Tag: Process Safety Management

Back to Basics: OSHA’s Process Safety Management Enforcement

Back to Basics is a weekly feature that highlights important but possibly overlooked information that any EHS professional should know. This week, we examine compliance with OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard. Is your workplace covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) standard? Application of the PSM standard was covered […]

safety audit team

Does Your PSM Auditor Have the Right Stuff?

Every 3 years, you need to complete an audit of your process safety management (PSM) processes. Often, the emphasis is on the standard and the facility—but in order to conduct a thorough and effective compliance audit, you also need a skilled auditor. And that means more than someone who knows what the standard says.

Chemical plant workers, piping

CSB Cites Chain of Failures in DuPont Plant Deaths

A “chain of failures” in emergency response and process safety management led to the November 2014 deaths of four workers following a methyl mercaptan release at the DuPont Plant in La Porte, Texas, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).

Boiler guage

OSHRC Says PSM Rule Covers Connected Vessels

The Process Safety Management (PSM) standard applies to equipment like boilers that don’t involve highly hazardous chemicals if the equipment is interconnected with or located near equipment that does, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission recently decided.

Retail Facilities

Bill Would Affect Retail Facilities Definition for PSM Standard

A provision in the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018 (Farm Bill), which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2018, would provide a definition that clarifies that retail facilities that receive more than half of their income from direct sales to end users or consumers, including farmers and ranchers, are exempt from […]

PSM Retail Exemption Update

A little over a year ago, OSHA issued a memorandum revising the agency’s interpretation of the PSM standard’s retail facility exemption.  However, on September 23, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the agency’s revised interpretation.

Will RMP and PSM Revisions Create More Overlap?

EPA’s Chemical Accident Prevention Program, more commonly referred to as the Risk Management Program (RMP), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) program will always go hand in hand, as both seek to prevent chemical process accidents and protect workers and the public from the sometimes devastating consequences of such […]

Will RMP and PSM Revisions Create More Overlap?

EPA’s Chemical Accident Prevention Program, more commonly referred to as the Risk Management Program (RMP), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) program will always go hand in hand, as both seek to prevent chemical process accidents and protect workers and the public from the sometimes devastating consequences of such […]

California Announces Oil Refinery Safety Proposal

California’s occupational safety and environmental agencies have proposed a set of landmark regulations to strengthen workplace and environmental safety at oil refineries across the Golden State. Find out what’s involved and what regulations would be strengthened.