by Mike Hall, Mar 13, 2008

Edwin Foulke, head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), defended his agency’s actions in preventing combustible dust explosions like the Feb. 7 blast that claimed the lives of 12 workers and seriously injured 11 others at an Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga.

We’ve taken strong measures on combustible dust.

But several other safety experts and members of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee laid out a pattern of inaction on OSHA’s part in setting a dust standard, including ignoring the 2006 recommendation of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) that an emergency combustible standard was needed to save lives.

At a hearing yesterday that probed the Imperial Sugar explosion, committee Chairman Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said:

What’s particularly troubling about the Imperial Sugar explosion is that, not only was it preventable, but [OSHA] had been specifically warned about dust hazards and provided with guidance on how to address them.

The [CSB] warned OSHA over a year ago that existing standards were inadequate to guard against the risk of industrial dusts, like sugar, building up to dangerous levels and exploding.

When dust builds up to dangerous levels in industrial worksites, it can become fuel for fires and explosions. Combustible dust can come from many sources, such as sugar, flour, feed, plastics, wood, rubber, furniture, textiles, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes, coal and metals, and so poses a risk across a number of different industries.

Last week, Miller and Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) introduced legislation requiring OSHA to move quickly on a dust standard. Since 1980 there have been 281 combustible dust explosions that have killed 119 worker and seriously injured another 781. Said William Wright, the interim chair of the CSB:

These tragedies are preventable. The key to avoiding the most devastating accidents is to eliminate the basic fuel, the combustible dust that accumulates over time inside plants and awaits some event to trigger a massive explosion.

But instead of issuing a combustible dust standard, OSHA is relying on corporations voluntarily policing themselves; distribution of information about the danger of high dust levels and what are known as housekeeping rules to clean and remove dust. But as Wright pointed out, those rules require:

that “all places of employment be kept clean and orderly and in a sanitary condition” but does not mention combustible dust or impose any specific enforceable limitations, engineering controls, procedures, or training requirements.

In fact, prior to the explosion Imperial Sugar had a regular housekeeping and cleanliness program to maintain food quality and safety and to protect workers from slips and other injuries.

Tammy Miser, whose brother Shawn in 2003 was killed in a combustible dust explosion in Huntington, Ind., criticized OSHA for seeking voluntarily compliance and for not issuing a dust standard:

We know that it’s feasible to prevent these explosions. And it is beyond negligent to expect a company that knows about these hazards to voluntarily comply, instead of making it a requirement.

OSHA put out a bulletin on combustible dust, but at the very beginning it says, “This Safety and Health Information Bulletin is not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations.” How seriously do you think companies will take it?

Miller said OSHA’s failure to act on a combustible dust standard is a “tragic pattern of inaction” from the safety agency ever since the Bush administration took office.

We see it in the agency’s failure to inspect refineries; in its failure to issue new workplace safety rules; in its failure to address ergonomic hazards; in its failure to effectively address the potential hazards of pandemic flu; in its failure to meet even its own deadlines on standards for workers’ personal protective equipment and other life threatening hazards; in its highly questionable injury and illness statistics; and in its promotion of voluntary programs over strong enforcement of the law.

Click here to see a webcast of the hearing and to read testimony from all the witnesses.

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