 12 responders and three others, injuring 252 and damaging or destroying…
More Freedom and More Catastrophic Fertilizer Explosions: After a catastrophic ammonium nitrate explosion at West Fertilizer exploded in 2013 killed 15 people, injured 130 more and destroyed much of the town of West, OSHA discovered that the facility was not covered by OSHA’s Process Safety Management and had therefore not been inspected since the mid-1980s.…
Five gas rig workers are presumed dead after an explosion gas rig in Quinton, OK. The names of the employees are Matt Smith of McAlester, Parker Waldridge of Crescent and Roger Cunningham from Seminole — and two from neighboring states, Josh Ray of Fort Worth, Texas; and Cody Risk of Wellington, Colorado. For much of the…
Dan Zak of the Washington Post has written a long feature article on the impact and aftermath of the West fertilizer explosion that killed 15 people, injured 252 and damaged or destroyed 500 buildings in the small town of West Texas on April 17, 2013. The article does a great job of describing the impact of…
The Republican Congress may not be fulfilling it responsibility to provide oversight over a Republican-controlled OSHA, but the Government Accountability Office is still on the job. The GAO is Congress’s “watchdog” and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. Over the past couple of years, the GAO has investigated OSHA’s activities around protecting healthcare workers…
It’s not all bad news out there. While Washington sucks workers down into an abyss of corporate anarchy, the State of California is showing us that humans can be rational and protective of their fellow beings. Despite efforts by federal EPA to roll back its Risk Management Program improvements, other Trump administration attacks on worker…
America, we have a problem. And it promises to get worse. 2 Killed in Explosion at West Virginia Industrial Plant Insurance Journal, May 30, 2017 Residents Shaken By Oil Tank Explosion CBS, May 26, 207 Chemical reaction forces evacuation of Waco industrial plant May 12, 2017 Officials Blame Mechanical Failure For Explosion at Dow Plant Chem.Info-Mar…
Chemical industry representatives are using unproven allegations that a criminal act caused the catastrophic 2013 West Texas explosion to try to kill an important chemical safety rule. Millions of people live and work in the shadow of high-risk chemical plants that store and use highly hazardous chemicals. The House of Representatives is expected to vote…