OSHA implements National Emphasis Program to eliminate highly hazardous chemicals in the petrochemical industry 13 JUNE 2007
OSHA has published a directive implementing a National Emphasis Program to help eliminate workplace hazards associated with the release of highly hazardous chemicals at petroleum refineries.
National Safety Council Report: Accidental Deaths on the Rise 12 JUNE 2007
Accidentaldeaths in the United States are rising at an alarming rate, more than 20 percent over a 10-year period, according to the latest data available.
For a corporation in the Chemical Industry sector, managing safety and the welfare of a company's human capital is imperative. One of the methods for approaching this compliance objective is using Hazard Communication (HAZCOM) which is an important part of The Occupational Health and Safety Administration's (OSHA) attempt to maintain employee safety in the workplace: OSHA: Hazard Communication.
As stated by the U.S. Department if Labor:
"The HCS provides people the right-to-know the hazards and identities of the chemicals they are exposed to in the workplace. When employees have this information, they can effectively participate in their employers' protective programs and take steps to protect themselves. In addition, the standard gives employers the information they need to design and implement an effective protective program for employees potentially exposed to hazardous chemicals. Together these actions will result in a reduction of chemical source illnesses and injuries in American workplaces."
From October 2004 until September 2005, OSHA issued 1,740 citations to the chemical industry and fines totaling $1,696,146. The average worker incidence rate was 3.5 per 100 full-time employees and the Chemical Industry had 31 fatalities.
As a result of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA), corporations within the Chemical Industry in particular are facing challenges which can be costly and time consuming. Compliance with Section 311 and 312 of the EPCRA "require(s) businesses to report the locations and quantities of chemicals stored on-site to state and local governments in order to help communities prepare to respond to chemical spills and similar emergencies." Compliance with Section 313 "requires EPA and the States to annually collect data on releases and transfers of certain toxic chemicals from industrial facilities, and make the data available to the public in the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)." It is imperative that companies keep careful record of all transfer and release information regarding chemicals reported in TRI data.
"The Clean Air Act requires EPA to regulate emissions of toxic air pollutants from a published list of industrial sources referred to as "source categories." As required under the Act, EPA has developed a list of source categories that must meet control technology requirements for these toxic air pollutants. The EPA is required to develop regulations (also known as rules or standards) for all industries that emit one or more of the pollutants in significant quantities. EPA has developed implementation tools (eg. checklists, brochures) to help comply with the standards."
The EPA's limitations on TRI (Toxic Release Inventory) Data, among other regulatory guidelines, can be reflective of the environmental initiatives which are taken on by a corporation. The process related to on-site releases (to air, bodies of water, and land) and transfers (to publicly-owned treatment works, recycling, energy recovery, treatment, and disposal) can result in a large amount of reporting and a need for compliance solutions. With the largest amount of TRI released by one company as over 5 million pounds, the tracking and reporting of chemicals such as methanol, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, manganese compounds, and sulfuric acid can be overwhelming without the proper compliance management system. Having the proper chemical recovery system in place is also critical.
More specifically, when the EPA compared the Chemical Industry to other industries, not only did they have more frequent inspections (every six months, on average), but they also had a higher amount of violations than most industries, as well. The majority of these inspections were related to CAA and RCRA guidelines.
Click here to view some of the Federal Statues and Regulations associated with the Chemical Industry
Some questions to ask yourself:
What can our company do to stay competitive?
Are we losing too much time, money, and other resources dealing with non-compliance?
Are we using the most cost-effective methods to stay compliant?
If not, are we looking to alternatives to our existing compliance system?
Please feel free to browse our website or contact us to see if ehsSUITE is just what your Chemical Corporation needs to stay competitive.
The graphical analysis feature provided as a standard tool of ehsSUITE allows users to quickly and easily produce graphical displays of data and information using trend, bar, pie and many other data visualization techniques.
ehsSUITE is the only comprehensive metadata-driven application for compliance management. What this means is that all information delivered to the user, such as calculations, validations, alarms, reports and dashboards, is defined in user-configurable tables and are easily managed using configuration wizards.
The event and task feature of ehsSUITE is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules.
The ehsSUITE has a real-time data collection and handling application that allows users to connect to external sources of data, combine with manual data input and provide a sophisticated infrastructure capable of distributing data in real-time, allowing your company the ability to more efficiently manage data for the protection of air and water quality, land systems, and ground water.
From English to Spanish, from Spanish to German, from German to Dutch and back to English...ehsSUITE speaks any language with a simple click of a mouse. The ehsSUITE platform is the only compliance management software with a built-in language translator.
The beating heart of ehsSUITE is its notification manager. As one great entrepreneur once said, "Set it and forget it!" Once notifications are set in ehsSUITE, you can relax and focus on more important issues than managing a calendar and reminder list. That is because ehsSUITE has the ability to proactively manage events, tasks, and deadlines.
The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, Health and Safety, and Plant Security.
The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, such as SPCC, SSM, SPCC, SWPPP; Health and Safety, such as Emergency Response, and Plant Security.
The event and task management capabilities of the calendar tool integrated throughout ehsSUITE provides the user with a range of options from the simplicity of simply managing calendar-based events to the functionality required to manage complex compliance projects.
The ehsSUITE calendar tool is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules and tasks.
With ehsSUITE, web-based displays and dashboards have never been easier or more useful to build and maintain. The page editors provide the users of ehsSUITE a simple and intuitive toolbar to configure powerful data visualization and communication displays and dashboards.
The ehsSUITE provides a regulatory database that may be maintained by the user or may employ the optional BNA XML feed to keep regulations current. All regulations are configured to conform to the BNA standard that provides the user enough flexibility to manage regulations by citation.
The ehsSUITE manages safety equipment by providing the tools necessary for adding equipment, images associated with the equipment, procedures for proper use and deployment, and linking the equipment to an area or facility location.
The ehsSUITE incident management system is a powerful work-process system allowing the user to easily configure incident management systems to correspond to the legacy systems and procedures in place.
The ehsSUITE allows the centralization of MSDS documents to an easier to manage location. Display of the latest MSDS is easy and convenient through the ehsSUITE's web browser.
In addition to providing real-time data, configurable dashboards, reporting in Microsoft Office, and many other features that extend the business value of ehsSUITE software to our users, our Design and Development team has taken it one step further by adding a spreadsheet tool.
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