In January 2021, after a nitrogen leak at a poultry plant in Georgia killed 6 workers and injured scores more, federal investigators arrived at the scene.
The team, from a small federal agency called the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, traced the fatal leak to a freezer part that had been bent out of shape. A series of recommendations to improve safety followed.
Now, the White House is planning to eliminate the agency, allocating $0 for its budget starting in 2026. Even industry groups are opposed.
The board has a reputation for working collaboratively with companies, said Shakeel H. Kadri, executive director of the Center for Chemical Process Safety, an industry-funded organization that works on safety issues, adding that it also doesn’t penalize companies or issue new regulations.
“It has a unique mandate to do independent investigations,” Mr. Kadri said, that’s invaluable particularly at small- and medium-sized companies, where a lot of chemical accidents tend to happen but also where companies have fewer resources to investigate root causes themselves. The board’s findings are also used in other countries and in academia, he said.
The plan to dissolve the safety board is another blow to workplace safety at a time President Trump has already moved to make cuts at other federal agencies that protect workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which regulates working conditions in America, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, dedicated to research to prevent work-related injuries and illnesses, have faced steep cutbacks.
The Trump administration has also moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities nationwide.
In an interview, a former member of the chemical board, Rick Engler, said that not investigating chemical disasters would be akin to failing to investigate airplane accidents and losing the opportunity to learn from them.
“The risks are borne almost exclusively by workers who are there putting in the work, day in and day out,” said Mr. Engler, who was appointed to the board by President Barack Obama.
The White House said in its 2026 budget request that the Chemical Safety Board duplicates capabilities of other agencies to produce “unprompted studies” of the chemicals industry.
The board’s defenders say the board has a minimal budget, $14.4 million last fiscal year, and about 40 staff purely focused on investigating complex chemical mishaps, making it a lean and effective organization.
“As many devastating chemical incidents amass hundreds of millions of dollars in property and economic damages, the prevention of one disaster would save multiples” of the board’s budget, a group of 26 House Democrats, led by Nellie Pou of New Jersey, wrote in a June 24 letter urging the White House to reverse its decision.
The White House declined to comment on the letter from the members of Congress.
In the case of the poultry processor, investigators found that liquid nitrogen, which is widely used in industrial freezers, had overflowed and quickly vaporized, killing two maintenance workers from asphyxiation. During the ensuing evacuation, at least 14 other workers tried to enter the freezer room to rescue their colleagues. Four of them also died from asphyxiation.
Investigators traced the accident to a device called a bubbler tube, used to measure liquid nitrogen levels inside the freezer. The tube was likely bent during maintenance, they said, rendering it unable to measure and control the freezer’s liquid nitrogen levels.
Following the Chemical Safety Board’s findings, the freezer’s manufacturer, Messer, revised its freezer design to include several layers of protection against liquid nitrogen overflow. The poultry processor, now part of Gold Creek, also developed emergency response protocols which the board said would help prevent future accidents.
“Then these incident details are documented, and the knowledge becomes a very valuable guidance,” said Faisal Khan, director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University. “We can learn and improve.”
Hiroko Tabuchi covers pollution and the environment for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York.
The post Trump Wants to Kill a Chemical Safety Board. Chemical Makers Object. appeared first on New York Times.
