Sugar dust, like other industrial dusts, is extremely combustible, but despite the urging of safety experts, the Bush administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has yet to set a federal standard to control combustible dust levels.
Today, the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee approved a bill to force OSHA to issue combustible dust rules. Says committee chairman Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.):
It’s unfortunate that OSHA didn’t heed warnings from 2006 about the dangers of combustible dusts, but it’s downright stunning that OSHA still has no sense of urgency in dealing with these deadly hazards, even after the Imperial Sugar tragedy. Unlike OSHA, this Congress is not complacent about the safety of American workers.
The legislation follows the deadly Feb. 7 explosion at Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth, Ga., plant. Sugar dust had built to a level that when an as yet unidentified source sparked the combustible sugar dust, the blast was so powerful it killed 13 workers, injured dozens more and caused extensive damage to the plant.
In 2006, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) issued a report calling for mandatory regulations to prevent such explosions. But OSHA has ignored the board’s calls for dust level standards and instead is relying on corporations to voluntarily regulate themselves.
Just last month, OSHA administrator Edwin Foulke told reporters a dust standard was not likely anytime soon.
We need to have the documentation, we have to have the research, we need to have the evidence.
Since 1980, there have been 281 combustible dust explosions that have killed 119 workers and seriously injured another 781.
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 therefore poses a risk across a number of different industries throughout the United States.
The legislation, H.R. 5522, must be approved by the full House before going to the Senate. The bill would:
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Direct OSHA to issue interim rules on combustible dust within 90 days. The rules would include measures to minimize hazards associated with combustible dust through improved housekeeping, engineering controls, worker training and a written combustible dust safety program;
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Direct OSHA to issue final rules within 18 months. The rules would be based on effective voluntary standards devised by the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit organization, and in addition to items required in the interim rules, would include requirements for building design and explosion protection. The interim rules would remain in effect until the final standard is issued; and
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Direct OSHA to revise the Hazard Communication Standard to include combustible dusts.
At a March 13 hearing, 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.
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