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 extensively in a new directive for OSHA’s compliance safety and health officers (CSHOs). At the end of last year, the agency issued its updated enforcement directive, which became effective January 24.
OSHA established its PSM standard in 1992 in response to catastrophic incidents worldwide in chemical manufacturing. Workplaces covered by the standard include those in chemical manufacturing and petroleum refining. However, certain substances, equipment, and processes in other industries are also covered.
The new instructions replace a directive issued in 1994. The update removed an audit checklist and now presents its enforcement policies in a question-and-answer format.
The directive incorporates decades of agency-issued interpretations of the PSM standard (29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §1910.119).
OSHA also is working on an update to the rule and has a National Emphasis Program (NEP) of enforcement and outreach for PSM. While the checklist was removed from the new enforcement directive, OSHA’s directive for its NEP contains both an explanation of the inspection process and inspection procedures. The NEP directive instructs CSHOs to use a “Chemical NEP Dynamic List of Questions,” but OSHA hasn’t publicly disclosed its dynamic lists of questions. The lists are maintained on internal agency servers.
The enforcement and NEP directives are written for agency personnel. OSHA issued an employer guide to PSM compliance 30 years ago. However, there are newer guides for small businesses and storage facilities on the agency’s website.
When does the PSM standard apply?
Nearly 30 pages of the 103-page enforcement directive address application of the PSM standard.
The quantity of highly hazardous chemicals at a facility rather than the likelihood of a release determines whether the standard applies. Threshold quantities of highly hazardous (toxic or reactive) chemicals are listed in the mandatory Appendix A of the standard.
Over the years, employers and other stakeholders have asked OSHA about application of the standard for specific substances. The agency’s responses—standard interpretation letters—have been incorporated into the new enforcement directive. An appendix to the directive contains links to the text of interpretation letters, memoranda of understanding, and other directives addressing questions about the PSM standard.
The standard requires employers to perform a compliance audit every three years to determine whether the PSM standard applies. The standard’s nonmandatory Appendix C, “Compliance Guidelines and Recommendations for Process Safety Management,” offers employers background on the standard’s requirements.
Incidents and accidents
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is a federal body that investigates industrial accidents, explosions, and fires. The board has no enforcement authority and doesn’t issue citations or impose fines, but it makes recommendations for regulatory changes to OSHA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It also makes safety recommendations to companies, industry and standards-setting organizations, and labor groups.
The board’s reports offer insight into some of the worst industrial chemical accidents, and the board’s recommendations offer employers and industry groups guidance on chemical process safety.
For example, the board’s report on an explosion and fire at a refinery in Wisconsin that injured 36 workers uncovered six safety lapses, such as:
- Lack of transient operation safeguards in a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit;
- Loss of process knowledge as the refinery went through a series of ownership changes;
- Failure to maintain process safety information, operating procedures, process hazard analyses, and operator training;
- Lack of an industrywide publication establishing common basic process safety practices for all FCC units;
- Vessel materials that lacked the toughness properties of newer grades of steel in new vessels; and
- Lack of emergency preparedness to handle competing priorities—an asphalt release, a fire, and worker injuries.
The CSB last summer released a report on its investigation of a hydrogen chloride (HCl) release at a chemical facility in Charleston, Tennessee, where a worker was fatally injured. Contract workers from two different firms, wearing different levels of personal protective equipment (PPE), conducted separate work on the fifth floor of an equipment access platform at the facility.
One of the workers applied excessive torque to flange bolts on a heat exchanger outlet pipe containing HCl, causing the pipe to crack and releasing the hazardous chemical in the workers’ vicinity.
Workers on the platform weren’t able to see their surroundings or access the staircase, the only way to exit the platform. Three of the workers, who weren’t wearing full-body chemical-resistant suits, began climbing down the side of the structure to escape the HCl cloud. All three workers fell approximately 70 feet during their attempt to escape. One worker died from the fall, and two others sustained serious injuries.
CSB investigators concluded that the employer didn’t have written procedures for its contractors to follow or policies or procedures for evaluating simultaneous operations.
The board is still investigating a fire that seriously injured an employee at the Marathon Martinez Renewables facility in Martinez, California, but recently released an update. The board so far has found that a metal tube ruptured within a reactor charge furnace during a unit start-up, releasing hot renewable diesel and hydrogen. The board’s chairperson noted that the CSB often investigates incidents that “occurred during start-ups when conditions at a facility can change quickly.”
In addition to its reports on completed investigations, the CSB also has a YouTube channel with safety videos examining the causes of major chemical accidents.
Your compliance
The PSM is just one of OSHA’s chemical safety regulations. The agency also has standards for specific substances like metalworking fluids or hexavalent chromium. OSHA’s hazard communication standard applies wherever there are chemical hazards and requires training, as well as the use of chemical labels and safety data sheets.
If you do have a threshold quantity of a highly hazardous chemical in your facility, you must develop and implement a written PSM program, which must be developed with employee participation.
You also must perform a process safety hazard analysis, compile process safety information, and develop and implement written operating procedures.
Additionally, you need to inform any contractors of known explosion, fire, or toxic release hazards. You also need to issue “hot work” permits for any hot work operations performed on or near process equipment.
You must maintain the integrity of chemical process equipment and perform a pre-start-up safety review in new or modified facilities.
You need to establish and implement “management of change” (MOC) procedures, as well as provide process safety and equipment maintenance training. You also need an emergency action plan for your entire facility, as well as plans for handling small releases of highly hazardous chemicals.
Moreover, you need to investigate any incidents that resulted in, or could have resulted in, a catastrophic release of highly hazardous chemicals.
At least every 3 years, you must perform a compliance audit to assess the effectiveness of your PSM program, and you need to retain copies of the two most recent compliance audit reports.
The future of the PSM standard
You may one day face new requirements for handling highly hazardous chemicals.
Former President Barack Obama signed Executive Order (EO) “Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security” (EO 13650) on August 1, 2013, directing OSHA to modernize its PSM standard. Incidents prompting the EO included explosions, major fires, runaway chemical reactions, and toxic chemical releases.
The agency’s rulemaking to modernize the PSM standard is one of OSHA’s six economically significant rulemakings. However, the agency’s rulemaking to address the prevention of major chemical accidents remains in the pre-rule stage.
The agency issued a request for information in 2013. During an October 2022 stakeholder meeting about the modernization rulemaking, OSHA identified a number of PSM issues it may address in an amended regulation, including:
- Clarifying the atmospheric storage tank exemption, retail facilities exemption, and threshold quantities for mixtures of substances listed in Appendix A of the standard;
- Possibly adding coverage of oil and gas well drilling and servicing operations, reactive chemical hazards, and the dismantling of explosives and pyrotechnics; and
- Making updates to Appendix A, including adding ammonium nitrate and other chemicals and new concentrations of substances.
OSHA is now analyzing stakeholder feedback gathered during a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) review. The entry in the Labor Department’s regulatory agenda lists no date for a forthcoming notice of proposed rulemaking.
There also are 11 open recommendations for OSHA from the CSB. In a report last year on a chemical fire and toxic gas release following a Category 4 hurricane, the CSB reiterated a recommendation for OSHA to amend its PSM standard to mandate more comprehensive control of reactive hazards that could have catastrophic consequences.
Other open recommendations for OSHA include the following:
- Amending the PSM standard to require that an MOC review be conducted for organizational changes that may impact process safety;
- Promulgating a separate standard for all industries that handle combustible dust that would be based on current National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) combustible dust standards and updating the grain handling facilities standard to clarify that grain handling facilities with combustible dust are covered by the new combustible dust standard;
- Amending the PSM standard with the goal of achieving more comprehensive control of reactive hazards that could have catastrophic consequences;
- Amending process hazard analysis (PHA) requirements to explicitly require an evaluation of reactive hazards;
- Revising existing standards or establishing a new one to require that employers ensure the coordination of simultaneous operations (SIMOPs) involving multiple work groups, including contractors;
- Removing the exemption for oil and gas drilling and well servicing from the Control of Hazardous Energy (lockout/tagout) standard;
- Establishing a new standard similar to the lockout/tagout and PSM standards that applies to the drilling, production, and servicing/workover activities at onshore oil and gas wells;
- Adding fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate (FGAN) to the list of highly hazardous chemicals covered by the PSM standard and adding an appropriate threshold quantity to Appendix A of the standard; and
- Eliminating the atmospheric storage tank exemption from the PSM standard.
Be mindful that the PSM rule may apply to additional substances or at different threshold quantities, and current exemptions may one day be removed.
For now, perform audits to determine whether your facility is covered. If the PSM standard does apply, develop a program with all its required policies, procedures, and training.
