BP Products North America Inc. will
pay a full penalty of $50.6 million
stemming from the 2005 explosion at
its Texas City, Texas, refinery that killed 15
workers and injured 170 others, according to
OSHA.
The agreement resolves failure-to-abate
citations issued after a 2009 follow-up investigation.
In addition to paying the record
fine, BP has agreed to take immediate steps
to protect those now working at the refinery,
allocating a minimum of $500 million
to that effort.
“This agreement achieves our goal of
protecting workers at the refinery and ensuring
that critical safety upgrades are
made as quickly as possible,” said Secretary
of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “The size of
the penalty rightly reflects BP’s disregard
for workplace safety and shows that we will enforce the law so workers can return
home safe at the end of their day.”
Under the agreement, BP immediately
will begin performing safety reviews of
the refinery equipment according to set
schedules and make permanent corrections.
The settlement resolves 270 of the 709
citations that OSHA issued to BP at its
Texas City Refinery in October 2009. In
these citations, OSHA alleges that BP
failed to meet obligations set forth in a
2005 agreement with OSHA. These allegations
relate to the continuing implementation
of abatement activities following the
2005 accident. BP contested the citations
and maintains that the refinery has undertaken
extensive actions to enhance worker
safety in full conformance with the 2005
agreement.
Both parties have agreed to settle these matters and focus on moving
forward collaboratively in order to
continue to improve plant safety.
This new agreement addresses the
concerns that OSHA raised in these
citations. BP is hopeful that this
agreement will provide a platform to
resolve the remaining citations.
As part of this agreement, BP is obligated
to fund the program, currently estimated
to cost up to $500 million over the
period 2010 to 2016. This amount is in addition
to the more than $1 billion that BP
spent on safety and infrastructure improvements
at the Texas City Refinery during
2005-2009.
Besides its commitment to future investment,
BP also has agreed to pay a penalty
of $50.6 million to OSHA as part of this
settlement.
K-C Pro
Expands Skin
Care Plant
To meet growing demand for skin care
and hygiene products, Kimberly-
Clark Professional has undertaken a
series of improvements and investments in
its San Antonio, Texas facility.
The upgrades have enabled the facility
to increase production of its Kleenex
brand instant hand sanitizers, foam, lotion
and other skin cleansers as well as its new
surface disinfecting product, which was
launched in the U.S. in July.
“As people have become more aware
of the important role that hand hygiene
products play in preventing the spread of
infections, such as H1N1 and other strains
of influenza, we have responded by accelerating
our investments in our San Antonio
facility,” said Josh Renihan, North American
skin care business leader for Kimberly-
Clark Professional. “Global demand for our skin care products is expected to
increase in the coming years. We are making
these investments to meet customer
needs today as well as tomorrow.”
The improvements to the San Antonio
Skin Care facility include:
• Investments in the plant’s infrastructure;
• Capital investments in equipment and
manufacturing processes;
• Increasing the capability of the plant’s
bottle lines;
• Sustainability best practices, including
improving ventilation systems to
reduce emissions from manufacturing
processes.
“These and other ongoing improvements
will ensure that we have the ability
to meet higher demand levels for instant
hand sanitizers as well as our other skin
care products now and in the future,” said
Byron Prosser, operations team leader for
the San Antonio Skin Care Facility.
The facility in San Antonio was built
in 1977 and currently employs 130 people.
It produces a full line of skin care
products for commercial, institutional and
industrial use.
Magid Glove
ISO 9001
Certified
Magid Glove & Safety, a Chicago
distributor of work gloves, protective
clothing and industrial
safety equipment, recently achieved the
International Organization for Standards
(ISO) 9001:2008 Certification, marking
12 consecutive years that the company has
been recognized by the ISO for quality
management.
“Magid has seen tremendous value in
adopting the ISO 9001: 2008 standards,”
said Adam Cohen, executive vice president
of Magid Glove & Safety. “By integrating
a quality management system into
all our processes, Magid is able to continually
improve its performance and consistently
achieve customer satisfaction by
gaining operational and organizational efficiencies
and reducing costs.”
ISO 9001:2008 standards work to enhance customer satisfaction by specifying
requirements for a quality management
system, and organizations must pass
a rigorous audit to confirm quality, consistency
and compliance of their processes
and products.
Magid’s quality management audit was
conducted by Quality Systems Registrar,
Inc., earning certification for its distribution,
manufacturing, R&D and customer
service facilities, in addition to its corporate
headquarters located in Chicago.
AIHA
Supporting
‘OSHA
at Forty’
The American Industrial Hygiene
Association is standing with Dept.
of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and
OSHA Administrator David Michaels in their view that deterrence must be an objective
of OSHA enforcement activities.
In a letter to Michaels on behalf of the
nearly 10,000 industrial hygiene and
safety professional members of the
AIHA, Michael T. Brandt, DrPH, CIH,
PMP, expressed the associations “sincere
support for Secretary Solis’ and your vision
for OSHA as it moves forward in its
mission to protect worker health and
safety.”
Brandt said Michaels’ recent document
“OSHA at Forty: New Challenges and
New Directions,” was “refreshing and exactly
on target for where we as practicing
professionals need to be in the
coming years.”
The strategies and focus cover several
different areas, and AIHA offers its support
for all of these efforts to “transform”
the agency. In particular:
AIHA supports OSHA's view that
deterrence is, and must be, an objective
of OSHA enforcement activities.
Employers must be encouraged to
make an investment in the health and
safety of their workers. And those who fail to make this investment must
be held accountable.
However, AIHA is also pleased that
along with increased enforcement, OSHA
strategy recognizes the importance of
compliance assistance and the role it
plays in protecting workers.
“AIHA also supports efforts to strengthen
OSHA’s use of science. Activities firmly
grounded in strong science will be more receptive
to employers, workers, and those
professionals serving on the front line of
worker health and safety. Much of this reliance
on good science also involved
improving interagency collaboration.”
“AIHA also supports modernizing
workplace injury and illness tracking to
identify data trends that will help both
the agency and employers dedicate
scarce resources to mitigating the most
important occupational risks. Collecting
accurate data, will better help the
agency (as well as employers and employees)
address the problems of high-risk
workplaces and ensure that both
workers and employers are treated fairly
and equitably.”
