Safety Info Posts

Revised Interim Enforcement Procedures for Reporting Requirements under 29 C.F.R. 1904.39

This memorandum provides updated internal guidance and procedures for the Area Offices to enforce the reporting requirements. Among other things, this memo updates the procedures for the intake of reports from employers, data collection and sorting; and entry of data in the OIS system.  Revised flow charts are provided to help understand the intake process…....

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Year One of OSHA’s Severe Injury Reporting Program: An Impact Evaluation (OSHA)

Under a requirement that took effect Jan. 1, 2015, employers must report to OSHA within 24 hours any work-related amputation, in-patient hospitalization, or loss of eye. (The requirement to report a fatality within 8 hours was unchanged.) Injuries may be reported directly to an OSHA field office, to the OSHA toll-free number, or via an online…...

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EPA RMP GDC citations @ chemical plant (Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) & $33K)

This investigation began after a 9.6 pound vinyl chloride release from an improperly installed rupture disc (RD). The rupture disk had been improperly installed per original design, and its identification tag had been improperly inserted in the rupture disc holder.  Just last night I posted an incident where a “low pressure” vessel catastrophically failed because it did…...

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EPA RMP citations @ food plant (NH3 & LPG, $52K)

This is an interesting CAFO!  The facility has a 30,000 gallon LPG tank which they use the fuel for heating water to produce steam to cook its product.  The LPG is exempted from Part 68 since it is “used as a fuel”; HOWEVER, EPA pulled out their “General Duty Clause” and cited the facility for the…...

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Cost–Benefit Analysis of Proposed California Oil and Gas Refinery Regulations (RAND Corp)

The research reported here assessed the costs and benefits of the proposed California process safety management (PSM) and California Accidental Release Prevention regulations that are designed to improve safety at oil and gas refineries in California. The authors estimate these costs and benefits in four categories: costs to industry (to implement the regulation), costs to…...

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How safe is your Permit-to-Work management system? (QRA Results)

The SPAR-H method applied in this study could analyze and quantify the potential human errors and extract the required measures for reducing the error probabilities in PTW system. Some suggestions to reduce the likelihood of errors, especially in the field of modifying the performance shaping factors and dependencies among tasks are provided.  The PTW process…...

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Low Pressure storage tank @ brewery catastrophically fails (RD installed upside down)

At a brewery, the base plate-to-shell weld seam of a 90-m3 vertical cylindrical steel tank failed catastrophically. The 4-ton tank “took off” like a rocket leaving its contents behind, and landed on a van, crushing it. The top of the tank reached a height of 98′. The internal overpressure responsible for the failure was an…...

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OSHA PSM Citations @ ice plant (NH3 & $67K)

An ice manufacturer using anhydrous ammonia in the plant’s refrigeration system under went an OSHA PSM inspection in September 2015. OSHA’s inspection found that the plant failed to: Document that equipment used in the refrigeration system complied with recognized and generally accepted engineering practices. Conduct a pre-startup safety review following modifications to the refrigeration system…....

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2nd BLEVE in as many days??? (MC331 – Propane)

2018 UPDATE – NTSB Report issued on this incident From the NTSB Report… About 6:20 a.m., as the combination vehicle was traveling northbound on US Highway 431 (US-431), a two-lane undivided highway, near Stroud, Alabama, it entered a right curve near the intersection of County Route 256 and began to encroach on the southbound lane,…...

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EPA RMP citations @ cold storage facility (NH3 & $43,500)

Respondent is a company doing business as a cold storage facility. The Respondent has an RMProgram covered process, ammonia refrigeration, which stores or otherwise uses ammonia, in an amount exceeding its applicable threshold of 10,000 pounds. Based on an RMProgram compliance monitoring investigation initiated on October 29, 2013, the EPA alleges that the Respondent violated…...

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