CSB Chairman urges OSHA to adopt combustible dust standardAt a recent Senate hearing, John Bresland, chairman and CEO of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), called on OSHA to act on a November 2006 CSB recommendation to adopt a comprehensive standard regulating combustible dust in the workplace.Speaking before the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Chairman Bresland said this year’s tragedy which killed 13 workers at a Georgia refinery — caused when sugar dust was ignited and exploded — demonstrates the need for a new OSHA standard that would cover a range of industries exposed to this hazard. Such industries include food, chemicals, plastics, automotive parts, pharmaceuticals, electrical power (where generated by coal), and others.The chairman noted the CSB’s 2006 Combustible Dust Study identified 281 dust fires and explosions in the U.S. between 1980 and 2005, killing 119 and injuring 718 workers. These included major dust explosion accidents in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Indiana in 2003, killing a total of 14 workers.Chairman Bresland said that since the study was released, media reports have indicated there have been approximately 82 additional dust fires and explosions. In the report, the Board also recommended improved training of OSHA inspectors to recognize dust hazards, better communication of dust hazards to workers through material safety data sheets (MSDSs), and instituting a national emphasis program to better enforce existing standards — something which OSHA has now begun and for which Bresland commended the Agency.Bresland noted that good engineering and safety practices to prevent dust explosions have existed for decades, and that current good practices are contained in numerous National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards, some of which have been adopted by state and local governments in their fire codes.Bresland said, “OSHA has recognized the importance of NFPA’s dust standards and they are referenced numerous times in the National Emphasis Program that OSHA began last year and reissued earlier this year.” However, he added, without a comprehensive OSHA standard for combustible dust, it is difficult for businesses to know which specific NFPA provisions or other requirements they may be subject to.