EPA urged to tighten chemical safety rules

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) recently sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Director Gina McCarthy to urge her to strengthen the safety requirements in its proposed update to the Risk Management Program (RMP) chemical safety regulations.
“For too long, we have seen the consequences of chemical disasters,”Boxer said in the letter. “From 2004-2013 alone, EPA documented more than 1,500 accidents at hazardous chemical facilities. The result was nearly 60 people killed, about 15,000 people injured or seeking medical treatment, almost 500,000 people evacuated or sheltering in place and property damage of more than $2 billion.”
Boxer urged McCarthy to require all hazardous chemical facilities to analyze their methods that could be improved with inherently safer technologies and alternatives and to require those facilities to submit their analysis results to the EPA. Boxer also urged required implementation of safer technologies and alternative discovered through those analyses.
“EPA’s rule is a rare opportunity to save lives and protect children’s safety by preventing catastrophic chemical disasters,” Boxer said. “If the rule is not strengthened, every day another generation of children will grow up at risk. All workers and fence-line communities deserve the best available chemical disaster prevention and EPA’s RMP rule is the one chance in a generation to ensure strong nationwide protection.”