Archive for December, 2010

Toxic Acid Leaks from Honeywell Plant that Locked Out Steelworkers

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
Honeywell officials admitted yesterday that toxic hydrofluoric acid leaked for approximately two hours Tuesday from its Metropolis uranium conversion facility, where Honeywell locked out  228 members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669 on June 28.
Since the lock out began six months ago, members of USW Local 7-669 have repeatedly warned that Honeywell is endangering the community by replacing trained and experienced steelworkers with inexpert and green workers to run the nation’s only site for refining uranium for eventual use in nuclear power plants.
Here’s what Honeywell admitted:
“At around 3 p.m. this afternoon, the Metropolis plant experienced a leak of hydrofluoric acid at its tank farm. The plant sounded its emergency siren and activated its emergency response procedures as a precaution. The release was immediately contained by the plant’s water mitigation system and a team immediately began working to stop the leak. The leak was stopped before 5 p.m. local time.”
Here’s what experienced workers who are members of Local 7669 reported about the event :
“At approximately 3 p.m., picketers outside the Honeywell Metropolis uranium conversion facility noticed a large plume from the Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) Storage area.  The plant’s mitigation towers, which spray water to knock down any escaping gas, were turned on and sirens were heard.  The siren was turned on, then immediately off, and then later on again. The towers sprayed for approximately an hour and a half.
“Honeywell has been running the plant with replacement workers since locking out the union workforce on June 28, 2010.  .  .United Steelworkers Local 7-669 President, Darrell Lillie, said “We have been warning everyone for months that there is the possibility of a fatality and major breach of public safety at this plant,” and added, “The workers in the plant do not have the experience it takes to safely run this facility.”
“The plant has been recently cited for violations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and is under and EPA investigation concerning improper storage of Potassium Hydroxide (KOH).  Honeywell has played down the seriousness of the events that have taken place during the six-month-long lockout.
“The community should be outraged at the way the facility is being operated and their safety at risk, and demand that someone take action before this becomes the present day Katrina,” Lillie said.
“Honeywell put out a statement that this was a “small release” of HF, however, the experienced workers of the plant, who could do nothing but watch from the picket line, know that a “small” release doesn’t require the mitigation towers to run for over an hour.
“Gary Lewis, a 14 year veteran of the plant was on the picket line when the event happened and said, “I heard the sirens and saw a large cloud of HF over the tank farm,” and added, “HF is nothing to play with, it can kill you.”
“The storage tank that failed was full and holds approximately 150,000 pounds of HF.  The site typically has close to 500,000 pounds on site.  Studies show that if even 10% of the HF onsite is released, it could travel up to a 25 mile radius and affect as many as 175,000 people.
“Darrell Lillie added, “If they continue to have ‘fender benders’ like they had today, it is a matter of when not if there is a ‘head on collision.’”
Concerned about the community’s safety, the locked out steelworkers have offered to train local fire departments on how to tackle fires at the Metropolis plant.
Members of the local will conduct a training program Jan. 24 at their health and safety department. They say the training will highlight chemical-specific hazards and measures to deal with a large scale fire at the plant.
Lillie issued a statement saying:
“Honeywell has not provided the training necessary to our local firefighters to be prepared to respond to such a fire.  It would not have been responsible of us to recognize this gap and do nothing.”

Originally appeared on USW Blog.

Honeywell officials admitted yesterday that toxic hydrofluoric acid leaked for approximately two hours Tuesday from its Metropolis uranium conversion facility, where Honeywell locked out  228 members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669 on June 28.

Since the lock out began six months ago, members of USW Local 7-669 have repeatedly warned that Honeywell is endangering the community by replacing trained and experienced steelworkers with inexpert and green workers to run the nation’s only site for refining uranium for eventual use in nuclear power plants.

Here’s what Honeywell admitted:

“At around 3 p.m. this afternoon, the Metropolis plant experienced a leak of hydrofluoric acid at its tank farm. The plant sounded its emergency siren and activated its emergency response procedures as a precaution. The release was immediately contained by the plant’s water mitigation system and a team immediately began working to stop the leak. The leak was stopped before 5 p.m. local time.”

Here’s what experienced workers who are members of Local 7669 reported about the event :

“At approximately 3 p.m., picketers outside the Honeywell Metropolis uranium conversion facility noticed a large plume from the Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) Storage area.  The plant’s mitigation towers, which spray water to knock down any escaping gas, were turned on and sirens were heard.  The siren was turned on, then immediately off, and then later on again. The towers sprayed for approximately an hour and a half.

“Honeywell has been running the plant with replacement workers since locking out the union workforce on June 28, 2010.  United Steelworkers Local 7-669 President, Darrell Lillie, said “We have been warning everyone for months that there is the possibility of a fatality and major breach of public safety at this plant,” and added, “The workers in the plant do not have the experience it takes to safely run this facility.”

“The plant has been recently cited for violations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and is under and EPA investigation concerning improper storage of Potassium Hydroxide (KOH).  Honeywell has played down the seriousness of the events that have taken place during the six-month-long lockout.

“The community should be outraged at the way the facility is being operated and their safety at risk, and demand that someone take action before this becomes the present day Katrina,” Lillie said.

“Honeywell put out a statement that this was a “small release” of HF, however, the experienced workers of the plant, who could do nothing but watch from the picket line, know that a “small” release doesn’t require the mitigation towers to run for over an hour.

“Gary Lewis, a 14 year veteran of the plant was on the picket line when the event happened and said, “I heard the sirens and saw a large cloud of HF over the tank farm,” and added, “HF is nothing to play with, it can kill you.”

“The storage tank that failed was full and holds approximately 150,000 pounds of HF.  The site typically has close to 500,000 pounds on site.  Studies show that if even 10% of the HF onsite is released, it could travel up to a 25 mile radius and affect as many as 175,000 people.

“Darrell Lillie added, “If they continue to have ‘fender benders’ like they had today, it is a matter of when not if there is a ‘head on collision.’”

Concerned about the community’s safety, the locked out steelworkers have offered to train local fire departments on how to tackle fires at the Metropolis plant.

Members of the local will conduct a training program Jan. 24 at their health and safety department. They say the training will highlight chemical-specific hazards and measures to deal with a large scale fire at the plant.

Lillie issued a statement saying:

“Honeywell has not provided the training necessary to our local firefighters to be prepared to respond to such a fire.  It would not have been responsible of us to recognize this gap and do nothing.”

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Mike Wright Brings Comments to CSB Panel

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Last week we brought you news from the Chemical Safety Board’s panel on the gulf oil spill, and mentioned that our own Director of Health, Safety and Environment Mike Wright testified on one of the panels for the day. Today, we bring you an excerpt of his comments. Admittedly, this is a long bit of text, but we felt that the message was important enough, and we didn’t feel like there was much that could be cut out. So, please, read Wrights compelling comments to the CSB below:

“I am not going to talk this afternoon about kicks and blowout preventers and cementing and drilling mud. Instead I want to make three simple points. First, the problem isn’t confined to BP. Second, the problem isn’t confined to offshore exploration and production. And third, we can learn a lot about safety management and mis-management, and about the culture of the oil industry, by looking at what’s happening in refineries. Because, in the end, it’s all one industry.

So let me talk about refineries. Most of our members in oil came through a merger with a union called PACE. That merger was finalized nine days after the BP Texas City disaster, and Texas City consumed much of our effort for the next several years. In the months that followed Texas City, the CSB produced its report on the accident itself and the Baker Panel reported on safety management in all of BP’s American refineries. We decided to take a look at the industry as a whole through a survey of our local unions in 71 refineries operated by 22 different companies. The findings are detailed in our 2007 report, Beyond Texas City.  We asked about four hazardous conditions that helped cause the Texas City accident and asked whether they existed at other refineries, and whether management had taken effective steps to address them. Those conditions were atmospheric venting, inadequate management of instrumentation and alarm systems, siting temporary structures near process units, and allowing non-essential personnel in vulnerable areas during start-ups and shut-downs. We also looked at emergency response programs. Ninety percent of surveyed refineries had one or more of those hazardous conditions. Forty-three percent had three or more. Seventy percent reported inadequacies in the emergency response programs. Those data were collected nine months to a year after the Texas City accident, yet 87% of our locals reported that the overall management of process safety in their refineries was still not effective enough.  Incidentally, that last critical condition I mentioned – non-essential personnel in vulnerable areas – was one reason why 7 people died in the Tesoro Anacortes accident on April 2nd of this year, more than 5 years after Texas City.

In my career at the USW I’ve been able to work on safety issues in a wide variety of industries – steel, nonferrous metals, mining, rubber and plastics, paper, chemicals, forestry, nuclear fuels, and general manufacturing. I know of no industry where the gap between the intrinsic hazard of the process on the one hand, and the quality of the industry programs addressing that hazard on the other, is so wide. That’s not because oil industry safety programs are so bad in comparison to other industries. Indeed, they are somewhat better than the average safety programs across all industries. But they tend to be the kind of ordinary programs aimed at trips and strains and injuries in general, mostly by exhorting employees to just work safely, often through programs that focus primarily on worker “behavior” instead of finding and addressing the kind of system failures capable of causing catastrophic accidents. It was macabre in the aftermath of the Anacortes tragedy to hear the industry praising its excellent safety record, based on OSHA recordables, as if a spraining an ankle was equivalent to being burned to death.

But the real problem is evident when you compare the ineffectiveness of those safety programs to the magnitude of the hazard. Mining, for example, has a higher death among workers. But a mine accident is confined to the mine, while a worst case refinery accident can affect thousands in the surrounding community. And no mine accident is capable of causing the kind of environmental damage that was caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

Kim Nibarger, a member of our Health, Safety and Environment Department and a former oil worker, describes a refinery as follows: “Take a gallon of gasoline in a sealed metal can. Get your barbecue grill good and hot. Now put the can on the grill. Multiply that by a million. That’s a refinery.” Of course, refineries have hazards beyond hydrocarbon fires and explosions. On October 4th, a worker died in a hydrogen sulfide release at  the ExxonMobil refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana. And the greatest community hazard of all is the possibility of a total loss of containment accident releasing hydrogen fluoride from an HF-catalyzed alkylation unit. In EPA’s modeling, the lethal plume goes beyond the 25-mile limit of the model. A full release in a populated area could kill or injure more that a million people unless they evacuated in time. A far safer system, using solid acid catalysts as a replacement for HF, has been demonstrated at the pilot stage. But to date we know of no refinery planning to build such a unit. Most have not even converted to the somewhat safer – although not safe enough – modified HF system.

Of course, the oil industry goes beyond many others in its system for setting voluntary standards through the American Petroleum Institute. Many of those standards are strong, well-reasoned and useful. But overall, that system just isn’t good enough. The fundamental problem with voluntary standards is that not everyone volunteers. For example, API recommends the use of diesel engine air intake shut-off valves to prevent explosions caused by runaway engines in hydrocarbon gas or vapor releases. Such measures are the law in the European Union, Canada, Mexico and China. But there are no equivalent federal regulations in the US, only an API recommendation, so most engines in most refineries lack these protections.  The main supplier of such systems tells us that they have sold ten times as many in Canada, where they are required by law, than in the US, where they are not.

Even where an API recommendation is widely followed, it may have loopholes that completely negate its intent. An infamous example is API 753, which was developed in response to a CSB recommendation that the API bar trailers and other portable buildings from potentially dangerous locations. API responded, and wrote an excellent standard in all respects but one – it specifically exempts “lightweight fabric enclosures.” So in many refineries the trailers have simply been replaced by tents.

The impact of these failings is evident in the industry’s performance. Several years ago, the USW set up a system for tracking serious process safety incidents in oil refineries. We use whatever published sources we can access, but we also rely on reporting from our members. In 2009 we recorded 45 serious process safety incidents – fires, explosions, releases. Five workers died in USW refineries. Things are not getting better: this year we recorded 49 serious incidents through December 7, with 11 deaths. Each of those incidents resulted from a loss of at least one, and usually several levels of containment or protection. And every week we get calls from our members about dangerous conditions – perilously thin piping carrying high-pressure hydrogen; temporary pipe clamps that seem to have become permanent; pipe clamps on top of pipe clamps; cracked process vessels like coker drums; decisions by management to run critical units even where the instrumentation is broken, or some of safety systems are inoperable.

And if you need more examples, on Monday, the USW joined a number of community and environmental organizations in Louisiana to release Common Ground II, a new report on safety in that state’s 17 refineries.  Using data from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the report charted an average of 10 accidents a week since 2005, involving releases of hazardous materials exceeding reportable thresholds. BP doesn’t operate a Louisiana refinery; the biggest offenders were ExxonMobil, Calumet Lubricants and Citgo.

We in the USW have tried to address these problems. In our 2008-9 contract bargaining, we proposed comprehensive language on process safety and on fatigue caused by the massive overtime the industry relies on. The companies would not agree to any mandatory programs, and made it clear that they would take a strike rather than agree with the union on safety.

When the CSB recommended that the American Petroleum Institute and the USW work together on the issues of fatigue and metrics, the API insisted on doing it through their normal voluntary standards process.  They assured us that everything would be done by consensus, and so we gave it a good faith try. But instead of working through disagreements, the industry simply called for votes, where it was three unions (the USW and two unions mostly representing contractors) against twelve or more industry representatives and of course we lost every time. After trying to make the process work for more than a year, we finally gave up in frustration and left the talks, rather than put our name on inadequate standards. The two resulting recommended practices, API 754 and 755, are marginally better than nothing, but they are not good enough. If the industry had engaged in real consensus discussions, they could have been so much better.

After Texas City, the USW applied for and received a grant from OSHA to do process safety training for oil workers. We wrote training manuals and curricula, all of which was reviewed and approved by OSHA. We offered the training to a number of refineries. It would have been free. We asked the companies to continue to pay their employees their regular wages for several days of  training, but that was all. They refused even that. One of the excuses was that they couldn’t spare anyone from their regular jobs. We ended up presenting the training in smaller doses, at conferences, for workers who would come on their days off, and in other industries.

I do not mean to say that the situation is uniformly bleak. Fifteen US refineries participate in the USW’s Triangle of Prevention Program, which includes systems of safety training for the entire workforce, along with intensive incident investigation to find and fix hazardous conditions. We think the program has made a real difference. But that’s 15 refineries out of 71. We are currently in quiet discussions with parts of the industry on other improvements. So far, those discussions are mostly talk, and there’s that old saying that talk is cheap. But another word for “cheap” is “cost-effective,” and we are willing to talk to any company, any trade association so long as there’s a chance that talking will lead to greater protections for our members and the communities that surround our workplaces. And as Monday’s Louisiana report shows, we’ve also made common cause with environmental and community groups concerned about refinery hazards.

So what’s the path forward? First, we have to fundamentally change how we regulate this industry, not just offshore, and not just in exploration and development, but all the way through refining. I said earlier that there is a dangerously wide gap between the inherent hazards of the oil industry and the effectiveness of the industry safety programs designed to address them. There is an equally wide gap between the hazards of the industry and our regulatory programs. A nuclear melt-down might be worse than a catastrophic release of HF, but the nuclear industry is regulated by the NRC, an independent agency with real power and resources. Mining is a dangerous industry, but mining has MSHA, with a stronger law and far more resources per worker than OSHA.

The oil industry has OSHA and EPA for refineries, and the Department of the Interior for offshore drilling. OSHA does its best, and the recent National Emphasis Program led to real improvements, but OSHA simply doesn’t have the resources to give the industry that level of attention over time. Nor does the EPA Risk Management Program, despite an excellent staff and strong commitment. Offshore, the situation is even worse. The new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement doesn’t have the staffing, the resources or the regulatory tools to do the job. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bureau could only pay new inspectors half of what they could make working for the industry, and the proposed federal pay freeze isn’t going to help that. And the Bureau is in the wrong place. In mine safety, we learned 35 years ago that you cannot put safety in the same Department that handles industry promotion and collects fees. That’s why we took mine safety out of the Department of the Interior and created MSHA in the Labor Department. That lesson should also apply to offshore oil. We should also put aside American exceptionalism and look closely at the programs in the UK and Norway. Those programs came at great cost – the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster, which took 167 lives. They deserve serious consideration.

Finally, let me add one other thing that would make oil exploration and development safer – unionization. I’m not saying that unionization automatically increases safety or that all union plants are safe. Texas City was a unionized plant. But we can bring fresh eyes, a fresh approach, and experience in other industries to the table. More important, we give workers a real voice in workplace conditions. We can encourage people to report safety problems, and we can protect them when a manager doesn’t like it. In fact, managers themselves sometimes bring us problems – quietly, secretly, anonymously – when they can’t get upper management to address them, and they believe we can. The other panelists this afternoon will go more deeply into what they’ve been able to accomplish through their unions.

Let me close by saying that I believe in the oil industry. In the five years I’ve been privileged to work on oil issues I’ve come to know hundreds of dedicated oil workers, union and management alike. I think we can solve these problems. I was trained as an engineer, and I still think engineers can do anything. But it’s not just an engineering problem. The industry doesn’t lack for technical competence or worker commitment to safety. What we need are effective management programs with strong union participation, backed by effective regulations enforced by well-resourced and independent agencies. We have a long way to go, but we can get there.”

Submitted by Andrew Fatato

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CSB Holds Panel on Deepwater Spill

Friday, December 17th, 2010

The Chemical Safety Board held a day of panel discussions on Wednesday, one of which featuring the USW’s own Mike Wright, to determine what could’ve been done differently to prevent the Deepwater Horizon explosion.  All in all, it was a day of condemnation not just for BP, but for the oil industry in general, as the panels found the entire industry wanting in vigilant prevention.

“Despite significant progress, not all the lessons of Texas City and other CSB investigations have been effectively implemented by the oil industry,” said the board’s lead investigator, Don Holmstrom, as quoted in a Houston Chronicle story on the panel.  And the CSB has the authority to make such a claim, as the independent federal agency has investigated at least 30 major oil industry accidents since 1999.

That’s not to say much of the discussion didn’t focus on BP. Before the Deepwater Horizon well blowout, BP hadn’t complied with a CSB recommendation to install someone on its board who would focus on health, safety and environmental risk. BP appeared to respond last month by appointing Frank “Skip” Bowman, an outside director, who would focus on safety.

“BP has taken some steps – just not as many as we had hoped back in 2007,” when the Texas City probe wrapped up, CSB Managing Director Daniel Horowitz said.

The panels also looked abroad, where countries like the UK and Australia have done away with specific rules and regulations, opting instead for a system that hold each company responsible for identifying the hazards inherent to their industry. This is a controversial tactic, but it is one that seems to work abroad, and one that might be worth trying, as it is increasingly difficult for the US federal agencies to come up with effective regulations.  The hazards of the oil industry are just not that well understood as, say, the construction industry, where the hazards are deeply documented.

To add to regulatory difficulties, it would seem the technology evolves faster than the rules can be made. The “safety case” design, that which is used in the UK and Australia, is an ever evolving document, made to flexibly address the ever changing industry while still keeping companies accountable for making sure employees are safe and the environment protected.

If the U.S. had adopted a safety case system before BP launched work on the Deepwater Horizon station, “the risks would have been much more effectively evaluated, the decision-making process would then have been guided by the evaluation of those risks, and that very well may have altered” the choices that were made, Ian Whewell, a retired offshore division director from the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive, said.

They’re interesting proposals, and hopefully these sorts of discussions will make for a safer future.

What more should be done? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Submitted by Andrew Fatato

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Oil-Drilling Inspectors Ill-equipped

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
In a statement issued in anticipation of the report’s release, Mr. Salazar said the inspector general’s investigation “further validates the urgency, direction and steps we have already taken toward building a transformed regulatory agency, with the authorities, resources and support to provide strong and effective regulation and oversight.”

The report is studded with detailed examples of the challenges that faced inspectors at the agency. In some cases, the report said, platform operators would “suspend operations until the inspector leaves the platform” to avoid being caught in “incidents of noncompliance.”A new report by the Interior Department’s inspector general on oil-drilling inspectors shows inspectors as overworked, poorly organized, and lacking in support from supervisors. The report looked closely at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the organization charged with keeping oil-drillers safe, and the environment

protected.

A new report by the Interior Department’s inspector general on oil-drilling inspectors shows inspectors as overworked, poorly organized, and lacking in support from supervisors. The report looked closely at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the organization charged with keeping oil-drillers safe, and the environment protected.

New York Times article:

In a statement issued in anticipation of the report’s release, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the inspector general’s investigation “further validates the urgency, direction and steps we have already taken toward building a transformed regulatory agency, with the authorities, resources and support to provide strong and effective regulation and oversight.”

The report is studded with detailed examples of the challenges that faced inspectors at the agency. In some cases, the report said, platform operators would “suspend operations until the inspector leaves the platform” to avoid being caught in “incidents of noncompliance.”

“The fatigue incurred by the high-intensity workload, as well as pressure from operators for shorter review times, creates conditions where mistakes could become more likely,” the report said.

Because of organizational weaknesses in the agency, the report found, inspectors had “no effective outlet to elevate concerns or issues encountered in a district office to the regional offices or headquarters.” That problem has been noted in the past in other federal regulatory agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration.

According to the report, inspectors who issued a high number of noncompliance notices to a company “reported being subject to industry pressure, often without management support to back them up,” while inspectors who found few instances of noncompliance “do not experience the same pressure.”

The report reveals a number of concerns in the oil-drilling industry, and while identifying them is the first step, there is much to be done before the inspections are doing what they need to to keep workers safe.

Submitted by Andrew Fatato

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‘You Can Invest in Safety Now, or You Can Pay for Failure Later’

Monday, December 13th, 2010

The headline is a remark to be delivered by William K. Reilly, co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, at a Wednesday conference of the lawyers for American oil companies. The Wall Street Journal previewed Reilly’s speech ahead of the conference, revealing that the leader of the federal spill commission will deliver harsh criticism to industry leaders – oil executives and federal regulators alike.

In particular, Reilly will target BP, Halliburton, and Transocean – the three companies responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill – for their negligence prior to the spill along with safety regulators he claims lack the technical expertise required to be effective. Reilly will call for oil companies to establish a self-policing agency similar to that of the nuclear industry.

From the Wall Street Journal:

“The interest group that could most threaten the future viability of offshore drilling is the oil and gas industry itself,” Mr. Reilly says in the speech. “There has to be a recognition that the industry has not made safety a high enough priority. We need a major transformation in the oil and gas industry’s understanding of what it means to put a priority on creating a safety culture. This is an industrywide challenge that can’t simply be laid at the feet of a few rogue players.”

While BP declined to comment ahead of the speech, Halliburton and Transocean were quick in their attempts to lay all of the blame on BP:

Halliburton said Tuesday it “remains confident that all the work it performed with respect to the Macondo well was completed in accordance with BP’s specifications for its well-construction plan and instructions.”

Transocean said “the calculations, blueprints and step-by-step construction procedures for the well were crafted by BP engineers and approved by federal regulators in advance of—and in some cases, during—the construction process itself.”

Kudos to the commission for moving past BP to determine everyone responsible for the loss of lives that sadly have become routine in the oil industry. It’s clear that BP was not alone in their carelessness.

Submitted by Patrick McQueen

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New Report Makes Energy and Environment Predictions

Friday, December 10th, 2010

As electricity and energy fluctuate in demand with the economy, the predictions for future energy usage provide interesting insights into the interaction between demand and renewable energy. Currently, the demand for electricity has decreased, due in large part to the recession and the cheap price of natural gas.

From the New York Times post:

Underlying the analysis is the calculation that growth in the gross domestic product and growth in electricity demand are now disconnected; with more efficient motors, lamps, air-conditioners and everything else that runs on electricity, the thinking goes, the economy could grow by 2.5 percent while the demand for the generation of electricity rose by only 1.1 percent.
Electric demand and economic growth have not been in lockstep for some time, but their degree of independence may be growing.
“It’s a much bigger break that what we’ve seen,’’ said Mark R. Griffith, managing director of management consulting at the company, which is based in St. Louis. From the smart grid to seeking higher energy efficiency, he said, the emphasis is on “smart everything.”

Underlying the analysis is the calculation that growth in the gross domestic product and growth in electricity demand are now disconnected; with more efficient motors, lamps, air-conditioners and everything else that runs on electricity, the thinking goes, the economy could grow by 2.5 percent while the demand for the generation of electricity rose by only 1.1 percent.

Electric demand and economic growth have not been in lockstep for some time, but their degree of independence may be growing.

“It’s a much bigger break that what we’ve seen,’’ said Mark R. Griffith, managing director of management consulting at the company, which is based in St. Louis. From the smart grid to seeking higher energy efficiency, he said, the emphasis is on “smart everything.”

As electricity remains expensive, technology will push to create products that don’t use as much of it, i.e. “green technology.” But, this has the subsequent consequence of slowing down the economy’s growth.

Projections by Black & Veatch, however, suggest that in time, this demand will increase, the drive for green technology will wain and the importance of global warming awareness will reach new highs.

You can read their full predictions here.

Submitted by Andrew Fatato

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CrisisWiki Gives Public Access to Disaster Data

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Following the Haiti earthquake, NPR started CrisisWiki, an online database of emergency preparedness and disaster relief information. CrisisWiki – modeled after HurricanWiki and similar sites – has now expanded to include all major incidents around the globe. The wiki now contains information for all significant occurrances since the earthquake.

From the CrisisWiki homepage:

The goal of the wiki is to create an editable directory of resources related to disasters and crises around the world. An example of how we’ve done this in the past can be seen at HurricaneWiki.org. What sets CrisisWiki apart from other disaster wikis is that we intend to design the wiki so it can accommodate resources for any disaster, rather than just one specific event, as well as aggregate local, state, national and international emergency preparedness resources before a disaster strikes. For more information on CrisisWiki, please see our project wiki or contact Andy Carvin at acarvin AT npr dot org or @acarvin on Twitter.

Submitted by Patrick McQueen

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Protecting health by eliminating hazards: New APHA policy statements take proactive approach to preventing illness and injury

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Post originally appeared on The Pump Handle

by Elizabeth Grossman

At this year’s American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting that took place in Denver November 7-11, the APHA’s Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety sections proposed new policy statements that recommend proactive strategies for preventing illness and injury by reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals and through design that promotes workplace safety. All five policy statements presented at public hearings on November 7 have now been approved. Two additional policy proposals – one that addresses the public health impact of U.S immigration policy and another that endorsed the World Health Organization’s code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel – will serve as interim APHA policies pending full review at next year’s annual meeting.

Reducing Exposures to Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Pesticides
One of the new policy statements advocates a precautionary approach to reducing Americans’ exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a group that includes brominated flame retardants, pesticides, plasticizers, and other compounds that make up plastics, water, stain and grease repellents, and non-stick surfaces, among many other products. US residents are widely exposed to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, as documented by the testing done for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey (NHANES), among other studies.

With its approval of this endocrine-disrupting chemicals policy, the APHA joins a growing number of national health and medical organizations that have made this recommendation. The list includes the American Medical Association (AMA), the Endocrine Society, Society for Occupational and Environmental Health, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Modeled on the policies adopted the AMA and Endocrine Society in 2009, the APHA recommends reducing exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (particularly for children, infants, and other vulnerable individuals) based on existing evidence of adverse health effects and despite current research gaps.

Another new APHA policy statement that aims to prevent illness by reducing chemical exposure is one that asks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require both biomonitoring of pesticide exposure and development of clinical diagnostic tools to detect and evaluate health effects of such exposures as part of any new pesticide registration. This policy statement is designed to improve health protections for farm and other agricultural workers and their families. Amy Liebman, director of environmental and occupational health at the Migrant Clinicians Network, presented the policy and explained that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1972 (FIFRA) makes the EPA – rather than OSHA – responsible for setting chemical safety standards for agricultural workers. Unlike comparable provisions under OSHA, the EPA currently lacks requirements for medical surveillance of workers’ chemical exposures. The new APHA policy aims to close that gap.

Addressing Risks from Nuclear Waste
Two additional policy statements that aim to reduce toxic chemical exposures focus on radioactive chemicals. One recommends that to protect public health, the federal government make clean-up of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation a national priority. Located on the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State near agricultural and tribal communities, Hanford is considered to be the United States’ largest Superfund site. Hanford has become a repository for nuclear waste generated on site and elsewhere. Some of this waste is poorly contained and threatens the Columbia River (a vital Pacific Northwest salmon migratory corridor and source of irrigation water), groundwater, and deep soil.

The other policy statement aimed at reducing risk of exposure to nuclear waste states that APHA considers intrastate and interstate transportation of spent nuclear fuel to be a public health risk and promotes measures to reduce this risk – for those directly engaged in this transport and for communities through which this waste would travel. The Hanford clean-up and spent nuclear waste policy statements were both formulated and presented at the APHA meeting by students at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health.

Built-in Prevention
Also taking a proactive strategy to protecting occupational health and safety is the new APHA policy statement that recommends structural design improvements to prevent occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. As Walter Jones, associate director of theLaborers Health and Safety Fund of North America, who presented this policy statement, explained it to me, the idea is to build physical safety into architectural design and construction. Examples include using beams that enable maintenance workers to clip in (rather than using free-standing scaffolding) or building fall protection into green or solar-paneled roofs to facilitate safe maintenance. This policy statement, which mirrors the fundamentals principle of green chemistry, supports the simple but radical idea of eliminating hazards at the design and engineering stage rather than trying to cope with resulting dangers after they present themselves. It dovetails with NIOSH’s Prevention through Design Program and OSHA’s green jobs programs, and with many of the “making green jobs safe jobs” discussions that took place at this year’s APHA meeting and theNational Council for Occupational Safety and Health meeting immediately preceding it.

What struck me about the new APHA Environmental and Occupational Health policy statements is their proactive strategy – their focus on protecting occupational and public health by eliminating hazards rather than by concentrating on risk reduction. This approach was the subject of many presentations and conversations at the APHA and COSH meetings in Denver, during which many speakers highlighted recent occupational disasters: Massey Upper Big Branch mine, BP/Deepwater Horizon, Tesoro, Kleen Energy, and the many less headline grabbing but no less devastating individual workplace injuries and fatalities. Overall, there was wide agreement that prevention and hazard elimination through improved workplace and process design is the most effective way of protecting both workers and the environment.

Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for investigative journalism.


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Study: Safety is Workers’ Top Priority

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Topping a list that included wages, overtime, and sick pay, a resounding 85% of workers polled answered that safety is their primary concern at their workplace in a University of Chicago/Public Welfare Foundation study entitled “Public Attitudes Towards and Experiences with Workplace Safety” published in late August. The study compiled the results of a decade worth of surveys and data. Respondents lamented the American workplace culture that focuses on safety only as a response to tragedy. While the majority of workers in the study claimed they were satisfied with safety conditions at their facility, many responded that stress and exhaustion were factors in preventable workplace accidents.

From the Univ. of Chicago News Release:

“Workplace safety is too often ignored or accidents taken for granted,” said Tom W. Smith, director of NORC’s General Social Survey (GSS). “It is striking that coverage in the media and public opinion polls have virtually ignored the 11 workers killed by the blowout and destruction of the drilling platform.”

Questions instead focused on the environmental impact of the disaster and overlooked worker safety, Smith pointed out. But he noted that “if optimal safety had been maintained, not only would the lives of the 11 workers been saved, but the whole environmental disaster would have been averted.”

Robert Shull, program officer for workers’ rights at the Public Welfare Foundation, said, “Workplace safety should be a constant concern. Given the importance that workers themselves place on this issue, we should not have to mourn the loss of people on the job before government and employers take more effective measures to ensure that employees can go home safely after work.”

Workers, speak up when safety is a concern at your workplace. We can all work to make sure that safety tops everyone’s list of priorities.

Submitted by Patrick McQueen

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Spill Panel Opens Public Forum

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

The federal panel investigating the BP oil spill opened their deliberations to public discourse today. The discussions continue tomorrow, and can be viewed live here.

The big news came from panel co-chairman William K. Reilly who, in previewing the commission’s upcoming recommendations, discussed the creation of an industry group to self-police lagging oil companies, similar to the group that exists in the nuclear industry. The proposed group would ensure that safety regulations were closely followed and would be completely self-financed by oil exploration ventures.

From the NY Times:

[Reilly] said it was in the self interest of the oil and gas industry to create an institute that will ensure, as he put it, “that the laggards in safety and environmental stewardship can be brought up to a higher standard by their peers.”

He added, “We are not dealing here with a sick or failing or unsuccessful industry, but with a complacent one.”

Mr. Reilly said the industry needed to adopt a new safety culture. But he also said that government needed to improve a regulatory system that he said had “failed utterly” to keep up with advances in deepwater drilling technology. He said the commission was likely to recommend regulatory reforms that go beyond those already being put into effect by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and that the panel would ask Congress and industry to help fund the changes.

It will be interesting to see whether the industry giants decide to spend the money to police themselves. Such a measure could help ensure panels such as this are not needed in the future. There is no word yet on how the proposal will be received by the industry.

Full details of the commission can be viewed here.

Submitted by Patrick McQueen

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