{"id":39274,"date":"2014-12-09T13:56:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T19:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=39274"},"modified":"2014-12-09T13:56:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T19:56:14","slug":"federal-investigators-chemical-industry-has-a-safety-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/12\/09\/federal-investigators-chemical-industry-has-a-safety-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Investigators: Chemical Industry Has A Safety Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div id=\"attachment_26737\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-26737\" alt=\"An aerial view shows investigators walking through the aftermath of a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas April 18, 2013.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/04\/11412381_H22037023-620x231.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/04\/11412381_H22037023-620x231.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/04\/11412381_H22037023-300x111.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/04\/11412381_H22037023.jpg 1849w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo by REUTERS\/Adrees Latif<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">An aerial view shows investigators walking through the aftermath of a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas April 18, 2013.<\/p><\/div>\n<h4><em>The U.S. Chemical Safety Board says the industry it oversees is experiencing a safety crisis. The board investigates industrial accidents. It says recent deadly explosions and chemical leaks in Texas make a strong case for action.<\/em><\/h4>\n<p>It\u2019s been a tragic couple of years for some people who work around dangerous chemicals in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFertilizer plant on fire, there was an explosion; we have several buildings that have been destroyed,\u201d said a dispatcher to first responders headed to a fertilizer business in the city of West. It was on the evening of April 17, 2013. Ten volunteer firefighters would be among the 15 people killed by the explosion.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/180609824&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Then last month in La Porte,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.houstonmatters.org\/segments\/segment-b\/2014\/11\/18\/what-went-wrong-at-the-la-porte-dupont-plant\" target=\"_blank\">workers at a DuPont pesticides plant<\/a>\u00a0called for help. From a 911 call from the plant: \u201cWe have five people unaccounted for; we have had a chemical release.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Four of those workers would later be found dead, apparently overcome by chemical fumes.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe industry is in a safety crisis in this country,\u201d said Rafael Moure-Eraso, chairperson of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. He spoke to News 88.7 from the board\u2019s offices in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>Using the La Porte fatalities as an example, Moure-Eraso said DuPont had been regarded as a safety leader in the industry. He said he didn\u2019t want to prejudice their on-going investigation of the fatalities at the DuPont facility, but:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s safe to say the safety standards need to be improved and there is not time to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The CSB last week formally announced that its number one priority is to push regulators to update safety standards that haven\u2019t changed much in 20 years. For example, looking at work hours to prevent fatigued employees &#8230; and at design of facilities to minimize risk.<\/p>\n<p>In Texas, the CSB\u2019s proposed changes would not only affect refineries and chemical plants, but also oil and gas drilling operations.With drilling up, so are worker deaths. Texas leads the nation with 216 fatalities from 2008 to 2012.<\/p>\n<p>For years, oil &amp; gas operations have been exempt from federal requirements to have what\u2019s called Process Safety Managemen which involves making detailed plans to reduce the risk of accidents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe believe companies are seriously under-regulated,\u201d said Moure-Eraso.<\/p>\n<p>To the contrary, the oil &amp; gas industry says no new regulation is needed. Industry associations wouldn\u2019t provide us with anyone to interview, but we reviewed\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/#!docketBrowser;rpp=25;po=0;dct=PS;D=OSHA-2013-0026\">written responses to federal regulators made on behalf of oil and chemical companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The upshot: the industry says the trouble isn\u2019t with the existing rules, it\u2019s with a few bad actors that don\u2019t follow them and end-up having catastrophic accidents. One example industry cited was the explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City back in 2005. Fifteen workers died and the Chemical Safety Board laid some blame on how it said BP had failed to have rigorous audits of its safety systems.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2013-0026-0078\">an industry association said the Texas City explosion was an \u201coutlier\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that wasn\u2019t representative of the industry as a whole. Bottom line: no need to update current regulations which, if it were done, would cost an astronomical sum according to the industry.<\/p>\n<p>But according to the Chemical Safety Board, those costs must be measured against lives and property lost when terrible accidents happen. The board\u2019s managing director, Daniel Horowitz, says spending more on safety enforcement and compliance pays off.\u00a0 He said they analyzed efforts in Europe where there are far more specialized government inspectors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey get the benefit of that in the form of much lower catastrophic accident rates about three to five times lower in Europe than they are here,\u201d Horowitz told News 88.7.<\/p>\n<p>The board\u2019s proposals will be considered by OSHA and the US EPA which are expected to issue new rules in coming months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Chemical Safety Board says the industry it oversees is experiencing a safety crisis. The board investigates industrial accidents. It says recent deadly explosions and chemical leaks in Texas make a strong case for action. It\u2019s been a tragic couple of years for some people who work around dangerous chemicals in Texas. \u201cFertilizer plant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[296],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39276,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39274\/revisions\/39276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}