Improving the impact of the U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board's safety recommendations

Background: The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is an independent federal agency charged with investigating chemical incidents. CSB's accident and hazard investigations lead to the issuance of safety recommendations, which are the agency's primary tool for improving chemical process safety and preventing catastrophic incidents. The CSB has issued 601 safety recommendations since its inception in 1998.

Methods: All CSB recommendations issued from 1998 to the present will be coded by purpose (e.g., regulation, regulatory enforcement, voluntary consensus standard, guidance document) and recipient type (e.g., federal, state or local government; consensus standard setting body; industry (corporate or site level.)) In addition, each recommendation will be classified as having high, medium, or low “potential impact” using a semi-quantitative rating system estimating its ability to produce sustained, long-term safety improvement(s). Finally, the recommendation's current status (open or closed) will be used to compare implementation rates between these categories.

Results: The governing hypothesis is that certain types of safety recommendations are more likely to be implemented than others. It is anticipated that recommendations classified as having “high” potential impact are less likely to be implemented than are recommendations classified as having “low” potential impact.

Conclusions: The results will lead to a number of conclusions regarding the types of recommendations issued by the CSB and their likelihood of implementation. Possible reasons for differences in impact and success rates will be discussed, as will the implications of these findings for future CSB recommendations and advocacy efforts.