Respondent operates a an unmanned gas processing plant that has on-site for storage, 154,110 pounds of flammable mixture. The process is a RMProgram level 2 covered process, which stores or otherwise uses a flammable mixture in an amount exceeding its applicable threshold of 10,000 pounds. On April 23, 2014, the EPA contractor conducted an on-site […]
This is without a doubt one of the top ten questions we get each year… Can employee’s be fit-tested with facial hair stubble? And not to be a smart a_s about it, the answer is still the same… NO. OSHA has been consistent over the years and my dozen or so articles on the matter
As safety departments get squeezed for $, we are seeing a spike in a severe deficiency in a site’s respiratory protection training. I first got wind of this when a client I was scheduled to do some respiratory protection training for canceled the course. This is a client we provide other services for, so while
OSHA has cited five contractors for safety and health violations after three employees were fatally injured and two others critically injured following an explosion onboard a towboat in Kentucky. The five companies collectively received 55 of violations with proposed penalties totaling $795,254. OSHA cited a ship repair contractor, an insulation contractor, two temporary staffing companies
As some of you may recall the Post Office got hammered by OSHA some years ago, and from those inspections, OSHA asked for abatement across all post office locations. One of those items was related to heat stress, and I might add that already this summer we have seen another heat stroke fatality within the
This 2018 decision is a MUST read for all safety professionals who wish to question the requirement for “machine specific” isolation procedures for “complex processes” AND for those who want to understand the isolation expectation for entry into a PRCS. This business made two mistakes that run rampant in businesses when it comes to the
WARNING! NEVER, in your wildest dreams, EVER EVER do this!!!! But this video does show us the flammable properties of ammonia gas. Crazy I tell ya, just crazy – not to mention this is just NOT the way Hot Work was intended to be carried. SO MANY concerns – but I just wanted to demonstrate
This is a telling video, showing us the consequences of “slugging a compressor” with liquid anhydrous ammonia. I do not have the details of the event, but one would have to consider the cause being a “High Level” in the vessel the compressor is intending to pull vapor from. These vessels should have level control
At 4:45 p.m. on December 27, 2017, an employee was adding piping from a man-lift to a chemical tank when he struck a transducer on a nearby chemical tank containing tetra-methyl ammonium hydroxide. The employee was drenched and was able to lower the man-lift and get into the emergency wash station. Several co-workers assisted the
Way back in the early 1990’s I learned a valuable lesson the “hard way,” and to this day, facility siting means something altogether different than how most view it. Those that work with me know I hate having combustibles such as empty pallets around chemical processes, especially flammable processes. But even non-flammable processes, such as
