Review - Pool Chemical Safety Redux – 8-9-21

 

A follow-up news story about a ‘chemical leak at a Texas water park’ story calls for an update about pool chemical safety. The new story claims that the chemical release was the result of an improperly installed filtration system. Is that even possible? Sure, it would have to deal with how chemical additives are piped to the their system.

I have previously described here the problems with sulfuric acid and bleach as water treatment chemicals. According to the news reports in this case, those were the two chemicals involved in this incident. It would appear that they were added into the pool water system at or near the water filtration system. Normally, one would expect that they were added at separate times to avoid this type of reaction. Apparently, that did not occur in this case for whatever reason.

If this was a fully automated system, the process control engineer (probably a different title at a water park), needs to go back and ensure that process control system for the water system takes into account any stoppages in the flow of water in the timing between the additions of these two chemicals into the system. If this was a manual system, the problem is more difficult because you may have to ensure that multiple people working the system are in communications about the operations of their individual parts.

If you really wanted to be safe, I would probably design the system so that one (more probably both) of the chemicals would be added into the pool by physically separated systems not attached to the filtration system. This would go back to the ‘opposite sides of the pool’ process that has long been recommended for. This is certainly more difficult and expensive to set up, but it would be inherently safer, something for which chemical process people should always strive.

For a more detailed discussion of the chemical reactions involved and how this incident could have occurred, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/pool-chemical-safety-redux-8-9-21 - subscription required.

 

OSHA Updates RAGAGEP Enforcement Guidance

This week the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) updated their enforcement guidance document that addresses the Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practices (RAGAGEP) requirements of the Process Safety Management (PSM) program. The original memorandum was published in June of last year.

SNARKY Comment

I’m going to start of this post with a very snarky comment, but it is one of my pet peeves so please bear with me.

For an agency that is very big on enforcing management of change policies in regulated environments they do a piss poor job of following those requirements in their own activities. This is a revision of an existing document but there is no summary of the changes made to the document, no explanation as to why the changes have been made and there is no clear statement as to when the changes take effect. Come on people, cut your employees and the regulated industries a little slack here.

Apparently Minor Changes

There are a number of wording changes that would appear to be relatively minor and inconsequential except for the fact that they are made throughout the document. For example, the word ‘published’ is removed as an adjective extensively throughout the whole document. We see this first in the first section of the document (now entitled ‘Examples of RAGAGEP’ where it was called ‘Primary Sources of RAGAGEP’) where ‘Published and widely adopted codes’ was changed to ‘Widely adopted codes’ and similar changes were made to the next two paragraph headings.

The word ‘publish’ and its variants were removed from the discussion in each of those three paragraphs as well. Does this mean that covered facilities can reference RAGAGEP standards that have not been published? And if they have not been published, how can an OSHA inspector determine if the facility is in compliance with those RAGAGEP? Or was this word removed to avoid confusion between publishing in the form of printed documents versus being published only in electronic format? Or was this just a change because the author of the new memorandum just has a thing about the word ‘publish’? This is an area where the appropriate use of management of change processes could provide some clarity.

Other Uses of RAGAGEP

The original memo included a section on other uses of RAGAGEP materials in PSM. It stated:

“Only the three sections of 1910.119 referenced above require compliance with RAGAGEP. However, RAGAGEP can also provide useful background and context, and can help CSHOs identify and document hazards and feasible means of abatement when reviewing other aspects of the employer’s PSM program and covered equipment.”

 This section is not included in the new version published this week. I would assume (because OSHA does not explain the change I am allowed to make assumptions) that this is because some OSHA inspectors were using RAGAGEP as justification for violations that had nothing to do with the RAGAGEP requirements of 1910.119. That would clearly be regulatory overreach and that would put OSHA in a bad light when complaints were brought before an administrative law judge.

Updated RAGAGEP

In the ‘Enforcement Considerations’ section of the memorandum there is another unexplained exorcise of a paragraph in consideration #12. That consideration deals with appropriate process mitigations when changes to RAGAGEP have been made. The original memo closed out the discussion with the following paragraph that is not in the newer version:

“This can be accomplished through a variety of approaches, such as but not limited to the PHA revalidation and management of change (MOC) processes, or through corporate monitoring and review of published standards. Citations for 29 CFR 1910.119(d)(3)(iii), either stand-alone or grouped with, for example, (e)(3) or (l)(1), may be appropriate if the employer fails to address the issues (see item 8 above).”

 While that original paragraph was not very clear on how these ‘approaches’ would be used to “address issues raised by or identified in the updated RAGAGEP”, it did at least point the OSHA inspector (and the covered facility) in the direction of looking in these areas to see if the RAGAGEP changes had been appropriately dealt with. I have no idea (or even wild assumption) about why this was removed from the guidance document.

Commentary

Remembering that this is a guidance document for OSHA inspectors I am disappointed that the changes made in this revision do nothing to clarify matters relating to the weakest point of the guidance; how to deal with revisions to RAGAGEP in an actual covered chemical process. If anything, the removal of the paragraph from item #12 actually muddies the water somewhat.

Covered facilities should also be able to use these memoranda to help them understand how inspectors are supposed to be looking at their PSM programs. This should help facilities to craft their programs in a way that is not only safe but compliant with current requirements. While compliance certainly does ensure safety, it is certainly in the best interest of facility management that they understand the compliance requirements.

Making changes to enforcement guidance is making changes to compliance requirements, even if (maybe most importantly, especially if) there are no changes being made to the regulations. Thus it is important to both inspectors and facility process safety managers to understand the true scope and reasons for changes to that guidance. Making changes to that guidance without an appropriate management of change does a disservice to both the inspectors and the regulated community.

EPA Publishes RMP Revision NPRM

The EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in Monday’s Federal Register (available on-line today; 81 FR 13637-13712) for revisions to their Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations. The revisions are mostly in response to the President’s executive order on Chemical Safety and Security (EO 13650) and the EPA’s request for information (RFI) supporting that EO.

NPRM Overview

The major points of the NPRM address the following three areas:

• Accident Prevention Program Revisions

• Emergency Response Enhancements

• Enhanced Availability of Information

The NPRM proposed three changes to the accident prevention program. These include:

• Requiring all facilities with Program 2 or 3 processes to conduct a root cause analysis as part of an incident investigation of a catastrophic release or an incident that could have reasonably resulted in a catastrophic release (i.e., a near-miss);

• Requiring regulated facilities with Program 2 or 3 processes to contract with an independent third-party to perform a compliance audit after the facility has a reportable release; and

• Requiring selected facilities to conduct a safer technology and alternatives analysis (STAA) as part of their PHA, and to evaluate the feasibility of any inherently safer technology (IST) identified.

The NPRM proposed four changes to the emergency response enhancements. These include:

• Requiring all facilities with Program 2 or 3 processes to coordinate with the local emergency response agencies at least once a year to ensure that resources and capabilities are in place to respond to an accidental release of a regulated substance;

• Requiring all facilities with Program 2 or 3 processes to conduct notification exercises annually to ensure that their emergency contact information is accurate and complete; and

• Requiring all facilities subject to the emergency response program requirements of subpart E of the rule (or “responding facilities”) conduct a full field exercise at least once every five years and one tabletop exercise annually in the other years; and

• Requiring responding facilities that have an RMP reportable accident to conduct a full field exercise within a year of the accident.

The NPRM proposed five changes to the enhanced availability of information. These include:

• Requiring all facilities to provide certain basic information to the public through easily accessible means such as a facility Web site or at public libraries or government offices;

• Requiring a subset of facilities, upon request, to provide the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) with summaries related to: compliance, emergency response exercises, accident history and investigation reports, and any ISTs implemented at the facility;

• Requiring all facilities to hold a public meeting for the local community within a specified timeframe after an RMP reportable accident;

• Proposing revisions to clarify or simplify the RMP submission; and

• Proposing technical corrections to various provisions of the rule.

EPA Seeking Guidance

In addition to the proposed changes in the NPRM, the EPA is also looking for public input on additional changes to the RMP that might be included in future rulemaking. For the accident prevention program, the EPA is looking for information on additional requirements for:

• Location of stationary sources (related to their proximity to public receptors); or

• Emergency shutdown systems

Public Comments

The EPA is soliciting public feedback on the NPRM. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # EPA-HQ-OEM-2015-072). Comments should be received by May 13^th, 2016.

The EPA is currently planning one public hearing to allow personnel to provide oral comments about the NPRM. The hearing will be held on March 29^th, 2016 in Washington, DC. Advanced registration for a chance to speak at the hearing is strongly suggested. You are supposed to be able to register on-line here, but the site is not set up as of the time I’m writing this post (3-12-16 9:00 pm CST). I suspect that it will be set up sometime on Monday.

Commentary

While I have not had a chance to complete a detailed review of the extensive NPRM, it seems clear even at the broad overview provided here that no one is going to be fully satisfied with what the NPRM proposes or ignores. In general I think that that should be the mark of any good regulation, but we will have to wait and see if that is the specific case here.

The topic of inherently safer technology provides a good case in point. Environmental and many safety advocates have long pushed for the EPA to require RMP facilities to implement IST improvements to their chemical processes. While there is not a consensus definition of what an IST improvement would be, the more vocal advocates press for a replacement of toxic chemicals with safer alternatives where ever possible, while more moderate advocates would replace the ‘where ever possible’ with ‘where practical’.

Industry, on the other hand, maintains that it already has conducted IST analysis as part of their standard engineering practices and that the decision to implement a specific IST improvement is a risk-management decision that is only able to be made by facility owners and engineers based upon their unique knowledge of the process.

At first glance it looks like the EPA in this NPRM has taken a middle road or requiring companies to formally document their IST analysis process.  Business will most likely complain that this is bureaucratic make-work that will cost money without providing any safety improvement. The safety and environmental activists will certainly agree that the study provision will not provide any safety improvement; that such improvements can only come with mandatory IST implementation. It will take a detailed look at the IST process outlined in this NPRM (I’ll be doing this in some later blog post) to determine which is more nearly correct about their assessment.

As usual, readers of this blog can expect that I will be taking more detailed looks at the actual language of the proposed changes in a series of future blog posts. Two things that I can tell you at this point: first, I expect that multiple parties will petition for a longer comment period (90 days instead of 60); second, I expect that there will also be multiple requests for regional public hearings. I really expect that both requests will be honored.

CSB Meeting Announced for Next Week - Caribbean Petroleum

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) published a meeting notice in today’s Federal Register (80 FR 42085-42086) for a public meeting to be held in Washington, DC on July 22^nd, 2015. The status of several on-going investigations will be discussed, including the final report on the Caribbean Petroleum accident.

Meeting

According to the CSB web site the following topics will be addressed:

∙ Updates on current CSB investigations;

∙ The final report, recommendations, and public comments received on the Caribbean Petroleum incident, a massive fire at an oil storage facility in Puerto Rico in 2009.  The Board may then vote on the Caribbean Petroleum report;

∙ A staff presentation on the calendared recommendation to BP resulting from the CSB’s investigation into the 2005 BP America refinery explosion in Texas City, TX; and

∙ Staff reports on recommendations related to California’s draft Process Safety Management rules and laboratory safety guidelines from the American Chemical Society.

The meeting is open to the public and there is no mention of any requirements for advanced registration. For those not able to attend in person there will be a phone participation option. After the Board completes the agenda items there will be time for public statements limited to 5 minutes or less. Written statements for the record may be submitted at the meeting or provided to Hillary J. Cohen, Communications Manager, hillary.cohen@csb.gov.

Other Issues

People who have been following the CSB will be well aware of numerous personnel issues that have been plaguing the Board for the last couple of years. They are now down to just two active members (a new Chair and another new member have been nominated and are going through the Senate confirmation process). This combined with conflicts between the Board and the CSB staff has undoubtedly affected the performance of the CSB.

Of much more concern have been the allegations of misconduct of some of the past and current Board members. More recently there have been allegations of contract improprieties perpetrated by the self-declared “interim executive and administrative authority”. Exacerbating these issues is the open conflict between the two remaining Board members. NOTE: Thanks to Richard Rosera for pointing me at these last two articles.

The underfunded CSB has a good historical record of investigating serious chemical process and handling accidents, determining root causes of those accidents and turning that information into both specific and broad industry guidelines for improving chemical process safety. The current problems need to be resolved before they have a permanent effect on the Board’s ability to perform its valuable and necessary function.

I am not generally a big fan of congressional investigations, but these problems have reached the point where congressional oversight is probably going to be the only thing that can prevent some of the current calls for the disbanding of the Board to be put into operation.