Chemical Safety Board’s YouTube channel earns ‘Silver Play Button’

Washington — The Chemical Safety Board’s YouTube channel was recently recognized with a Silver Play Button award from the online video sharing platform for exceeding 100,000 subscribers.

The independent federal agency issues safety recommendations to facility managers, industry organizations, labor groups and regulatory agencies. Its channel, @USCSB, has more than 365,000 subscribers. The channel features nearly 100 safety videos that provide safety recommendations aimed at protecting workers and communities, as well as lessons learned from agency investigations.

“CSB’s safety video program has been an extraordinarily successful way for the agency to provide critical information to a very wide audience of safety managers and workers at chemical facilities across the country, as well as stakeholders, government officials and the public at large,” Shauna Lawhorne, CSB video producer and public affairs specialist, said in a press release. “CSB’s safety video channel has more subscribers than the YouTube channels for even some of the very large, more well-known government agencies.”

Founded in 1998, CSB was a frequent target for elimination under the first Donald Trump administration. Although the board has operated with two of its five seats vacant since February 2023, additions to other areas of the agency have helped advance its mission.

In December 2023, CSB cleared a long-standing backlog of investigations and incident reports. Agency Chair Steve Owens credited the development for a boost in video production.

“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,” Owens said during a July 25 agency public business meeting. “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.”