The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), a union representing more than 1.3 million workers across North America, applauds the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) issuance of an Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking for combustible dust hazards in the workplace.

“This notice is an important first step on the way to a permanent rule to ensure the safety of millions of American workers,” said Jackie Nowell, Director of the UFCW’s Occupational Safety and Health Office. “More than 900 workers have been killed or injured since 1980 because of combustible dust accidents. These are avoidable tragedies that must be stopped.”

The UFCW also urges OSHA to work quickly to issue a tough rule that will protect workers.

“We can’t wait any longer,” said Nowell, “the time for a tough, comprehensive rule on combustible dust is now. We hope that employers, unions, and OSHA can work together to make this badly needed protection a reality.”

On February 19, 2008, immediately following the Imperial Sugar explosion in Port Wentworth, Ga. that killed 14 workers, the UFCW and  International Brotherhood of Teamsters petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to immediately issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for combustible dust in general industry noting that “workers who are employed in facilities where uncontrolled combustible dust emissions are present face ‘grave danger’ of experiencing fatalities or serious injuries as a result of dust explosions and resultant fires.”

This Advance Notice is the first step toward rulemaking since that time.

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The UFCW represents 1.3 million workers in North America, with nearly 1 million working in grocery stores and 250,000 working in the meatpacking and other food processing industries.

U.S. Rep. John Barrow wants faster action on combustible dust, which fueled last year’s deadly disaster at Imperial Sugar Co.’s local refinery.

The Savannah Democrat is reviving legislation to require the federal government to enact emergency standards concerning the hazard.

Barrow announced his move in the wake of last week’s final report by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board on the Feb. 7, 2008, explosions and fire. The board blamed the 14 fatalities mostly on company officials, who it said long knew the dangers of sugar dust but didn’t eliminate them.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has begun a lengthy process that could lead to tough new rules on combustible dust.

Barrow and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., pushed a bill through the house to mandate new rules last year after OSHA balked at calls for it to do so. The bill called for both temporary emergency rules and permanent ones. It passed overwhelmingly in the House but stalled in the Senate.

Barrow and Miller reintroduced the measure this year, but shelved it when OSHA announced its rule-making effort.

But Barrow now says that will take too long.

To read more about the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery explosion, view hundreds of photos and videos, and see documents from the investigation, go to savannahnow.com/news/explosion

“Given the continued threat of combustible-dust explosions and fires,” he said, “we need a temporary standard to prevent tragedies like the one we had at Imperial Sugar.

” … The hard reality is that it could be years at best before … regulations are in place. Meanwhile, the risk of another combustible-dust explosion or fire still exists.”

So Barrow is again pushing for the legislation, which would require OSHA to adopt emergency regulations.

The measure would tell OSHA to issue – within 90 days – an interim standard. It would require better housekeeping, engineering controls, worker training and a written combustible-dust safety program.

“People’s lives are at stake, and we can’t afford the time it will take for a permanent standard to work its way through the bureaucracy,” Barrow said.

Miller, who chairs the House Committee on Education and Labor, supports Barrow’s renewed effort.

“The chairman believes that there is still a real need to enact legislation in order to prevent these horrific explosions,” said Miller spokesman Aaron Albright. “A solid bipartisan majority of the House was on board already last Congress.”

Chris Crawford, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah, one of about two dozen Republicans to vote for the bill last year, said Kingston will do so again.

“You would think somewhere between the administration’s executive power and the legislation,” Kingston said in an e-mail, “we could come up with a balanced and workable solution for both the short and long term.” However, Albright acknowledged that, as was the case last year, the Senate could be a road block.

Georgia’s two U.S. senators supported the OSHA rule-making effort after the Chemical Safety Board issued its report last week.

But Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, both Republicans, said in a joint statement Monday that they are wary about emergency rules.

Chambliss and Isakson agreed with board chairman John Bresland that emergency standards seldom withstand court scrutiny.

Bresland voiced that view last week when asked at a news conference why the board didn’t urge OSHA to adopt emergency rules.

“Moreover,” the senators said, “these temporary rules only add confusion to the regulatory process.”

They said they hope OSHA will “promulgate effective permanent standards as expeditiously as possible … to prevent future tragedies.”

Under the administration of President George W. Bush, the White House had said the president would veto the bill if it passed.

The Obama White House did not respond to requests earlier this year for comment on the Barrow-Miller bill.

OSHA spokesman Michael Wald said Monday that it is the agency’s policy not to comment on pending legislation.

IT’S GOOD that Georgia’s two senators now support permanent, mandatory standards to protect American workers and eliminate hazardous dust in industrial workplaces.

Here’s a better idea for Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss – support proposed legislation that could have the new rules in place in as few as 120 days.

Both Mr. Isakson and Mr. Chambliss were on the fence last year on legislation to establish specific standards on combustible dust in general industries. Instead, the senators opted to wait until the government’s independent experts officially weighed in on the causes of the Feb. 7 explosions and fires that killed 14 workers and injured 36 others at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth.

And now the experts have spoken.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board approved a report Thursday in Savannah, citing a combination of unsafe sugar dust, poor equipment design and poor maintenance as factors in the fatal blast. The four-member, independent board again urged – for the second time in three years – adoption of dust standards to stop such preventable accidents from reoccurring and killing and injuring more workers.

Deliberation in federal rule-making is a positive thing when it stops the creation of excessive, bureaucratic red tape.

This isn’t one of those times.

Instead, in the wake of last Thursday’s affirmation by experts that dust has again needlessly taken lives, there’s a need for speed. Let’s get the new rules in place as soon as possible. Then enforce them.

U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Savannah, is co-sponsoring legislation (HR 849) that would fast-track the rule-making process, which means the new dust standards would go into effect in as little as three months.

We support this measure. After the CSB’s report, there’s no reason for Congress and the administration to go slow. Lives are potentially at stake.

Dust standards would make American industries pay attention to potential hazards now, not after workers have been killed or injured and facilities destroyed.

It’s clear from the evidence collected and presented by the CSB that Imperial Sugar was, at the very least, complacent before last February. Management was aware that dust was a hazard. Yet it didn’t take the risk seriously.

Today, Imperial Sugar says it’s a changed company. That’s good. But it took death and destruction for the company to readjust priorities. Many American businesses complain, and rightly so, about new, costly government regulations that appear to serve no legitimate purpose. But this is one instance when additional regulation is a good thing.

Complacency kills. It can kill again. The sooner that dust standards are applied to American industries, the better.

ATLANTA — A huge fire last year at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured 36 more was “entirely preventable,” a federal official said Thursday as the results of an investigation into the fire’s causes were released.

The owner of the plant, the Imperial Sugar Company, and the plant’s managers knew for decades about the hazards of sugar dust but failed to take the necessary precautions, according to the report, issued by the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents.

The report blamed inadequate equipment design, poor maintenance and ineffective housekeeping for the explosion and fire in February 2008, and said that Imperial Sugar and the sugar industry as a whole were aware of the dangers of dust explosions at least as early as 1925.

In a written statement, John C. Sheptor, the president and chief executive of Imperial Sugar, said the company had “collaborated” with the safety board on the report and was “working diligently” to put in place the report’s safety recommendations.

The report also cited internal memorandums at the plant, in Port Wentworth, Ga., dating from 1967, before it was owned by Imperial Sugar, showing that managers were concerned about the possibility that accumulations of sugar dust could ignite a chain of explosions that would destroy “large sections of the plant.”

The initial explosion most likely occurred inside a sugar conveyor situated beneath two silos, the report said.

The conveyor had recently been enclosed, creating “a confined, unventilated space where sugar dust could accumulate to an explosive concentration,” the safety board said.

That explosion quickly spread, igniting sugar dust and spilled sugar in adjacent areas.

Imperial Sugar had not conducted evacuation drills and the explosion and fires disabled most emergency lighting, trapping workers in a dark maze of corridors, the report said.

The Chemical Safety Board does not issue citations or levy fines, but in July 2008, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found violations at the Port Wentworth plant and at an Imperial Sugar plant in Gramercy, La., where an inspection five weeks after the Georgia fire found sugar dust four feet thick in some areas.

The agency proposed fines of $8.7 million, the third-largest in the agency’s history. Imperial Sugar is contesting the fine.

Brent J. Savage, a lawyer in Savannah who is representing some of the victims or family members of victims in lawsuits against the plant, said the report reinforced their case and cast new suspicion on insurers and other third-party inspectors, who the report said failed to make note of accumulations of sugar dust at the plant.

The first of his clients whose case is going to trial is Paul Seckinger, a mechanic who was badly burned and who, Mr. Savage said, has incurred more than $8 million in medical bills.

“They did an unbelievably in-depth study and they had access to things that a typical plaintiff’s lawyer would not,” Mr. Savage said of the safety board.

The US Chemical Safety Board traveled to Savannah today to release its preliminary report on the Feb, 7, 2008 explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth. Tonight, at 6:30 p.m, the public will have a chance to ask questions of the board before the “final” report is voted on this evening.

Unions representing food processing employees in manufacturing plants around the U.S., including a number of Imperial Sugar and Domino Sugar workers, immediately charged that the CSB had failed workers by not calling for “immediate, emergency changes in OSHA procedures to protect workers,” according to Evan Yeats, spokesperson for the UFCW – United Food and Commercial Workers International – which presents workers in U.S. and Canadian food processing plants.

Congressman John Barrow (D), who represents Savannah and Port Wentworth, also released a statement today: “Given the continued threat of combustible dust explosions and fires, this report makes clear why we need a temporary standard to prevent tragedies like the one we had at Imperial Sugar. I commend the Department of Labor for the steps they’ve taken to get permanent rules governing combustible dust on the books, but the hard reality is that it could be years at best before those regulations are in place. Meanwhile, the risk of another combustible dust explosion or fire still exists. It’s clear that we need to move forward on the bill that Congressman Miller and I reintroduced this year to get an emergency temporary standard in place as soon as possible. People’s lives are at stake, and we can’t afford the time it will take for a permanent standard to work its way through the bureaucracy for things to change. I hope that Georgia’s senators will join me in making sure that our bill gets passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law as quickly as possible. If we can prevent another community from going through what we did, we must.”

There were few surprises in the CSB’s report from preliminary information that was disclosed during public hearings this year. The explosion resulted from ongoing releases of sugar from inadequately designed and maintained dust collection equipment, conveyors and sugar handling equipment. Further, the CSB concluded that inadequate housekeeping practices allowed highly combustible sugar dust and granulated sugar to build up throughout the refinery’s packing buildings.

The first explosion – known as a “primary event” – “likely occurred inside a sugar conveyor located beneath two large sugar storage silos. The conveyor had recently been enclosed with steel panels creating a confined, unventilated space where sugar dust could accumulate to an explosive concentration. Sugar dust inside the enclosed conveyor was likely ignited by an overheated bearing, causing an explosion that traveled into the adjacent packing buildings, dislodging sugar dust accumulations and spilled sugar located on equipment, floors, and other horizontal surfaces,” according to today’s report.

“The result was a powerful cascade of secondary dust explosions that fatally injured 14 workers and injured 36 others,” it said.

The final report and proposed safety recommendations will be considered for approval by the CSB board members at a public meeting tonight in Savannah, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Hilton Savannah Desoto hotel, located at 15 East Liberty Street. The meeting will include a public comment period.

The CSB also today released a four-minute computer animation depicting the sequence of events that led to the accident. The 3-D animation will be included in a CSB safety video on the Imperial disaster that will be issued shortly after the final report is approved and will be available on the agency Web site, www.CSB.gov.

CSB Investigation Supervisor John Vorderbrueggen, P.E., who led the 19-month investigation, said, “Imperial’s management as well as the managers at the Port Wentworth refinery did not take effective actions over many years to control dust explosion hazards – even as smaller fires and explosions continued to occur at their plants and other sugar facilities around the country.”

The hazard of dust explosions in such plants was well known to the plant executives, said the CSB. “Internal correspondence dating from 1967 showed that Port Wentworth refinery managers were seriously concerned about the possibility of a sugar dust explosion that could “travel from one area to another, wrecking large sections of a plant.”

CSB Chairman John Bresland said, “I call upon the sugar industry and other industries to be alert to this serious danger.” But it is that policing of itself that has unions upset this morning, after hearing the report.

“It is ludicrous for the only recommendation from the CSB to ask the trade associations of various manufacturers to police themselves. It represents no protection for workers. Since their last report last December, we have called on the CSB to insist that OSHA implement immediate, temporary measures to address this. They did not. The process of changing OSHA regulations takes years. The last time they did it in the ’70s, it took 10 years,” said Yeats.

The CSB report said the company had not conducted evacuation drills for its employees and that the explosions and fires disabled most of the emergency lighting, making it difficult for workers to escape from the labyrinth of explosion-damaged buildings as the fires continued to spread.

The final report proposes a series of safety recommendations for board consideration. Imperial Sugar was urged to comply with National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommended practices for preventing dust fires and explosions, develop dust training and housekeeping programs and improve its evacuation procedures.

The report also called on industry groups AIB International and the American Bakers Association to develop combustible dust training and auditing materials. Imperial’s insurer, Zurich Services, and an insurance industry trade association should improve their insurance audit procedures for dust hazards and share their dust hazard training materials with clients, CSB investigators concluded.

“Do you know who AIB International is?” asked Yeats today. “They are the industry group that gave the Georgia peanut plant an outstanding report card.”

The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents. The agency’s board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. CSB investigations look into all aspects of chemical accidents, including physical causes such as equipment failure as well as inadequacies in safety regulations, codes, standards, management systems, training and industry practices.

The board does not issue citations or fines but does make safety recommendations to plants, industry organizations, labor groups and regulatory agencies such as OSHA and EPA.

The fines also expose OSHA’s inability to monitor the actions of big businesses such as Imperial Sugar.  The explosion in Georgia took place on February 7; however, OSHA inspectors found that the company had not taken immediate steps to mitigate another potential disaster when they inspected the plant in Louisiana a month later.

Earlier this year, the UFCW and the Teamsters called on OSHA to issue an emergency standard on combustible dust, and filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Labor demanding that OSHA follow the 2006 recommendations of the CSB, an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents.

In 2006, the CSB recommended that OSHA issue a rule that would have reduced the possibility of combustible dust explosions.  That year, the CSB conducted a major study of combustible dust hazards, and noted that a quarter of the explosions that occureed between 1980 and 2005 that were identified, occurred at food industry facilities, including sugar refineries.  In only one or two investigations were these incidents caused by mechanical mysteries that were either unforeseen or unpredicted.

Standards and codes have existed for years for OSHA to build upon and eliminate this type of explosion.  In 1987, OSHA issued the Grain Handling Facilities Standard as the result of grain dust explosions in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  This standard has effectively reduced the number and severity of combustible grain dust explosions in the grain handling industry, but stopped short of regulating combustible dust in industries outside of the grain industry.

The UFCW applauds the U.S. House of Representatives for passing legislation to force OSHA to set a combustible dust standard, and urges President Bush to reconsider his veto threat.  OSHA must act now and follow the recommendations of the CSB before more workers are killed or horribly injured.

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The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) represents more than 1.3 million workers, primarily in the retail and meatpacking, food processing and poultry industries. The UFCW protects the rights of workers and strengthens America’s middle class by fighting for health care reform, immigration reform, living wages, retirement security, safe working conditions and the right to unionize so that working men and women and their families can realize the American Dream. For more information about the UFCW’s effort to protect workers’ rights and strengthen America’s middle class, visit www.ufcw.org.