Corrected: US panel wants action by Congress on dust hazards

29 July 2008 18:36  [Source: ICIS news]

Correction: In the ICIS news story headlined “US panel wants action by Congress on dust hazards” dated 29 July 2008, please read in the second paragraph … killed 13 workers and injured about … instead of … killed 12 workers …. A corrected story follows.

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--US chemical safety officials warned Congress on Tuesday that mandatory federal regulation of explosive dust hazards in industry is more urgent than ever and asked that new legislation be approved quickly.

John Bresland, chairman of the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), told a Senate hearing that the February dust explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Savannah, Georgia, that killed 13 workers and injured about 60 others is “further evidence of the need for a comprehensive regulatory standard for dust” hazards.

Bresland told the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety that the Imperial Sugar explosion “was an accident that was preventable” and that similar tragedies are likely unless federal regulators take action.

“After witnessing the terrible human and physical toll from the Imperial explosion, I believe the urgency of a new combustible dust standard is greater than ever,” Bresland said.

He noted too that since the Chemical Safety Board was established by Congress in 1998, “three of the four deadliest accidents we have investigated were determined to be combustible dust explosions”.

The safety board concluded in a 2006 study that in the prior 25 years some 120 workers and others had been killed and 718 were injured in nearly 300 dust-related explosions.

Following that study, the CSB urged the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to take action to better regulate explosive dust hazards in US chemical, plastics, metal, coal and other industrial process industries.

The safety board asked OSHA to take action because the board is an investigative body that has no regulatory authority.

In October 2007 OSHA instructed its field offices to look for dust hazards during routine workplace inspections.  However, the CSB and some members of Congress criticised that response as inadequate.

The Senate is considering legislation passed earlier by the US House that would order OSHA to issue within 90 days a temporary rule regulating safety procedures and inspections for explosive dust hazards in a broad range of industries, including chemicals.

In addition, the “Combustible Dust Explosion and Fire Prevention Act of 2008,” HR-5522, would require OSHA to compile within 18 months a more comprehensive regulatory mandate covering dust hazards 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.

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