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America, we have a problem. And it promises to get worse.<\/p>\nAmerica, we have a problem. And it promises to get worse.<\/p>\n
2 Killed in Explosion at West Virginia Industrial Plant<\/strong> Residents Shaken By Oil Tank\u00a0Explosion<\/strong> Chemical reaction forces evacuation of Waco industrial plant<\/strong> Officials Blame Mechanical Failure For Explosion at Dow Plant<\/strong> Future in Jeopardy? McIntosh residents in fear after Olin chlori …<\/strong> UPDATE: Hazmat responds to chemical reaction at South Bend …<\/strong> Another chlorine gas leak occurs at Olin chemical plant\u00a0<\/strong> Police officer sick after responding to Olin chemical chlorine leak<\/strong> Chemicals left in barrels leave workers and neighborhoods at risk<\/strong> Fire and explosions at Tulsa Port of Catoosa chemical plant<\/strong> Chemical leak hits Shell facility, fire at ExxonMobil plant in separate …<\/strong> 1 critically injured in explosion at Felda chemical plant<\/strong> Coroner: 1 killed, 2 injured in accident at Calhoun Co. plant<\/strong> Three held for observation after chlorine leak near Baton Rouge<\/strong> Chemical fog in Atchison sends dozens to hospitals<\/strong> Kansas chemical plant spill: Accident causes ‘noxious cloud’ and …<\/strong> Chemical plant incidents prompt evacuations in Mont Belvieu<\/strong> Chemical fog in Atchison sends dozens to hospitals<\/strong> 2 killed in industrial accident at Wichita-area plant<\/strong> Badly burned man airlifted to hospital after accident at Deer Park …<\/strong> 2 killed in industrial accident at Wichita-area plant<\/strong> The list above is a very quick and dirty collection of only of a few (those significant enough to merit a newspaper article) of the chemical incidents that have occurred in the US in the last several months. But instead of investing more money into preventing these incidents — many of which could have turned into major catastrophes — the Trump administration is threatening to roll back a modernized EPA regulation, and more significantly, Trump is proposing to kill the Chemical Safety Board<\/a>\u00a0(CSB)*, an agency specifically created by Congress to prevent catastrophic chemical incidents.<\/p>\n The CSB was authorized by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 in the wake of catastrophic chemical plant accidents in this country, like the Philips 66 explosion<\/a>, which killed 23 workers in 1989, and incidents around the world, like the Bhopal chemical release<\/a> that killed thousands in India in the mid-1980s. It’s a tiny agency, with a budget of less than $12 million, five board members and a staff of less than 50<\/p>\n The President’s FY 2018 budget proposal<\/a> provides about $8 million to the CSB for funeral expenses \u2014 funding \u00a0for the Board to use to shut down its operations. The budget claims that the CSB is \u201cduplicative\u201d and that it \u201coverlaps with other agency investigative authorities.\u201d \u00a0The budget goes on to allege that, although the Board has done good work, “more often than not, its overlap with other agency investigative authorities has generated unhelpful friction. In recent years, CSB’s recommendations have also been focused on the need for greater regulation of industry, which has frustrated both regulators and industry.”<\/p>\n This is wrong.<\/p>\n Unlike OSHA and EPA, the CSB has no enforcement authority and issues no citations or penalties. Modeled after the National Transportation and Safety board, it issues recommendations to government agencies like OSHA and EPA, as well as industry associations and labor unions. It\u2019s real value is conducting root cause analyses of chemical disasters. While OSHA and EPA can only go after specific violations of their regulations and standards, the CSB can go way beyond identifying violations to address other causes, and then urge the agencies to address them. Consequently, the CSB often identifies problems and accident causes that EPA or OSHA either haven’t seen or are not able to address. \u00a0In addition to the reports and recommendations, the CSB has created a number of highly popular videos<\/a> that describe in simple plain language and graphics the causes of highly complex chemical incidents.<\/p>\n Regarding the “unhelpful friction” with other agencies,\u00a0it is true that\u00a0OSHA has sometimes found some of the CSB’s regulatory recommendations impractical considering how long it takes OSHA to issue standards, but many of the CSB\u2019s recommendations are currently forming\u00a0the basis of OSHA\u2019s revision of its 1992 Process Safety Management standard. \u00a0Of course, the fact that CSB recommendations may sometimes lead to additional regulations may be the real reason that the regulation-averse Trump administration wants to deep six the agency.<\/p>\n “I don\u2019t think anyone in the industry wants to see the Chemical Safety Board be abolished,” — Stephen Brown, vice president, Tesoro Corp<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ironically, considering the President’s complaint that its regulations have also frustrated industry, there has been no significant industry opposition <\/a>to the Board’s work and many in the chemical industry strongly support the CSB, as Bloomberg <\/a>\u00a0reported earlier this year,<\/p>\n “I don\u2019t think anyone in the industry wants to see the Chemical Safety Board be abolished,” said Stephen Brown, a vice president with Tesoro Corp., an oil refiner that was the focus of a 2014 CSB report<\/a>, in a telephone interview. “The goal is a fully functional, professional investigative body that approaches things in a professional manner with integrity.”<\/p>\n And a Forbes article<\/a> quotes spokespersons from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Center for Chemical Process Safety,\u00a0American Chemical Society,\u00a0Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and former CSB Board Member Gary Visscher, who served on the CSB during the Bush administration from 2004 to 2009<\/p>\n Even the Chlorine Institute, which has been the subject of a number of CSB recommendations, opposes the Board’s elimination. \u00a0In a letter <\/a>to Congress, Chlorine Institute President Frank Reiner said the Institute “fully supports” the agency and stresses that\u00a0\u00a0“The CSB fills a vital role in the chemical industry and we strongly encourage the full funding of the CSB.”<\/p>\n And aside from some serious management issues several years ago, there have been no one in Congress had expressed serious concerns about the Board’s role or conduct.<\/p>\n As mentioned above, the CSB’s true value is its authority to go beyond simple regulatory violations to look at the root causes of incidents, and other issues that the EPA or OSHA are not able to address. Take one example: The CSB’s report of the catastrophic Texas City BP refinery explosion in 2015 that killed 15 workers. While OSHA found numerous violations of its Process Safety Management standard and issued hundreds of violations with a huge (for OSHA) $21 million dollar penalty, the CSB report <\/a>went far deeper. For example, the CSB identified serious problems\u00a0how BP valued\u00a0personal safety over process safety, failed to evaluate the “safety implications of major organizational, personnel, and policy changes,” and failed to “provide adequate resources to prevent major accidents,”\u00a0so that\u00a0“budget cuts impaired process safety performance at the Texas City refinery.” \u00a0Identifying problem with \u00a0the refinery’s “safety culture,” the CSB noted that the company had failed to “create an effective reporting and learning culture; reporting bad news was not encouraged. Incidents were often ineffectively investigated and appropriate corrective actions not taken.”<\/p>\n The CSB also explored other areas that OSHA or EPA are unable to touch, such as fatigue of the plant operators. The CSB noted that “the Day Board Operator had been working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for 29 consecutive days,” hardly conducive to responding effectively to a rapidly deteriorating safety issues at a highly complex refinery.<\/p>\n The other problem, of course, is not just looking back at the chemical plants incidents, like West or BP that we’ve experienced over the past decades, but much larger incidents that the CSB seeks to prevent. The United Steelworkers represents\u00a0
\nInsurance Journal, May 30, 2017<\/p>\n
\nCBS, May 26, 207<\/p>\n
\nMay 12, 2017<\/p>\n
\nChem.Info<\/a>-Mar 30, 2017<\/p>\n
\nFOX10 News-Mar 23, 2017<\/p>\n
\nWNDU-TV-Mar 16, 2017<\/p>\n
\nFOX10 News-Mar 17, 2017<\/p>\n
\nFOX10 News-Mar 7, 2017<\/p>\n
\nMilwaukee Journal Sentinel-Feb 15, 2017<\/p>\n
\nkjrh.com<\/a>-Feb 4, 2017<\/p>\n
\nChannel NewsAsia-Jan 11, 2017<\/p>\n
\nNBC Channel 2 – January 9, 2017<\/p>\n
\nThe State-Dec 6, 2016<\/p>\n
\nCBS News-Dec 2, 2016<\/p>\n
\nKMBC Kansas City-Oct 21, 2016<\/p>\n
\nThe Independent-Oct 21, 2016<\/p>\n
\nKTRK-TV-Jun 26, 2016<\/p>\n
\nKMBC Kansas City-Oct 21, 2016<\/p>\n
\nKAKE-Jun 30, 2016<\/p>\n
\nKTRK-TV-Aug 11, 2016<\/p>\n
\nKAKE-Jun 30, 2016<\/p>\nDeath Sentence: The President’s FY 2018 Budget<\/h3>\n
The CSB’s True Value<\/strong><\/h3>\n