Today's Safety News

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A nose-down plane landing, new legal developments in Deepwater Horizon disaster and a factory safety law passed in Bangladesh are among this week’s top EHS-related stories as featured on ISHN.com.

In a public meeting yesterday, members of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board declared the response by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to seven longstanding recommendations – on combustible dust, fuel gas and the Process Safety Management standard – to be “unacceptable.”

Halliburton Energy Services has agreed to plead guilty and pay the maximum fine for destroying evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, U.S. Justice Department announced yesterday.

A school bus driver’s failure to observe a truck as it was approaching the intersection caused a 2012 collision in New Jersey that killed one student and injured fifteen more students and the driver, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

OSHA has cited the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital and DGA Builders LLC, both of Rochester, for 14 serious violations of workplace safety and health standards, chiefly involving asbestos. The companies face a combined total of $53,200 in proposed fines, following an inspection.

The EPA has added more than 130 chemicals to its Safer Chemical Ingredients List including, for the first time, 119 chemicals that use fragrance for commercial and consumer cleaning products.

Firefighters continue to battle a burning oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico which broke out Monday night. News sources say the rig has partially collapsed because of a ruptured natural gas well. The 44 workers on the rig were evacuated into two lifeboats and no injuries have been reported.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, Louisiana this week refused to grant Transocean Deepwater Drilling, Inc., owner of the Deepwater Horizon, a stay of a recent federal district court order that the company promptly turn over documents that the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has subpoenaed from the company for its investigation into the April 2010 explosion at the Macondo drilling facility in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an effort that stretches 2,900 miles across the continental U.S., law enforcement officers in 11 states are focused on preventing traffic deaths along I-80 throughout the remainder of July – typically one of the deadliest periods of the year on the busy route.