Tuesday, December 9, 2014
By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. Four years after an explosion and fire at a Hancock County {West Virginia} metals recycling plant killed three workers, the Obama administration has basically shelved a regulatory proposal that could help prevent such incidents.
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The {U.S. Chemical Safety Board} has been urging OSHA to write a combustible dust rule since 2006, when the board issued a landmark report that detailed 281 such incidents between 1980 and 2005 that resulted in 119 deaths and 718 injuries. Between 2008 and 2013, the CSB has found 50 more incidents involving 29 deaths and 161 injuries.
In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama said that it was long past time for OSHA to issue a combustible dust rule, and after his election, OSHA moved in April 2009 to being writing such a rule. But OSHA has never published a proposed rule, and has repeatedly delayed the next step in the rulemaking process a meeting to collect information about the potential impacts on small businesses and in May delayed any action on the issue again.
Just before Thanksgiving, the White House quietly released its most recent regulatory agenda. It indicated that OSHA had moved the dust rule to its long-term actions category, with no deadlines or timelines for any progress on the rule. ... Jesse Lawder, an OSHA spokesman, said agency officials have had to make some tough choices to prioritize other rules, such as one on silica exposure, another on construction work in confined spaces and a few others.
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Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.