Bloomberg Politics reported Feb. 1 that President Trump’s 2019 budget request will include a provision that eliminates the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB). Trump’s 2018 budget request also proposed its elimination, but appropriators disagreed and included it.
CSB investigates chemical accidents across the nation. “The CSB conducts root cause investigations of chemical accidents at fixed industrial facilities,” according to the agency’s website. “Root causes are usually deficiencies in safety management systems, but can be any factor that would have prevented the accident if that factor had not occurred.”
The agency, with an $11 million budget, is currently investigating the Jan. 22, Red Mountain Operating gas well explosion in Quinton, Okla., the Arkema Inc. chemical fire and explosion in Crosby, Texas, that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in August, and the Didion Milling Company incident in Cambria, Wis., that killed five in May 2017.
A product of Clean Air Act amendments in 1990, the board began operations in 1998.