CSB Announces Meeting – 4-20-16

Today the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) published a meeting notice in the Federal Register (81 FR 21533-21534) for a public meeting in Washington, DC on April 20^th, 2016. The meeting will also be shared via a conference line.

This is a business meeting rather than an incident review meeting. Items on the agenda include:

• The status of open investigations;

• An update on audits from the Office of the Inspector General;

• Financial and organizational updates;

• A review of the agency's action plan; and

• A calendared notation item related to recommendations 2001-01-H-R9 and 2001-01-H-R10 from the 2002 study on Improving Reactive Hazard Management.

Both of the recommendations that will be evaluated/approved are recommendations made to the American Chemistry Council. They revolve around:

• Developing and implementing a program for reporting reactive incidents that includes the sharing of relevant safety knowledge and lessons learned; and

• Work with NIST in developing and implementing a publicly available database for reactive hazard test information.

There will be a public comment period provided at the meeting and written comments may be submitted for the record.

CSB to Hold ExxonMobil Refinery Incident Meeting

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) published a meeting notice in today’s Federal Register (81 FR 903) announcing a meeting in Torrance, CA concerning the February 18^th, 2015 explosion at the ExxonMobil Refinery in Torrance. The meeting will be held on January 13^th. Interim findings will be presented by the CSB Staff. The meeting will also be web cast on the CSB web site

In addition to hearing from the staff on the status of the current investigation, the Board will also hear a presentation from a panel of experts on changes that are being made to the California process safety programs.

Registration is not required, but there will be limited seating available. According to the CSB press release pre-registration can be made by contacting the agency at meeting@csb.gov. There will be limited time for public comments at the end of the meeting and written comments may be submitted. There has been no method specified in the notice for submitting written comments but using the above email address should suffice.

CSB Investigation Meeting – NDK Crystal Explosion

Today the Chemical Safety Board published a meeting announcement in the Federal Register (78 FR 65610-65611) for a public meeting to discuss the results of their investigation of the December 7, 2009, accident at NDK Crystal, Inc., in Belvidere, Illinois. The public meeting will be held on November 14^th, 2013 in Rockford, IL.

The CSB staff will present their draft case study and after a brief public response period at the meeting the Board will vote on the acceptance of the staff findings. The notice lists the following key issues that were identified in the Board’s investigation:

• Pressure vessel design and material selection requirements,

• Learning from previous incidents, and

• Routine and thorough inspections of equipment.

The public is invited to make comments at the meeting, but should limit their comments to 5 minutes and written comments may be submitted at the meeting.

CSB Meeting on T2 Laboratories Explosion

Today the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) published a notice in the Federal Register that it will be conducting a public meeting on September 15, 2009 concerning the results of it’s investigation into the December 19th, 2007 explosion and fire at the T2 Laboratories manufacturing facility in Jacksonville, FL. Reporting back in late 2007 and early 2008 indicated that this was one of the largest explosions that CSB had looked at to date. It was the apparent result of an over-pressurization of a reaction vessel that caused that vessel to fail. The resulting flammable-vapor release formed a large fuel-air-mixture cloud which provided the situation for the actual devastating explosion. The accident caused four on-site deaths, including one of the owners, and a large number of on- and off-site injuries. It will be interesting to see what CSB determined the cause of the accident to be. One thing that will almost certainly come out of the investigation is a renewed call by CSB for both EPA and OSHA to be more proactive in regulating reactive-chemistry safety. DHS might want to re-look at their stand on what constitutes sabotage COI after seeing the results of this meeting.