this point it appears that we will have a number of procedural and parliamentary votes and motions on the floor so we're going to try to get through this the best way we can this this morning and to make sure that we have  e for all of our witnesses and our first two witnesses who will be first with the honorable john barrow who represents georgia's twelve congressional district includes the imperial sugar refinery  lies adjacent as i understand it to this area where the imperial sugar refinery is he will he will also join us at the at the witness table if he's delayed we'll call the panel and we'll take a take on congressman kingston when he when he arrives if i might just with some opening remarks say that just over a month ago an explosion ripped through the imperial sugar plant outside of savannah georgia killing twelve workers and injuring eleven others the probable cause of this explosion was combustible sugar dust the loss of lives and workplace incident is always a tragedy but what's particularly troubling about the imperial sugar explosion is that not only was it preventable but the u s occupational safe and healthy administration had been specifically warned about the dust hazards and provided a guidance on how to address them the u s chemical safety board warned osha over a year ago that existing standards were  adequate to guard against the risk of industrial dust like sugar building up in the dangerous levels and exploding as we will hear today in two thousand and six the chemical safety board issued a comprehensive study that identified hundreds of that killed over one hundred workers during the previous twenty five years the chemical safety board report found that no comprehensive federal rule rules exist for the control the risk to control the risk of dust explosions and general industry and recommended osha issues such rules tragically with more than the well more than a year after this chemical safety board's report was issued osha has taken no action to issue combustible dust rules and today's hearing we will discuss legislation h r fifty five twenty two to require osha to issue a standard to protect workers against combustible dust explosions the new standard would be based on a well recognized highly effective voluntary standards issued by the national fire protection association sadly osha's failure to act on civil dust is not the first time the agencies in action may have cost workers their lives for example in december nineteenth two thousand and seven four workers died in a massive explosion at the t two chemicals plant in jacksonville florida that the likely cause was runaway chemical reaction the chemical safety board warned osha about this chemical reaction has in two thousand and two report that identified one hundred eight fatalities in the previous twenty years resulting from explosions caused by chemical reactions the chemical safety board report made recommendations for addressing reactive hazards but as with the dust hazard oshie chose not to follow up on the recommendations instead osha chose to rely on the compliance assistance voluntary programs that has industry alliance's web pages fact sheet speeches and booths at an industry conferences the chemical safety board judge these voluntary activities to be an acceptable the bottom line is that under the bush administration utterly failed to fulfill its congressional mandate the agency is levy is leaving the congress with no choice but to step in just look at the record of the last twelve months on march twenty second two thousand and seven this committee held a hearing on  british petroleum texas city refinery explosion that killed fifteen workers in a decade before a hearing no she had not conducted a single comprehensive inspection of any refinery in the united states two days before the hearing ocean asked it would step up inspections in refineries nationwide on april twenty fourth two thousand and seven the subcommittee on workforce protections held a hearing osha's failure to address the death and illnesses of workers in the food flavoring industry deaths caused by the horrific irreversible lung disease and not lung disease now called popcorn long hours after the hearing ocean off the so called national emphasis program targeting food and flavoring manufacturers september twenty second twenty six two thousand and seven the house approved a bill forcing no should to develop rules to protect food flavoring workers just hours before that boat ocean nasa was going to start the rulemaking process the day after the imperial sugar explosion congresswoman  letter to secretary chao requesting the standards on combustible dust on the morning of march third after receiving no response from secretary chao congressman barr oh and i introduced the h r fifty five twenty two coincidently the same morning as we made the announcement assistant secretary falk made it was in savannah conducting a series of press interviews and he announced osha would conduct more combustible dust inspections and send letters to companies at risk but there is no reason for osha to wait to get to work on issuing new rules that would prevent this kind of disaster in the future the national fire protection association and others have known for a long time what causes these explosions and the national fire protection association voluntary standards are feasible and affordable unfortunately we see this tragic pattern of workplace injury or death followed by osha and action everywhere we look we see it in the agency's failure to inspect refineries and its failure to issue new workplace safety rules and it's fair to address hazards and failure to effectively address the potential hazards of pandemic flu and its failure to even to meet even its own deadlines on standards for workers personal protection equipment and other life threatening hazards it is it is this highly questionable injury and illness the statistics and its promotion of voluntary programs over overstrong law enforcement troubles us let me be clear the congress will continue to step in until osha starts to consistently and aggressively fulfilling its responsibility of protecting the lives of american workers i'd like to thank all of our witnesses in the vans for joining us today and the committee appreciate your testimony congressman bera welcome to the to the committee and we look forward to your testimony destroyed by a massive explosion the explosion killed twelve people main dozens more and shut down the economic engine that drove an entire community i have visited with the families of the dead and the dying i would turn to the meetings  into the memorial services and the question i hear over and over again is why why did this happen and what can we do to prevent this from happening again turns out that the cause is something that folks most folks don't even know about at all don't those the least bit dangerous at all and that's too much sugar dust all over the police also turns out there are lots and lots of other industrial does that can cause massive explosions like this and have been causing massive explosions like this for as long as manufacturing plants have been generating dust on an industrial scale what we've learned in my community since this disaster hit us is that the experts in the field known about this problem for decades they've been voluntary standards that effectively deal with this problem but not enough people know about the problem much less the solutions and even those who know about the solutions are required to adopt them we've also learned that the only standards that are mandatory really aren't designed with this problem in mind and they are working and so we have good standards that are not mandatory and inadequate standards that are mandatory so here we are again and once again the cry goes up to fix this problem has been around for so long only this time this time we're not going to get about what happen we're not going to stop until we do we can cut down this risk as much as possible of until now the arguments between those who say we shouldn't go too fast in developing a national standard and those who are you are going to slow there are those who argue that the cost of a comprehensive solution outweigh the benefits we've even had some people argue that we should go slow in adopting a national standard as we run the risk of encouraging employers to take our jobs in some other country where they don't care as much about worker safety as we do i disagree i say if we can prevent just one of these disasters from happening if we can prevent just one family from going through what the families at imperial sugar are going through it be worth it meanwhile some happen it sheds a whole new light on the debate and gives a whole new reason for adopting a national standard doing so as quickly as we can because georgia isn't waiting for congress to act the georgia insurance commissioner john oxendine has exercised his authority under georgia law to adopt the voluntary standards promulgated by the people who know best how to prevent these disasters from happening the n f p a and to make those standards mandatory but in georgia not commend him for his prompt action but i want to emphasize that this action gives us a new and compelling reason for national action because it's no longer an issue about losing jobs to foreign markets we don't care about worker safety as much as we do we now have to worry about americans losing jobs to other americans just because they happen to live in states where they haven't learned the lessons of imperial sugar yet unsafe competition is unfair competition and the specter of unsafe competition from abroad bad enough but the reality of unsafe competition right here at home is even worse if we really want to do we can to prevent this from happening we need and we need to act now the bill that chairman miller and i have introduced essentially does two major things first it directs osha to issue a rule within ninety days which would as a general matter require manufacturers to comply with the unit the a standard that right now are purely voluntary basic safety would no longer be an employer option no longer be a local option it would be a common obligation and a common right second our bill would give osha the opportunity to modify or revise the rule before it becomes final if they think they can make it better but it shifts to osha the burden of showing how those standards can be made better and we don't leave workers at risk for as long as that continue i commend the members of this committee especially chairman miller and congresswoman woolsey but try to do something about this for a long time the time to act is now we owe it to the victims of last month's tragedy and all the other victims before that to do what we can to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again thank you mr chairman thank you and thank you very much for taking your time in coming to testify but also the time that common arguments and that is that somehow these if we impose these regulations that that will drive jobs overseas that's commonly used by people who don't want the regulation i just wonder what you see kind of reaction you're  getting from your from your constituents again mr chairman the idea of unsafe competition being something we have to compete with on a national level is bad enough but while other states and move states in moving forward on a state by state basis to try and address this problem the reality is we've got unsafe competition right here at home and i think the specter of unsafe competition abroad is exaggerated and we shouldn't tolerate that either we should insist as a condition of fair trade agreements and the like that folks incorporate the cost of doing things safely our competing markets just like we were cooperate the cost of doing things safely is a cost of doing business in our country as i said unsafe competition is unfair competition that's true at the national level it's also going to be true we don't act as a national as will be true right here at home wh this what this risk was inside that facility or in the community the sense that i get mr chairman is the folks who work in the plants are generally aware that there is some are what was all too obvious is that the standards that were in force in the sand is that one effect nationwide are not adequate resent this sort of thing from happening and while it's one thing to know about it's another realize just how great the likelihood of an insanity is and the greater the gravity of the harm the less likelihood you have to have it on in order to have a need to act and that's what i think we're dealing with here thank you want to welcome my colleague jack kingston here as against and we welcome you were trying to fit this testimony in and out of the votes and i was told there was going to be a second vote but i see obviously there is a second vote but thank you for coming over and we have the minutes here b i don't know if you've made this saw that i would hear from my colleagues testimony i just want to say that thank you very much for inviting me and i appreciate this committee's interest and standards and i think it's good to have this hearing and i think it's important to act quickly and also act effectively because the gull that we all share is to prevent accidents like this in the future and i know we are all united in comprehensive worker safety i am a little concerned about the bill that in its present form it could have some unintended consequences primarily my concern is that it may be a one to fit one size fits all approach  we need to make sure that we have regulations tailored to different types of dustin to different types of industries just to name a few they're skull there's metal there's organics there sugar there's plastic wood and pharmaceuticals each with its now that might be something we need to look at from an appropriations standpoint but there are about eighty thousand plants in the country that happen tensile dust related hazards but since this legislation doesn't call for additional inspections housekeep and violations of the general duty clause of the one nine hundred seventy occupational safety safety and health that could continue to be a problem and h r fifty five twenty two recommends a rule based on having no less protection than the national fire protection association standards the n f p a six fifty four n f p a four eighty four feature numerous provisions which are comparable to existing osha standards such as housekeeping controls for accumulation of combustible an electrical ignition sources other parts of n f p a six fifty four and four eighty four would actually expand the scope of his authority into areas such as building design and that may be the intent of the committee but but i think we need to be aware of that in addition n f p a sixty one is not mentioned in the bill but that's the portion that covers products such as sugar and certainly we should look at that in terms of this legislation also h r fifty five twenty two requires that osha violated statutory mandate for public comment period i see why congress wants to move quickly but doing so could eliminate helpful comments from thousands of industry stakeholders employees in unions who could contribute helpful suggestions and concerns without the appropriate time frame for evaluation and their input it will be difficult to determine any and intended consequences of this regulation and finally we don't definitely know what caused this tragedy numerous inspectors are trying to answer that question even as we make today these include osha the chemical safety board the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms local fire inspectors and insurance adjuster among these questions are what ignited the dust why after ninety years of operation did an explosion of this size occurs car was there a change in dust containment was there a lapse  housekeeping did the ventilation change was there a process and change certainly answers to these questions are going to be relevant to affective legislation well fast action is desired appropriate action and regulation should not be discounted i hope we can meet both these objectives and i look forward to working with with you and mr barrow and i think mr balfour introduced in this and with that mr chairman that my testimony thank you processing but the but what they saw was you didn't have a consistent system with integrity of removing the fuel from the from this mission points come in in all different fashions but it's the it's the presence of the fuel and what they you know when they looked at this they didn't see a framework to make sure that that fuel was minimized during this process or a lot of different procedures the n f p a standards have evolved as a result of give and take an input from every conceivable sector of the industrial a communist country for over sixty years now what's needed is not input has he got that what's needed is the will to act when you've got an agency that don't know  congressman kingston thank you for your time and for your testimony the committee will return as soon as possible will reconvene the committee and if we have our next town come forward thank you in advance for your testimony thank you for your participation in today's hearing i think it's critically important hearing and thank you for your patience in putting up with the congressional floor schedule say at the moment it's a little bit unpredictable but there's two stories either we're going to have about an hour or we're going to be right back on the floor very quickly so will will see our next panel is made up of mr william e right william wright was appointed to the u s chemical safety and hazards investigation board in september two thousand and six immediately prior to his appointment to the board mr wright served five years as chairman of the department of defense explosive safety board mr wright served in the navy special operations explosive ordinance disposal community and mr wright earned his bachelor's degree support memorials and awareness to families of workers killed on the job she was one of the two thousand and seven tony miss ocky award from the occupation and from the occupational section of the american public health association ever to focus it was appointed assistant secretary of labor for the occupational self and hate occupational safety and health and sept september two thousand and five prior to his nomination mr polk was a partner in the law firm of jackson lewis of greenville south carolina and washington c mr davis of r t is an attorney with at cal and heckman in washington d c and represents clients in the areas of occupational health safety toxic substance management pesticide regulation employment law and product safety he's a certified industrial hi gene ist amy spencer is a senior chemical engineer at the national fire protection association in quincy massachusetts she has been with the n f p a twelve years and prior to joining this organization she worked at the national institute of occupational health and safety welcome to the to the committee we look forward to your testimony when you begin the green light will go on and when you have one minute left of the five minutes an orange light will go on we'd like you to try to wrap up your testimony but we certainly want you to complete your thoughts on the purpose of your testimony and then there will be a red light and again mr wright we're going to begin with you chairman miller ranking member mckeon and distinguished members of the committee i am william wright testifying today on behalf of the u s chemical safety board including members william work and gary i commend you for convening today's hearing and for your leadership on this issue mr chairman the disastrous accident at imperial sugar is but what's the latest of a long series of tragic dust explosions going back over decades dust explosions kill and injure american workers destroy jobs and businesses and shattered communities no one knows that better than tammy miser after losing her brother shot to a dust explosion she has courageously dedicated her life to drawing attention to this deadly hazard mr chairman these human tragedies are preventable without accumulated the most catastrophic type of dust explosion will not occur good engineering and safety practices to prevent dust explosions have existed for decades in the standards of the national fire protection association n f p a in two thousand and three the c s p investigated three catastrophic dust explosions in north carolina kentucky and indiana that caused a total of fourteen deaths and dozens of injuries we found that all three facilities had longstanding dust hazards state osha officers had inspected all three facilities prior to the accidents but the dust hazards were never recognized or cited furthermore the c s p determined that all three explosions could likely have been prevented if the facilities had implemented n f p a recommended practices like these others our pulmonary findings indicate the explosion at imperial sugar appears to have been a multi stage of vince an unknown primary event most likely dislodge sugar dust that had accumulated over a long period on surfaces throughout the facility this dislodged us fuel devastating secondary explosions that killed and burned workers this facility was decades old and had many horizontal surfaces where dust could collect such as overhead floor joists rafters and ductwork witnesses have described substantial snow like accumulations of sugar dust on the surfaces most employees and contractors have received little training on the explosion hazard from accumulated dust and no witnesses others in november two thousand and six the c s p completed a comprehensive study of the problem of combustible dust we determined this problem was nationwide and urgent the problem shows no sign of diminishing and in and two thousand and five causing one hundred and one thousand deaths and seven hundred eighteen injuries and since two thousand five about seventy additional dust explosions have been reported the c s p study called on osha to develop a comprehensive regulatory standard for dust explosions and general industry to improve training of ocean inspectors and to require better communication of dust hazards for workers using material safety data sheets and as an interim measure we also recommended that osha stablish a national emphasis program to better enforce existing standards and we commend osha for having undertake such a program in october two thousand and seven osha's existing requirements including the jude general duty clause in the housekeeping standard applied to combustible dust hazards however a comprehensive dust standard would be more effective by focusing both employers and inspectors attention on this hazard and the steps that should be taken to prevent dust explosions and fires in one nine hundred eighty seven osha issued a standard to prevent brain dust explosions this standard has cut deaths and injuries from the brain dust explosions by sixty percent the grain the standard requires a formal written housekeeping program with cleaning schedules identification a priority cleaning areas and the immediate safer move all of any dust accumulations over an eighth of an inch in addition to housekeeping facilities excuse me in addition to housekeeping industrial facilities need to consider proper equipment design maintenance building design explosion venting and control of ignition sources finally workers must be made aware of the hazards of combustible dust and trained on the safe methods for working within dust environments the n f p a codes contain recommendations on all these topics and like all other voluntary consensus standards the n f p a dust those will need to be carefully  to create regulations that are reasonable and appropriate for a wide variety of affected industries and workplaces mister chairman we urge the prop development of a comprehensive dust standard as we recommended in our two thousand  this will not only save lives protect us jobs and businesses but also protect our communities thank you for the opportunity to testify today  sir thank you mr chairman and i like to thank you for the opportunity to appear here today to discuss the proposed legislation h r fifty five twenty two the combustible dust explosion and fire potential but protection act of two thousand and eight i would like to begin my testimony by expressing my deepest personal condolences to the victims and to the families of those who were killed or injured in the explosion at imperial sugar refinery in port wentworth georgia one death in the workplace is one too many every employee in osha takes the agency's mission very seriously and they join also join me in this press and their condolences to those affected by this tragedy when the explosion occurred at imperial sugar on february seventh osha responded immediately a team of highly trained experts from osha along with an outside expert on combustible dust were on the scene to help ensure the safety and health of first responders and prevent additional injuries or deaths from occurring for example osha compliance person impose appropriate penalties combustible dust is a recognized workplace hazard and osha uses a multi pronged strategy to address this hazard osha already has tough and effective standards and policies on the books that address is combustible does hers including the standards come in general requires for housekeeping electrical safety ventilation hazards location has a communication and emergency action plans a list of all seventeen osha stand as that relates last year osha implemented a comprehensive national emphasis program for combustible dusts this proactive measure was based on a regional special emphasis program on combustible dust implemented in two thousand and four the national emphasis program focuses on workplaces offices program to focus on site facilities with a high probability of catastrophic event overall osha will conduct approximately three hundred combustible dust inspection this year due to national's emphasis program in addition to combustible d standards and enforcement osha has undertaken aggressive outreach to the regulated community we are working to promote promote their understanding of potential catastrophic impact of combustible dust and inform them of the means to reduce this hazard for example in two thousand and five osha issued a safety and health information bolt in the worship entitled combustible dust in industry preventing and mitigating the effects of fire and explosion this ship was made widely available and was recently mailed to thirty thousand workplaces that are prone to combustible dust hazards we also sent an alert letter to state administrative occupational safety and health programs run by the twenty three states osha has hosted educate recession's on combustible dust and osha has also dissimilar the information and education compliance assistance materials related to combustible dust included interactive web based training tools on various occupational safety health topics further we recently posted a couple dust web page and the co bustible dust factsheet to make it easier to find these guys materials and other combustible dust resources osha is developing new guidance materials including a hazard communication alert we recognize the need for specialized training  combustible dust we have provided advanced training for over thirty three hundred fifty of our compliance safety officers this week we conducted two hour refresher course on combustible dust for over four seven hundred of our enforcement personnel we also us as a topic in the susan harbor training grant program osha has taken strong measures on combustible dust nevertheless the agency is carefully considering all options to deal with combustible dust including rulemaking osha continually about the waits and to its combustible dust efforts and the information gathered through its new effort and national emphasis program will be critical to this effort the existence of a standard does not ensure that hazards will be eliminated many tragic accidents could have been avoided or minimized if the employers that complied with existing osha standards we did not yet know what noncompliance with whether or not compliance was a factor in the tragedy it imperial sugar and it would be unfair to  public assert that today but ultimately employers are responsible for the state the health of their employees and osha stands ready to work with all interested parties who are committed to workplace safety thank you mr chairman for inviting me here today and i'll be happy to answer any questions you may have sean boone in two coworkers went in to realize a chip melt furnace and they decided to stick around a few minutes just to make sure that everything was ok and sean's back was towards the do they the furnace when they were picking up their tools and there was and there was a blast some say sean got up and started walking towards the door and then there was a second more intense blast sean didn't die instantly he laid on the building for a while the has never bothered to call the family and let us know that that sean was injured or that he was there was any kind of explosion all we received a call from a friend of my has been mark's and he told us that shawn was on his way to fort w when mark reached the hospital where they had all been transferred she asked sean was there well they didn't they hadn't and identified a white male there so nobody had even bothered to identify who my brother was the only way he was identi by as a parent body weight and structure because he had no body hair and no physical markings to identify we drove five hours that night hoping and praying it wasn't my brother we were we arrived in the on fire pastor told us to prepare ourselves because he hadn't seen anything like that since the war and the doctors told us that they were they weren't going to bandage treatment because they said that even they if they took his limbs has an internal organs were burned beyond repair and that was pretty apparent by the black sludge they were pumping out of his body i went in to see my brother and maybe somebody i didn't know him wouldn't recognize him but he still had some remnants of his i were of his red eyebrows long and he also had em rules the same face it was splitting  little small one but he was still my bed our family immediately started talking about taking him off of life support i never agreed to do this we'd alternately given up on my brother it would mean that we were taking his last breath and even though we want to morning we were still making that decision and we did we watch the machine stopped and watch my brother die before our eyes we watched him take his last breath and the two things that i can always remember and never leave are his last words i'm in a world of hurt and his last breath i truly feel for these families at the m imperial sugar plant all of them have had horrible horrible injuries and death because i know where they are and i know where they've been and i know where they're going i'm really discuss it do hate same her i felt when my brother was killed because of this information with out there and it could save them and it could save these people at the end sure imperial sugar point everybody knows what caused this explosion and it would have been nice spent we know it's feasible and it's beyond negligent to expect companies to do this voluntary basis i really strongly believe in osha and i believe it's necessary but only if it's working and i felt that in this case it failed and it's really failed miserably not only only have they failed these families but the previous one i follow this the chemical board study and i came up for that hearing and i was really excited i really thought with them given recommendations something would be done about finally something would be done but the only thing that it creates no legal obligations and i don't see how this can be expected to be taken seriously and there's sitting there telling them right off the bat that there's really no legal obligation for this is i remain hurt and angry at the lack of compassion by the corporations and osha because no matter how much time goes by the pain never goes away it never fades and the incident never dies or a lot of our losses  these kinds of hearings are always difficult for all the participants and i want to express my personal condolences to ms miers or to the people in for wentworth who suffered this tragedy  i have been around situations like this before it affects not just the families but the friends neighbors and communities and i want to support what mr barrow said this morning this tragedy in port wentworth as the tragedy suffered is going to affect a lot of people for a long time i want to thank the committee for inviting me to participate and for holding this hearing and here  to represent the chamber of commerce and to provide some insight from our perspective on the proposed legislation i want to say at the outset that submitted written statement to the record and i hope that will be introduced and i'll just make a few remarks here as we talk about this problem i've been doing industrial hygiene and occupational safety and health for nearly thirty five years one of my earliest positions was in a company where we actually had to deal with combustible dust flammable liquids an enormous array of occupational hazards in the workplace and i can tell you that that experience leaves me humble every time i see an incident like this and the reason i'm humble about it is because i'm not always sure i understand exactly what happened one of the things that i did in preparing for the testimony was i went back and looked at the  b s report on the case in north carolina of the west pharmaceutical case and what struck me about that particular report was the fact that a lot of the things that we're talking about in the n f p a standard were actually done the engineers had paid attention to some of these issues they had thought about them they'd have had planning meetings about the kinds of things that they were going to be doing what kinds of hazard they could encounter i'm not suggesting that they were infallible it's obviously that they weren't but what makes me humble about these things is the fact that not only the engineers but everybody who appeared at that port that west pharmaceutical plant missed the question of what was going on above the ceiling in that facility and i will tell you straightforwardly i expect i would have missed it as well and i have looked at these kinds of problems for many many  years without getting anything any great detail i can certainly talk about this it like but i can tell you that given the way that the plant was designed given the materials that were involved i don't think it was knowable in advance that this dust would accumulate above the ceiling because of the nature of the chemicals that were involved in the nature of the processes and that's one of the difficulties that we have people are fallible they make mistakes the one common theme that i've heard so far from the previous three speakers and also from mr barrett mr kingston this morning is that we know how in many cases to prevent these accidents what the problem seems to be is that the people who are actually involved the employers and employees involved in these facilities don't have the information and the one real serious deficiency that i see in regard to solving the problem in the future is that we haven't done an adequate job and haven't even begun talking about how do we get that information into the hands of the people that need it and make it effective i want you to understand business is not opposed to having standards standards give us guidance standards give us certainty we understand then what our obligations are when the standards are clear and unambiguous the problem with the n f p a standards is that they are often more ambiguous in certain aspects than we would like them to be they make it difficult not only for employers to comply but for the agencies to enforce them so it's really important to spend the time in transferrin a standard from a voluntary compliance programme like n f p a to a mandatory standard that would be enforced through the force of law not because we want to water down the standard or change it but to make sure that it gives clear instructions and clear understanding to everybody involved so we know that the information is available the question is are we going to use it and i can tell you that the chamber and the people that i work with the employees that i work with are committed to making these standards work and to work with osha to come up with standards that are effective and will do so hopefully in a process that osha adopts once the process once the process of investigation and savan is completed thank you mr chairman for your time and attention spencer we need your microphone on thank you i appreciate the opportunity to speak to you about the combustible dust explosion and fire prevention act of two thousand and eight my voice is a very strong this morning i'm on the tail end of a cold but i hope my message will be strong beazley spencer a senior chemical engineer representing the national fire protection association and f b i and i've worked at the association for twelve years i services staff liaison to several n f p a technical committee is responsible for documents dealing specifically with hazard by incorporating by reference the relevant standard today i will provide a brief background of an f d a a description of the relevant codes and standards that addressed us hazard processes and conclude with discussion on how i believe these codes and standards that are adopted by state and local jurisdictions throughout the us and the rest of the world the n f p a consensus process in the periodic revisions of all documents ensure state of the our practices and safeguards are included in a has more than two hundred fifty committees made up of about four thousand experts who represent diverse interests such as enforcers users consumers manufacturers designers researchers insurance and labor these experts in their various fields serve as members of the technical committee to write nearly three hundred codes and standards in fact one of the n f p a does committees has technical committee members from both osha and the chemical safety board c s b many n f p a codes and standards appear as mandatory s principle does document n f p a six fifty four standard for the prevention of fires and explosions from the manufacturing processing and handling of combustible particulate solids covers the fundamentals of dust protecting the dust hazard processes and its handling and conveying requirements are often referenced in other dust documents we also have commodities specific documents covering coal sulfur combustible metals wood dust facilities and agricultural dat in fact the operations that sugar refinery such as imperial sugar are in the scope of an f d a sixty one are agricultural the standard i don't want to bore you with the long names and numerical designations but n f p a provides comprehensive coverage of dust hazard  seven dust related documents originating as early as one nine hundred twenty three the fundamental requirements and best practices found within these documents have been highlighted in the combustible dust explosion and fire prevention act of two thousand and eight as well as c s b recommendations and industrial peer reviewed journal the necessary requirements to prevent fires and explosions include minimizing production and release of dust to the workplace and housekeeping procedures to minimize dust accumulation thereby minimizing the fuel source written programs are required to manage the hazard equipment maintenance is required to minimize ignition sources all or dust documents address the hazards of combustible dust and three simple steps first hazarded and if occasion in terms of the type of dust and its means for generation in terms of ignition sources secondly hazard evaluation a risk based assessment of the various processes and equipment used and hazard processes and third hazard control measures including building construction and location explosion control and death liberation venting housekeeping fire protection systems and management of change in conclusion if we are to safely and successfully regulate industrial processes that involved us the challenge for us all is to effectively disseminate the information to provide sufficient training and ensure consistent enforcement and f b i codes and standards adequately address how to mitigate or lemonade hazards of combustible dust we encourage any action on your part that will more aggressively require compliance with these codes and standards moreover we believe the best method to accomplish the safety goal is for osha to develop a mandatory standard to address  mitigate dust hazard by incorporating by reference the relevant n f p a codes and standard and f d a is committed to assist where appropriate in these activities and for all these reasons we support the combustible dust explosion and fire prevention act of two thousand and eight thank you for your attention the opportunity to testify  that prevention could be the could be the result of both the investigation and your recommendations chairman that's correct we believe these are preventable events i'm encouraged that osha has sent out thirty thousand letters advising enterprising people in various industries of the potential hazards and to raise their awareness but this is basic knowledge that doesn't set the bar with respect to a standard and that's why we still hold with our recommendation that a formal standard should be adopted that everybody will abide by that allow also increase the awareness of inspectors as well as employers with respect to the dust hazard and you consider that of the board the board considers that critical to overall record with respect to all the recommendations of the chemical safety board has made to us over the years we have implemented over seventy three percent of those recommendations in some form or another some of them or another that worries one of the recommendations was as part of the combustible dust study was dealing with doing some type of special emphasis program we instituted our national emphasis program we actually had a special a local emphasis program in place for combustible dust earl offices program and if we determine that there are we don't cover everything that we need to cover then we will consider making as a as a strong option mr right when you look at the totality of those regulations that housekeeping cleanliness and keeping the workplace clean but and oftentimes in these cases the dust is hidden as was pointed out in the west case and i do take a little exception to the witness that said that the ceiling dust was sort of an agree that we should have a formal standard so that employers and inspectors can keep this on people's minds for the long run and not just for a short period of time with an consider rather exhaustive and comprehensive study of this of this problem and they recommend that we go two ways to a standard for this for this purpose not knit together a series of standards from other other codes and other other reasons and that's a record that's a recommendation and your testimony mr fox you stand that all on its head instead of first their recommendation that we have a comprehensive standard you say first they recommend osha have a national emphasis program we initiate a national program in two thousand and four second the safety board recommended offer training throughout osha training as do we recognize again buswell does have a prevention we've been offering these training for several years how many people take advantage of that training for our personnel we have trained we have a three and a half day condo no no no no the general training program before you started three and a half day program the general training well all of our kosher knows when they do their initial training receive combustibles just training we're telling me that the people who are now taking the three and a half day training of all had the initial training  chemical safety board recommend osha issue a combustible dust standard and then you tell us how if all your standards are followed the workplace will be safe the explosions suggest that that's not the case inate the dust there cannot be a combustible dust explosion and our position and that's part of why we're doing the national offices program is to to to outreach to and inspect these facilities where there are potential  testimony was people the facility had the they had the information they just didn't act on it i'm not they didn't have the information about the ceiling because it wasn't called to their attention but it would have been had we taken had these other standards in place in the fire association citations on this and the courts have specific review commission and the courts have both determined that combustible dust is encompassed and part of the house keeping it as part of the housekeeping standard so if the employers comply with the housekeeping standards there would be the limitation of the dust and this there could not that would eliminate or at least mitigate the hazard of having a combustible bus explosion i don't read the safety board's direct recommendations and finding that they agree with that but i'm mr right is that accurate that the housekeeping if they were in compliance with housekeeping that that would well sir i would just refer back to the osha standard for grain dust i mean when that standard got into place sixty percent reduction in the number of explosions and fires associated with grain does i think that if abiding by current regulations will certainly help with the basic house cleaning requirements however a a robust standard that lays out specific requirements for all employers to follow will ensure that everybody follows the same sheet of music the particulars that are in place today are optional recommendations to folks  mr fultz letter itself calls attention to some of the standards and some of the procedures that are in place at his web site and ask people to make sure that they're aware of those and that they advise their employees and they raise awareness and we appreciate that because any raising awareness with respect to dust explosion knowledge is is helpful but it's not going to prevent just explosions from happening if the special half of the emphasis program that has been in place since two thousand and four was really effective we wouldn't have seen half of the explosions we've seen in the last few years so i think it's ineffective and i think we need to have a current dust explosion comprehensive standard to grandfathering provisions the bill will require changes to every building constructed over the last century does osha have that authority they don't at the present time mr me mr mckeon i think one of the fallacies of the suggestion that we should just adopt the n f p a standards wholesale by reference is that the present system that we have doesn't permit that to be updated the way the n f p a standards would be updated all of the n f p a standards have provisions in them that talk about what happens to existing facilities in the case of the six fifty four in my written testimony included some information about those look back provisions and when employers and building owners are required upgrade their facilities so even if we are successful in adopting a standard it's going to take an awful lot of time in education to get people to understand what their obligations are to understand how those standards apply to their facilities and so on and that's why i've emphasized in my testimony and i repeated verbally here how important it is for us to start thinking about how to get the information in the hands of people in a meaningful way having the data having the standards out there is not the same thing as having people understand exactly how to apply those standards and i think one of the the one thing that's missing i think from the o program is working with as many other organizations as they can find to try to make sure that people understand how to apply these standards oh she has cooperated programs with a number of different trade associations many of whom represent industries that have combustible dust hazards in them we could much more quickly get many more people to understand these hazards if we had a program where we would go out and use those communication channels to make them aware of the an a p a standards of the of the application of the housekeeping standard that osha has and other standards so that they would know how to prevent these these events from occurring  they're preventable but it takes a lot more than just putting paper together in washington make it effective this is a pretty big country and when you pass a law here by the time you get a fully implemented understood in force you know it's time to write another law and that is a problem that we deal with on everything we do here can you explain for the committee how imposing standards without notice and comment from affected parties can actually delay implementation of safety practices due to the likelihood of litigation yes mr mckeon i can help answer that question i think the first point to be made is that the  i standards do have ambiguous provisions in them so simply adopting them wholesale leaves open the question of whether or not a particular standard applies in a particular location that is a particular provision applies to a particular location if you look closely at the standard what you'll find is two different sections and i'm talking specifically about six hundred sixty for the first couple of pages of six fifty four talk about the program matic kinds of things that the bill co behind that are a series of sections of talk about engineering standards of building design standards and other kinds of things like that that go directly toward the kinds of changes that need to be adopted and used in order to implement the sixty four requirement some of those are mandatory and some of those are to be used when the person in the words of the standard the authority having jurisdiction decides that they're appropriate so one of the things that you end up with and big u s standards especially when they are mandatory is that people disagree on how they apply and you end up in that case when you have a financial penalty osha fine or or citation you end up with people trying to decide whether or not it's appropriate to comply with that provision and whether or not it applies in their particular circumstance the standards the voluntary standards recognize that distinction what the hearing process does when osha handholds its hearings in washington to review proposed standards is it allows the agency to hear from people who have to live with these provisions on the ground how these these are to are going to affect them how they're going to be interpreted what kinds of an impact the different changes are that are proposed are going to have and equally important how long it's going to take to implement those changes so i think if we skip that step if we don't have the opportunity to hear from people who have to live with these things on the ground in their daily lives we're going to end up with a standard that's not going to achieve the objectives that we all have which is to have a safer thank you mr chairman thank you everybody for your testimony just going over a number of the testimonies and i know we've been going back and forth with votes and everything when you talk about the dust and you talk about about only one of thirty two inch deep of combustible dust covering an area of at least five percent of the toll area of a room is enough to cause a catastrophe dust explosion when you are explaining that on the second part where you know general cleaning should take care of that particular problem you know when i dust my house the most dust is up to my ceiling fan which is a little difficult to get to at times but that's where we go for it because obviously every time i put the fan on the dust is going all over the place but it still builds up so i'm trying to think of when you go for the inspections or even talking to the employers how do you tell them to clean up there because reading the rules it doesn't sound you know keep the hallways clean keep the floors clean i didn't see anything that mentioned is it supposed to be just known that you should as is a lot of our standards so it allows the employees the flexibility to determine what their has is what is the hazard they have to address there and how they're the best way to address that hazard so and with respect to rafters and stuff  on the rafters under the housekeeping stand it is our position that they would they be required to make sure that the dust does not accumulate in those areas so if the employers know that the supposed to clean the rafters and the facilities that we've identified as having the potential for dust hazards and that would be part of the inspection process to look into those areas mr wright do you have any answers to that all i wish i did other than my firm recommendation that we have a comprehensive standard that will address those areas and i might add that in addition to simple cleanup one cannot go into a confined space with an air hose and just push dust around it particularly if there are live ignition sources available because in an attempt to clean up the area the person may in fact create the disaster that he's trying to avoid and we would think that comprehensive dust standard would help advise people on what the proper and safe way to clean up these facilities is rather than just relying on a good housekeeping standard as it were  one of the things i know that we have a grain handling standard and i'm just again thinking of common sense things that happen in my house i feed the birds in the winter so when i open a bag a pouring it into my plastic container a whole bunch of dust comes up and i'm thinking well i'm breathing this you know so now i only do it outside so if you're in a plant working with all of this these chemicals and you know it whether it's grain whether it's sugar you know flour gosh you know i'm not knowledgeable in those areas but that's an awful lot of stuff that's going up in the air in people's in the lungs and everything else like that so with some of the incidents that  seen unfortunately with too many people being killed what is the problem of trying to get almost all the different kind of just under one kind of program so that of our inspection process and the rules that we have that are that are mandatory all the seventeen standards that i noted on in my testimony that we believe are political combustible dust are mandatory employers are required to follow those  answer part of what your question too is about the does is not necessarily just all housekeeping we also have a standard on ventilation and which we require employers to make sure that that the the that they're venting out the dust away from the outside the facility also part of this is part of the housekeeping may mean that the employer would be required to ensure engineering controls around place so that the dust would not even a scape the process itself so does have hoods on top of the drums or whatever so that the dust would be captured and will not be would not get out into the workplace itself so there's a series of things that actually would be a pleasurable and we think that we have all these in and that is correct and i do agree with that however looking through the osha regulations there are three or four places with just a few very general nonspecific type requirements such as the floor of every work room shall be maintained in a clean and so far as possible a dry condition in a codes and standards go so far beyond that where it really discusses the different types of hazards that can occur in a facility and as mr wright pointed out house key just telling them to do housekeeping isn't enough because in some cases housekeeping can actually cause the explosion if not done properly and of codes and standards address exactly how to do the cleanup properly like for instance with a special hazard such as metal before you can even begin the cleanup enough for eighty four requires a preliminary cleanup using non sparking scoops and soft bristle brushes so you can go through a plant and you can see footsteps and you know that there's a dust hazard so that means that there needs to be more housekeeping ok so you clean it up twenty four hours a day there's still dust there that means there's a bigger problem in the system that needs to with the budgetary pullbacks over the last several years do you have enough inspectors to really keep up with everything that's going on in all the different plants that we have across this country employers that had the highest injury and the most rates and those are the ones that we honest for a comprehensive wall to wall inspection we also have different programs where our national offices programs which we have here in custom combustible dust and we have a whole series of  national offices programs where we target those particular hazards that are most that we find the most cause of the greatest injury or illness is that i was not actually answering my question i'm asking do you feel that you have enough inspectors to do the work that needs to be done around the country well i would say that we are obviously doing the job we need to be doing because if you look today the most recent data that we have we had the lowest injury illness and i'd like to thank the witnesses thank you for your testimony this is a very important hearing dealing with the health and safety and even lives of american workers thank you for being here like the star of mr serrano please understand you're an in hygienist experiences of different types of dust can you estimate how many different types of dust exist in the workplace today you know because it's there probably innumerable the one thing i wanted to make a point about this the notion of combustible dust when we talk about this we have a definition that n f p a has come up with that's very broad any dust except for what we call mineral dust things like rock and sand and that sort of thing can be combustible under the under the right circumstances so it's a very broad subject mr fuld mentioned that they sent out thirty thousand letters and i've heard numbers like eighty thousand workplaces around the country if you ask me i'd say the number of workplaces that might have in some part of iraq gratian a combustible dust potential is on the order of maybe several million it's a very very common problem if you're using certain kinds of things and doing certain kinds of things and i want to clarify one thing davis about the comment that mr wright made about the the west pharmaceuticals the problem at west was that we had a chemical substance in a form that you would not expect to present a chemical a combustible dust hazard it was a liquid slurry of polyethylene and if we are to believe that what the report says about that the polyethylene that was in this slurry was used in a very thin quantity you know on the parts in in the facility those parts were dried and somehow that small quantity was carried off of the parts up into the ceiling and deposited in concentrations that were not visible to the naked eye in other words as in the smoke listen mccarthy suggested earlier only open a bag we can see the dust here you're opening a container that has a liquid in it and when i said i i was humbled by the experience and in reading the report what i meant was i would never have thought that using that slurry in that circumstance would have produced enough dust even over  the ten year period between one thousand nine hundred six and when the explosion occurred probably not exactly ten years but anyway over that period of time that there would have been an accumulation sufficient to cause the devastation that occurred there obviously something happened i don't know exactly what it was but what i'm telling you is even with my thirty five years of experience having looked at these problems over the years looking at that particular process i would not have said combustible dust might be a problem that's what i mean  it's hard to know where combustible dust is an issue yes there are there is information many material safety data sheets talk about combustible dust being a potential hazard that's the starting place the process that has to occur subsequent to that involves everybody in the facility and in regard to the question mrs mccarthy asked about housekeeping when i was working with companies that have it and still work with companies that have combustible dust issues you have to have a housekeeping program that involves using vacuum cleaners long handled brooms all kinds of things even to the extent of on a periodic basis either semiannually annually going through and cleaning those flat surfaces when i was a young industrial hygienist one of the old gray haired gray beards in the business advise me when you first go into a plant look and see what the housekeeping is like housekeeping will tell you how much pride the people in that facility have in their operation and if they keep a clean clean plant the chances are they're going to be paying attention to the small things so i think the the problem that we have here is not a question of standards we have lots of standards the standards even the voluntary standards like the and i p a standards can be enforced by osha under the general duty clause and that by no means is a voluntary requirement and so it's not a question of having standards and knowing what to do it's a question of getting the  we've heard the reference to the one thirty second of an inch of dust the n o p a standard sets that as the minimum level for the highly explosive does there's actually a formula in the standard the talks about making adjustments to that level depending on what's called the ball density of the dust and you could spend hours talking about these kinds of technical details the point not every combustible dust is the same not every combustible does presents the same degree of hazard and that's why in the context of the n f p a standards the authority having jurisdiction and the people who implement the standards have to make judgments and we're introducing the human element again here they're making judgments valuable human judgments about how to apply t standards that's a different process than what we've been talking about in the enforcement context thank you my time is expired now you're back thank you mr chairman i'm listening to this discussion of the housekeeping standards  whether they're sufficient or not sufficient i mean your description of what happened with that liquid container seems to me to be an argument that housekeeping standards given what what you said miss spencer aren't always going to get to the problem because you need more specific kinds of oversight to determine whether the the workplace is being maintained in a way that is safe and is going to prevent these accidents i wanted to ask  we do have a grain does standard as a correct so if there weren't one in place would you be arguing that the housekeeping standards and other things that your age engages in are sufficient that you wouldn't need to have a grained standard in place today i just assume that it has been done in one thousand nine hundred seven and we were having a discussion today about the grain standard would you be taking the same position on that that you're taking with respect to the combustible dusting and mr sarbanes we have if you look at the grain does standard it actually does have focuses on housekeeping ventilation the standards that we have their in place and so i said if there was not and prior to the implementation of the grain standard employers in those industries were being cited under those are mandatory standards for housekeeping in ventilation and the and so forth and yes there is a grain standard but unfortunately there are still we have been able to reduce those across the board in the country we're at our lowest rate in paid holidays and also the lowest rate of injuries and illnesses in the country as ever experienced right now see i come and i assume that light is correct right and i correct ok i'm keeping the council been there not knowing a lot about the subject ahead of time so i've been listening very carefully and i just it seems like your hand in by a bunch of things one is that you have this president of the grain standard which seems to have made a significant difference by by raising awareness significantly on it you've got the chemical safety board you've got the n f p a that are urging that there be  specific standards with respect to combustible dust and you yourself keep saying that well you know we're doing all the things that what i'm hearing you say we're kind of doing all the things that we would need to do if there was if there was in fact a comprehensive combustible dust standard in place we're doing those things now so i don't understand where the resistance is to to establishing this this standard that is being urged left right and center it seems to me by everybody around you if you could just explain that a little sarbanes i would i would say as i mentioned earlier in my testimony we are we have instituted this national offices program and we are gathering are gathering information from that to determine whether or not are the standards that we have in place now sufficient to meet the hazards that we were doing with and we've not ruled out the possibility of doing or making so we are looking that is an option for still but we're just trying to collect the data through the national  program where we're looking at all the as many sites as we can and inspecting those sites to determine do we have do our standards actually cover what we need to cover or is there some holes in the coverage that we need to address and that would just think it creates a pretty powerful precedent to address this kind of situation and in a similar way and i you know i allow the not everything that happens in the past is a precedent that should be applied broadly but it seems to me that there's sufficient evidence and statements by those who know this area bass that a comprehensive standard here would make a lot of sense and one of the things i worry about is the negative implication of it not being there in other words if if there is a if there's a standard that exists with respect to other things and  there's continued resistance that you say your mind is open and i appreciate that but if there's a perception and continue to resist and to establishing similar kinds of standards in this area then people are going to draw from that you know they're going in for maybe that the attention the awareness whatever it is is not as heightened as it ought to be and so there is a value in setting the standards actually that goes beyond  that's more than the sum of the parts i mean you're kind of talking about you've got all the parts in place to do the kind of oversight that needs to happen to protect people but what you get by establishing a comprehensive standard is you you ratchet it up you ratchet the awareness of it you heighten awareness so that as misspent it was saying it is not sufficient in people's minds to people don't get complacent just because they pushed a broom or they vacuumed every twelve hours because anderson and there's there's a lot higher level of scrutiny expectation is in place so mr wright maybe you could speak to that that idea of heightened awareness being part of what we're trying to achieve here with a comprehensive yes or i think if you do a comparison with the grain thus standard as i testified to it has specific schedules written programs are required don't air necessarily to clean up dust you remove anything that's greater than an eight eighth of an inch thick immediately and you id priority areas that you're going to work in this is all absent from the general housekeeping standard with respect to combustible dust and that was one reason that we recommended that a comprehensive standard be in place and as you pointed out a comprehensive  standard will keep this awareness alive forever as opposed to a finite point in time that an emphasis programme may in fact people become complacent with and forget about because they're lucky and they haven't had any fatalities or incidents it's not unlike what i worked with for most of my adult life explosives you know people do die with explosives because they do get complacent with what they're handling the same can be true with dust thank you might nine times finish i just note that with an emphasis program also something else may come along that requires a new emphasis pulls the attention away from this other thing and if you have it in place is something you have to continually look at that also drives the resource question that congresswoman mccarthy asked because then you might decide you don't have enough resources to do the job you need to do to cover the permanent standard or comprehensive would would be decreased as we move forward because we have new techniques and we have a knowledge of how to try to prevent things but it seems that we still are having necessary depp's you know we had the hearing about census laundry and the deaths that was occurring in that industry and in all the whole shortly after that hearing we had two deaths right in my district at the northeast linen company in linden new jersey where two employees improperly train and properly prepared to do that suffocated to death this is like a week or two after we had the hearing talking about why can't we have better standards ms woolsey a mr wilson and other members came to the hearing in my district and so i do have a concern that  that we are really not stepping up to the plate even while we as a matter of fact why we're having a hearing in london that day two men from my district fell from cleaning windows over a new york one one actually live to be honest but i misspoke in our last hearing when you testified when you were here last testifying at a hearing on oceans failure to issue standards i expressed my concern at that hearing with the promotion of voluntary programs we have a lot about voluntary programs companies want to do the right thing and therefore we should leave it up to them government that governs least as bad as you know keep the government out of the workforce that's the philosophy it seems but i ask you about the alliances and the alliances over mandatory standards industry at that hearing i asked you specifically then about the reactive alliance and whether you thought that voluntary efforts like alliances and specifically the ally they reactive alliances were more effective than osha standards at that hearing several months ago you replied yes because quote always he is able to outreach to so many more employees employers and thus cover so many more employees by quickly developing and working together to develop these guidance documents these best practices these training modules now at this time we have four people dead from a preventable reactive the explosion in jacksonville and accord an ocean is all records the only thing the re actives alliance did was t put up a website and set up some balls at a conference and actually train only thirty six people in the alliance was discontinued last year now it seems to me that if you had changed the process safety management standard as the chemical safety board recommended thousand workers would have been trained by now these standards would have been mandatory and it's possible that these four workers in jacksonville who are now dead may have been alive and so and i fear that the way you're heading with combustible dust is the same as we have had in the past so my question so how can you still tell me that reactive alliance was was more effective than revising the process safety management standards would have been and can you to why a standard that everyone must comply with won't be more effective and prevent reactive chemicals or dust explosions you know we still seem to have this is not mandatory let everyone do the right thing and it's not working  i do believe that it allows us to outreach to so many more employers but with respect to react i would first mention the fact that we do have a number of osha standards including process safety management as a communication flammability combustible liquids fire protection who are out there already on the books that are applicable to reactive chemicals so we do have standards that are in place on that  so we are that with respect to where we are once again we are looking at we've not ruled out doing a stand it is and we're actually working with the process safety alliance which is alliance we put together with the  focus on reactive so we are looking at how we can go about that so we are trying to be effective on this particular issue but you still opposed to mandatory i mean you said that you still think that you know it's going to work out all right how many a definition of reactive all my time is expired but what bothers me with this administration is whether it's the beef that they said was unfit for human consumption but then oshi concluded that it was not injurious to your health some i can't figure out but that was last week's hearing i can't figure out how they said we had a great recall of hundreds of millions of tons of  b and found out that eighty percent had been consumed why do you talk about a recall how can recall so that's already been so recall that's eaten but once again the lack of enforcement to i had to ask the witness did you see the same video i saw about these cows that couldn't walk to slaughter so they put them on live trucks and roll them in and drop them in because you're supposed to be able to walk to the  slaughter house and there's just seem to be the ventilating while rome is burning we're have to start protecting american people deserve better they deserve better for their food they deserve better for their help and they deserve better for working conditions for working men and women i think my time has expired  that when she saw the work of the chemical safety board and the work product there and the recommendations she thought at last something would finally happen that would protect other workers in these dust related industries from the horror that her her brother and her family  went through and i must tell you i just see such an incredible lack of urgency on your part about the role of your agency to protect workers that it's astounding you mention that you're now engaged in the of accident mitigation with that with the chemical industry and the refiners and you're rattled off a whole list of people there that's after one of the worst accidents and one of the most scalding reports by the chemical safety board that we've seen in the history of this program and the negligence and the and the conspiracy to avoid spending money on that refinery reached all the way in to the boardroom  british petroleum and cause the exit of a number of those officials and a huge fine were hell on wheels after the accident but nobody was inspecting that facility to see the build up of the process problems that led to that accident prior to that accident you keep talking about how you're citing people on housekeeping and most of it's after an after an accident come in after the fact that you have violated housekeeping and yet have seen in the exchange here between the members and you it's quite unclear exactly what housekeeping means and whether housekeeping itself would result in a diminishing of the accidents we've had the we had the housekeeping standards and we keep the accidents going you know i guess one of the nice things about seniority around here is you're around long enough to see these arguments come around i was here when grain elevators were popping up like fireworks and we went through all of the same arguments and we went through hidden places of many in that industry now say that that engineering changed the productivity of those plants that engaged in it and kept them competitive for much many more years against a against foreign competition than if they hadn't done it because they had t invest in a new generation of machines that made them far more effective and yet against that evidence against a sixty percent reduction in the explosions on grain you want to suggest that you like to keep the housekeeping standards that we had before the grain explosions that this industry quite hasn't quite come to it yet and yet we see a process here when we're trying to be user friendly here we see a process mr somebody makes the best case for the fire association standards he says they've taken into account and that's me mr davis's question they recognize there's different kinds of data they recognize there's different kind of specific gravity so whatever densities that he pointed out this is what they do they rival these consensus standards across their broad range of hazards within particular industries and in some cases they're adopted on a mandatory basis some cases apparently on a voluntary basis some places are incorporated into existing codes and it's an evolutionary ongoing process you're here clinging to what you've done and it's turned out to be incredibly ineffective in terms of getting the kinds of results that workers in this country are entitled to the kinds of results that we saw in cotton the standards that we saw  standards but i went to those hearings at those elevators when i was a new member of congress i listen to those workers and their families and i listen to those owners but in fact the grain standards turned out to be the right thing to do there comes a time you know you're suggesting that if a person can navigate the web site if they if they get the advantage of the emphasis program if they get the letter and they understand it if they know that somehow that the grain standards may also apply to their business even though they're not in the grain business that they can knit together a system of safety i think miss misers brothers entitled to more than that and i think the workers in savannah were entitled to more than that and i appreciate that this was a liquid that we didn't understand except we understood the purpose of its application was to create dust between the layers in the products of and robert but housekeeping would take care of that because the dust migrated it was a spotless facility it just didn't anticipate that so you know we can we can continue to do this very convoluted disjointed system and tell the workers to take the hindmost that's just not going to be acceptable to this committee and it's not going to be acceptable to the congress you know we're trying to do this at a threshold that works for employers that works for regulators and that allows a process to go forward to have the continuous improvement but you want to cling to the past you're issue we've been issuing citations to employers and once again the number of inspections that we're doing we've been continually increasing the number inspections that we know the past number of years that we are getting out to the to those facilities we are targeting no the ones our emphasis programs are target so you know you again let me explain something when you answered miss mccarthy you talked about injuries and falls and those kinds of thing that was exactly what your attention was directed to with respect to british petroleum that everybody was walking around saying how many worker safety days did they have and nobody fell and broke their leg sprain their rank or lost a day of work and meanwhile this this this this this refinery was getting ready for one of the great explosions in our industrial history with the ok that's how you said you selected your intensity of your in status and that is those industries where you have the most lips and falls that is part of our  our site specific targeting that's correct mr chairman but we also have our local emphasis programs our national emphasis programs which target those areas where we find specifically our local emphasis programs focus on those local issues where they are where they're seeing that they're having the most serious safety health issues and so they target them on the local level and then on the national level we're looking at where we have a lot of where where we're seeing on a national basis safety health issues to address those and i think once again indicated here on this particular issue we are looking to gather the data from our national has a program determine whether or not we needed to move to rule making imperial sure it was not on your inspection that it would have been on  spencer h r fifty five twenty two suggests that osha create a standard no less productive than the n f p a six fifty four and four eighty four how many other standards are referenced in those two documents are these in the public domain and if not how much would it cost the non member of your organization to obtain these materials to ensure any dust program meets the n f p a standards mr mckay and there are a number of documents referenced in all of our enough codes and standards because for instance when there are electrical concerns as there are with that would refer to the national electoral code so there are a number of references all of the dust specific the specific commodity our reference back to an a p six fifty four which is the fundamentals of the document you also asked are they available to the public all of our codes and standards are posted on our website for free read only so they're available for anybody with no cost if i may add another point mr service mentioned his opinion a codes and standards are ambiguous and i respectfully disagree with that and he specifically mentioned that the authority having jurisdiction and other enforcers have a lot of leeway in  a codes and standards in the body of the standard which is the mandatory portion of the standard there is written in mandatory language all with a shelf there are should in the advisory material that gives people information  with any kind of a regulation including osha regulations there's some judgment that is necessary every situation cannot be addressed due to the variables that each facility dick committees and the documents cannot address every single permutation of how a facility is laid out so there has to be judgment through the authority having jurisdiction and the users of the standard so i definitely disagree that the codes and standards are ambiguous and his assertion that there is not by an n s p a is an anti accredited association and all of our committees are balanced and we have public comment to ant requires one set of public comment on the changes we have to we have a whole system set up such that consensus is well established also assistant secretary for all mention that more data are needed before the codes and standards should the ports clear the rule making should be done and i disagree with that also respectfully the investigations just through the c s b have to all the same things and they are the same things that enough codes and standards have requirements on it's a broad nature of problems with the different types of dust and n f p a has had written documents since one nine hundred twenty three and decades before that there was initial work on that so it's highly unlikely that there would be anything profoundly new in the area of dust explosions that would be covered with the national impetus program  the requirements are out there in an f d a codes and standards and we would like osha to mandatorily reference them as opposed to taking bits and pieces and creating their own regulation on dust hazards  seven dust related documents and that we request that the be referenced mandatorily such that it's a comprehensive coverage of dust hazards thank  there's quite a bit of detail explanation that and i'm wondering what kind of a degree you need and you know to put this into place i've i come from a business background and i visit companies you know some small some large and and small companies i don't know where they would get the people to to read and put in force all of these policy saying it but it's  i understand the seriousness of the problem but i like the way what you said about it takes judgment and at some point there has to be some local judgment and and i and i would think that people are trying to do their their best you know we can put lots of laws and we could have somebody in forcing everyone and i guess are still some accents i know the object is to prevent all accidents and i would i wish we could and i guess we should continue to work toward but the more we write more documents like this that have more and more detail eight point nine point seven the ignition temperature of a layer of dust on it just goes on and on and on and i  appreciate what you're doing and it just looks like a very tough tough situation and i've i've sat through now a number of these hearings where we have had very serious accidents where we've had people lose their lives and have loved ones here that are that are you know feeling that loss and and it's they're all tragedies and i don't think anybody does any of these things on purpose that would be good if we could eliminate all of the of the potential problems i commend what you are doing to try to alleviate things and encourage you to continue it but i guarantee speak to mr mckeon to your point you noted what kind of degree do you need to be able to look at this and what you actually cited was in our advisory material what we try to do is also educate the people who are using the standard so we have non mandatory sort of educational tidbits in the back the actual standard that looks pretty big but the actual standards about twenty pages and it may look complicated when you're actually in the industry you're going to know about a lot of these things already this is just great reminders mandatory reminders of what you have to do to keep your facility safe thank you thank you and just add to that that the outset i'd forgive if you're not but it was pretty clear that this could you check that because that's that's our information if you would check that out we were told locally they had not been inspected under the national offices program but they would have been on the list of facilities to be inspected eventually  that everybody says they're going to do it to make the standard and i i also feel like there are some companies i mean there are many companies that are doing it and they are trying to do it and they are doing their best but the standards are for the companies that really don't care and there are companies out there that don't care i don't like to say that but it's a back just the way things go and i feel like if there is a better made it will be applied to those people to where it needs to be and i would really love to see it done i mean there's nothing else i can say about that except for that really it would target people that it should be standard would be in the voluntary things i think people are trying to do trying to do that too but i think people would take it more seriously if there was a standard also rather than just voluntary voluntarily doing this because i feel like it sure you're doing a good thing you're doing that you're doing what you should be doing but you're not going to pay as close attention as the what's really going on thank you mr right if i might just where we're going to in this hearing because we've got a boat and i think we can justify your took your time to wait for us to to go to another vote i'm correct in understanding mr wright that  you essentially said that osha's response to your recommendations was not acceptable and that is or is not the first time that the chemical safety board has made that reaction to a response to their recommendations and this with respect to the reactive chemicals yes yes sir we haven't opened an acceptable standing i guess or classification for that particular recommendation to o if i may sir i would like to add with respect to the discrete regulations that secretary spoke the general duty clause the housekeeping standard the ventilation the electrical those are all discrete documents that one would have to go search for hans out for review and what we're asking for is something that would give us one stop shopping that wouldn't capsulated all the requirements as well as those that are contained in an f p s there's no place within the osha standards currently for management of change into an engineering design explosion prevention techniques and  accident that we saw we've seen recently in savannah and we've seen up until savannah that we have an opportunity to deal with that but some point this has to be a comprehensive regime appreciate you want to run every trap until you get to be told to do that i think you have to show that you can do both because i think at the end today this is not going to work without that without that regulatory scheme as i said we're trying to start out  here at a user friendly point and then osha can make its determinations over the next couple of years but clearly this regime should be should be put in place i'm a participant with respect to the chemical safety board i worked very hard for them to come into existence and i fought very hard against the the chemical industry and others that wanted them out of existence and we knew what we were we were doing we were trying to get somebody who was impartial who wasn't there to find fault who was there to look at the causation of these and make and make recommendations and i think that they they have developed over the years to be the gold standard we can then impute that kind of knowledge an activity that is necessary to protect these workers so this committee will will continue that that deliberation but i hope that we will shortly be able to take action and i want to thank all of you for your for your testimony for your expertise and i hope that we'll be able to continue to call on you as we as we move to the next stage of this of this process thank you