Abstract
The Environmental Protection Agency has updated a 25-year-old regulation intended to reduce chemical plant accidents and protect communities, workers, and emergency responders. The revision to EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) is part of a sweeping regulatory overhaul of federal industrial safety regulations ordered by President Barack Obama in 2013. Obama directed agencies to make changes in the wake of the deaths of 15 people, mostly emergency responders, in explosion of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at a fertilizer warehouse in West, Texas. RMP provisions cover some 12,500 facilities that, according to EPA, reported 1,500 accidents over a recent 10-year period. These incidents involved nearly 60 deaths, 17,000 injuries, the evacuation of 500,000 people, and property damage of more than $2 billion. Among changes, the new regulation calls for independent, third-party audits of companies after an accident or near-accident and consideration of inherently safer manufacturing approaches. However, the rule specifies that implementation of
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