The U.S. Chemical Safety Board's (CSB) is inviting comment on its just-issued Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding accidental release reporting. The proposed rule describes when an owner or operator is required to file a report of an accidental release and the required content of such a report and is intended to ensure that the CSB receives rapid, accurate reports of any accidental release that meets established statutory criteria.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) has published a significantly updated version of a safety standard that provides guidance for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving a safety and environmental management system (SEMS) for offshore operations.

The EPA said yesterday that it will not impose new financial responsibility requirements for the petroleum and coal products manufacturing industry (the industrial sector that transforms crude petroleum and coal into usable products) “because the financial risk to the federal government from those facilities is already addressed by various existing federal and state technical and financial requirements and modern material management practices.”

Our green story. Responsibility is a major part of the Mount Vernon FR business model—responsibility to protect both our customers and the environment: Mount Vernon FR recycles water used in production processes through our boiler, so that we are wasting less and conserving more.

Integrating autonomous vehicle policies into your fleet safety management systems; a restaurant manager dies from a toxic mix of cleaning chemicals and no U.S. mine earns Pattern of Violation status. These were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

A “fair” intended to encourage recycling innovations will be held Thursday, November 14, 2019, in Washington, DC. The first-ever America Recycles Innovation Fair, which is open to the public, is aimed at finding solutions to enhance the U.S. recycling infrastructure, creating new markets for recycled materials, and improving education and outreach about recycling, according to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

New data from the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that concentrations of ethylene oxide, a colorless and carcinogenic gas, are higher in Phoenix than anywhere else in the country. The data came from 18 air quality monitoring stations in nine states across the country, from Seattle to St. Louis to Camden, New Jersey.

According to the National Indoor Air Survey by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, people believe that the health risks related to indoor air are greater and more serious than they actually are according to research data. Finns' knowledge and risk beliefs related to indoor air were surveyed for the first time.

In California and other U.S. western states, wildfires have become more frequent and intense, adversely impacting air quality and human health. Smoke from wildfires contains many toxins and irritants, including particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, which, due to their size, penetrate deep into the lungs and contribute to cardiopulmonary and respiratory illness.

Eliminating exposure to asbestos and addressing the effect of climate change on mental health were two of the fourteen new policy statements adopted by the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Governing Council at its 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo in Philadelphia this week. The ambitious agenda includes topics ranging from environmental justice to drinking water safety and attacks on health workers.