US Congress mulls controls on plastics dust

04 March 2008 22:28  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--Legislation introduced in the US House on Tuesday would force federal workplace safety officials to implement nationwide regulations against explosive dust hazards from plastics, agrochemicals, fibres and other substances.

 

Representative George Miller (Democrat-California), chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, introduced a bill that would require federal workplace regulators to adopt recommendations made in 2006 by the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) to reduce combustible dust explosions.

 

Miller said he has decided to force implementation of nationwide precautions against explosive dust hazards by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), charging that OSHA has failed to voluntarily implement recommendations made by the Chemical Safety Board in 2006.

 

He cited the 7 February dust explosion at a Savannah, Georgia, sugar mill that killed 12 workers and injured 60 others as the kind of fatal accident that might have been prevented if OSHA had acted on the safety board’s rule request.

 

If passed, the “Combustible Dust Explosion and Fire Prevention Act of 2008” would require OSHA to issue within 90 days a temporary rule providing standards for explosive dust safety in “manufacturing, processing, blending, conveying, repackaging and handling of combustible particulate solids and their dusts” from plastics, rubber, pesticides, fibres, dyes, pharmaceuticals and textiles, among others.

 

According to the draft legislation, the temporary rules would have to set mandatory workplace safety precautions against dust explosions that meet or exceed the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) voluntary standards for combating dust explosions in manufacturing.

 

OSHA would then have 18 months to draw up and implement a more comprehensive and mandatory standard regulating combustible dust hazards, according to the draft bill.

 

The Chemical Safety Board urged OSHA in late 2006 to issue an explosive dust rule, following the board’s finding that 119 workers had been killed and 718 injured in nearly 300 explosive dust accidents between 1980 and 2005.

 

“It is unfortunate that Congress should have to tell OSHA how to do its job,” Miller said on introducing the bill.  He said that OSHA “has failed to act despite the fact that the dangers of combustible dust have been well known for years”.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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