Beyond Texas City: the state of process safety in the unionized U.S. oil refining industry.
The March 2005 British Petroleum (BP) Texas City Refinery disaster provided a stimulus to examine the state of process safety in the U.S. refining industry. Participatory action researchers conducted a nation-wide mail-back survey of United Steelworkers local unions and collected data from 51 unionized refineries. The study examined the prevalence of highly hazardous conditions key to the Texas City disaster, refinery actions to address those conditions, emergency preparedness and response, process safety systems, and worker training. Findings indicate that the key highly hazardous conditions were pervasive and often resulted in incidents or near-misses. Respondents reported worker training was insufficient and less than a third characterized their refineries as very prepared to respond safely to a hazardous materials emergency. The authors conclude that the potential for future disasters plagues the refining industry. In response, they call for effective proactive OSHA regulation and outline ten urgent and critical actions to improve refinery process safety.
McQuiston
Thomas H
TH
tmcquiston@uswtmc.org
Lippin
Tobi Mae
TM
Bradley-Bull
Kristin
K
Anderson
Joseph
J
Beach
Josie
J
Beevers
Gary
G
Frederick
Randy J
RJ
Frederick
James
J
Greene
Tammy
T
Hoffman
Thomas
T
Lefton
James
J
Nibarger
Kim
K
Renner
Paul
P
Ricks
Brian
B
Seymour
Thomas
T
Taylor
Ren
R
Wright
Mike
M
D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000458:organization & administration; D004190:Disasters; D019652:Extraction and Processing Industry / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000458:organization & administration; D007750:Labor Unions; D016272:Occupational Health; D010578:Petroleum; D017751:Safety Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014481:United States; D014489:United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration / Q000458:organization & administration
D010578:Petroleum