OSHA Issues New National Emphasis Program (TRN Safety Alert)

From Cliff Gerbick, ASP (The Reserves Network Director of Safety)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued a new National Emphasis Program (NEP) for chemical facilities. The NEP is focused on protecting workings from the risks associated with catastrophic releases of highly hazardous chemicals.

The new NEP replaces a 2009 pilot Chemical Facility National Emphasis Program which covered certain regions across the United States. The new program is a nationwide program that establishes updated polices and procedures for inspecting workplaces that are covered under OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard. The PSM standard covers employees who have threshold quantities of highly hazardous chemicals in their workplaces. The purpose of the new NEP is to give inspectors better tools to conduct inspections of facilities that are likely to have highly hazardous chemicals in quantities covered by OSHA.

For further information on the National Emphasis Program and Process Safety Management, please visit www.osha.gov.

For information on additional OSHA National Emphasis Programs, please (Click Here for OSHA Programs)

Cliff Gerbick is the Director of Safety for The Reserves Network, a provider of “Total Staffing Solutions” in the office, industrial, professional and technical markets. To contact Cliff, email cgerbick@trnstaffing.com.