The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) Program identified and regulated the security of high-risk chemical facilities using a risk-based approach. Pursuant to section 5 of the Protecting and Securing Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Attacks Act of 2014. Authorization had been granted for CFATS until July 27, 2023. Congress did not act to reauthorize the program in time and, as such,...

Please remember, these principles were proposed over 100 years ago! Mr. Heinrich may not have been 100% correct in all his beliefs, but I would go as far as to say that if a business today were to embrace his principles from the 1920s, it would see significant improvements in both culture and performance.  Industrial executives do not need to know all the details of an accident prevention method,...

SAD! AED flagged for expired parts before HISD student’s death, per yearly inspection But we see it more often than not. A company invests in AEDs and then does not maintain them, leading to a false sense of safety. We usually get pushback when we write them up in audits, as the business will claim there is no OSHA standard requiring inspection/maintenance of AEDs. So my friend and former...

A jury trial is set for the former employee charged in the February home explosion that killed one volunteer firefighter and injured 13 more people. He is facing a felony charge of involuntary manslaughter and three other misdemeanors relating to the unlawful transfer, release, maintenance, and control of liquid petroleum gas. The worker, 67, has been released on a $5,000 unsecured bond and is prohibited...

This week, EPA finalized a rule to ban some uses of CTC that have already ceased and establish robust workplace protections, including a Workplace Chemical Protection Program (WCPP), including an inhalation exposure concentration limit, direct dermal contact controls, and related workplace exposurecontrols, and prescriptive controls, for uses not prohibited to address the unreasonable risk to human...

OSHA has released comprehensive data collected on more than 890,000 workplace injuries and illnesses at more than 91,000 workplaces in calendar year 2023, including incident-level details on the conditions and circumstances of injury and illness events. Federal electronic recordkeeping and reporting requirements require certain employers to use OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application to submit injury...

There has been a lot of armchair quarterbacking regarding the decision to Vent & Burn the VC railcars in East Palestine, OH. My personal and professional opinion, knowing what I knew at the time, was that V&B was the correct decision. These decisions are always challenging to make, but failing to perform V&B on these cars left the potential for a BLEVE (of sorts) to occur. I have posted...

The gas main explosion caused 30 homes in Wessington to be evacuated. A company and contractor have been fined after a gas main explosion led to the evacuation of 30 homes in a village. Residents were forced to leave their properties on 21 June 2022 after a worker struck the underground gas main while installing fencing, causing the explosion. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said the blast...

I have written extensively about pressurized containers in the fire safety arena catastrophically failing and leading to injuries. But this event is new to me. I have no idea what “detonators” are used for in a fire protection system; can anyone who does this for a living explain? UPDATE: Many THANKS to everyone for sending me more info. The source of the explosion was fire suppression...

Under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the statutory authority to set phase-out dates for ozone-depleting substances (ODS) and to evaluate potential risks posed by proposed ODS substitutes. Under the terms of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, EPA promulgated regulations to phase out the production of Halon 1301....