[jandrewrogers]

To be honest, I’d never heard of them until now. Industry runs on Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), which are privately produced. The thing is, the hazards for chemicals at least are highly standardized. The nature of e.g. ammonium perchlorate doesn’t change much depending on where it comes from. No one needs to write their own MSDS.

Safety operationally is regulated by OSHA, based on the MSDS among other things. It isn’t entirely clear where the CSB fits in. There aren’t many surprises in chemistry and OSHA is aggressive.

The safety protocols are pretty straightforward forward and strict, there isn’t much novelty in chemical disasters. Chemical disasters are virtually always for stupid reasons covered by other regulatory organizations.

[nerdsniper]

MSDS is just a small part of process safety. CSB deals with the very largest industrial accidents. These are at plants where millions of pounds of chemical flow through any pipe every day.

The examples you mention about MSDS sounds relevant to a large building/warehouse, but we’re talking about massive industrial complexes nearly equal to the area encompassing all of Seattle+Bellevue+Redmond+Renton+Tukwila.

At that scale, there are still plenty of surprises. Like, “oh shit, I didn’t realize the new version of the lubricating oil the manufacturer recommends for our massive pumps have a different additive that reacts with an impurity in our process stream which catalyzes an exothermic reaction”.

I highly recommend a very short book named “What Went Wrong” by Trevor Kletz. It’s surprisingly entertaining and walks you through basic things that have caused disasters at countless chemical plants over and over again.

[EvanAnderson]

I learned about the CSB listening to the Causality podcast[0]. The various chemical plant mishaps described there make me think there's ample need for the CSB.

[0] https://engineered.network/causality/