why are businesses exloding every other week?
- Thread starter evince
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evince
Truthmatters
The Board found that “Reactive incidents are a significant chemical safety problem,” but that OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard “has significant gaps in coverage of reactive hazards.” The Board therefore unanimously recommended that OSHA “Amend the Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard, 29 CFR 1910.119, to achieve more comprehensive control of reactive hazards that could have catastrophic consequences.” In case OSHA didn’t get the hint, a number of labor unions representing workers in industrial facilities that use reactive chemicals had petitioned OSHA twice for a standard, and the Clinton administration was in the early stages of rulemaking before the Bush administration pulled the action off of OSHA’s regulatory agenda.
More than five years after the CSB’s recommendation was issued, OSHA has refused to act. In typical Bush Administration fashion, instead of revising the PSM regulation, OSHA established an “Alliance” of chemical industry associations and published a reactive chemical webpage. The Alliance involved setting up booths at chemical industry conferences, occasional presentations about Alliance activities, and two actual training workshops that trained a total of 36 students. In 2004, the CSB evaluated OSHA’s response and judged it “unacceptable,” and the Alliance was terminated in March 2007.
One week after the CSB’s preliminary report on the Jacksonville explosion, Representatives George Miller (D-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor, and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Chair of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee (later joined by Jacksonville Congresswoman Corrine Brown (D)), sent a letter to OSHA suggesting that this incident might have been prevented had OSHA complied with the CSB’s recommendation. The legislators called on the agency to take “immediate steps to revise the Process Safety Management Standard to improve the control of reactive hazards as recommended by the Chemical Safety Board.”
More than five years after the CSB’s recommendation was issued, OSHA has refused to act. In typical Bush Administration fashion, instead of revising the PSM regulation, OSHA established an “Alliance” of chemical industry associations and published a reactive chemical webpage. The Alliance involved setting up booths at chemical industry conferences, occasional presentations about Alliance activities, and two actual training workshops that trained a total of 36 students. In 2004, the CSB evaluated OSHA’s response and judged it “unacceptable,” and the Alliance was terminated in March 2007.
One week after the CSB’s preliminary report on the Jacksonville explosion, Representatives George Miller (D-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor, and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Chair of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee (later joined by Jacksonville Congresswoman Corrine Brown (D)), sent a letter to OSHA suggesting that this incident might have been prevented had OSHA complied with the CSB’s recommendation. The legislators called on the agency to take “immediate steps to revise the Process Safety Management Standard to improve the control of reactive hazards as recommended by the Chemical Safety Board.”
evince
Truthmatters
Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.
Desh, it's great that you often bring substantive posts, about real issues that concern america, its democracy, its economy, and its workers.
Too often we get caught up in horse race aspects of politics, and armchair punditry.
This is exactly the reason I supported Edwards. I think he recognized a deeper, core problem in america that went beyond platitudes of "change" and laundry lists of promises to different interest groups.
And that issue is that the public interest has been overwhelmed by the interests of powerful corporations. The media never touches this stuff, they obsess about the horse race. And the undue influence of the monied interests and the powerful financial institutions has been recognized since the days of Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt, but are often ignored.
Too often we get caught up in horse race aspects of politics, and armchair punditry.
This is exactly the reason I supported Edwards. I think he recognized a deeper, core problem in america that went beyond platitudes of "change" and laundry lists of promises to different interest groups.
And that issue is that the public interest has been overwhelmed by the interests of powerful corporations. The media never touches this stuff, they obsess about the horse race. And the undue influence of the monied interests and the powerful financial institutions has been recognized since the days of Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt, but are often ignored.