The U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s decision to reverse a policy of including the names of workers killed in the incidents it investigates is drawing fire from safety advocates. In a letter to the CSB, more than fifty organizations and individuals demand that the agency reinstate its policy of naming the fatally injured workers in its reports – something it had previously done since 2014. The CSB stopped the practice recently because doing so “may infer culpability on the part of the entity responsible for the operation of the facility where the incident occurred,” according to a spokesperson.
The CSB’s most recent report, about a fatal gas well blowout in Oklahoma, does not mention the workers who died in the blowout: Josh Ray, Mike Smith, Cody Risk, Parker Waldridge, and Roger Cunningham.