New CSB Chair Seeks Better Accident Investigation

Vanessa Allen Sutherland, newly appointed chair of the US Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), has announced an organizational review, to be completed within three months, aimed at improvements in investigating chemical-related industrial accidents.

Sutherland succeeds former chair Rafael Moure-Eraso, who resigned in March of this year in the wake of a congressional investigation of mismanagement at the agency.

“With a 40-person staff and a roughly $11 million budget coupled with the number of chemical accidents that I have seen come through my in-box, it really is important for me to understand operationally how we are best positioned to execute our mission to investigate accidents, share what we find, and really be a voice domestically and internationally on chemical safety,” Sutherland said.

Tasks ahead of the new chair, who previously was chief counsel for the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, include holding a public hearing in Houston, Texas, to release a report on the November 2014 incident with methyl mercaptam that killed four workers at a DuPont plant in La Porte, Texas. CSB also is going to vote for a second time on whether to accept a report about a 2009 accident at Caribbean Petroleum in Puerto Rico.