Chemical Safety Board adds resources, reaches a milestone

Washington — By steadily increasing investigative staff and restructuring tasks, the Chemical Safety Board is “getting close to at least hitting on all cylinders,” Chair Steve Owens said during a July 25 public meeting.

In December, the agency cleared a long-standing backlog of investigations and incident reports. Removing the backlog, Owens said, has allowed for production of a stream of videos offering safety recommendations and lessons learned from agency investigations.

“It used to be that our video team would wait for an investigation report to be completed so that they could do their work and get out our videos,” he added. “But in this case, we’ve gotten so many of them done that they’re kind of scurrying to keep on top of the number of reports that we’ve issued and get those videos out in a timely fashion. So, they’re doing a great job, as well.”

Two seats remain open on CSB’s five-member board. Owens didn’t discuss possible additions to the board during the call.

“With our current capabilities and staffing levels, we’re now able to produce reports as well as continue to deploy teams of investigators to a range of incidents,” CSB member Sylvia Johnson said.

Each agency final report on investigations includes safety recommendations. Chuck Barbee, director of recommendations at CSB, said the board recently reached 1,000 recommendations since the board’s inception in January 1998, a feat he called a “major milestone.”