January 29, 2010

US grain group wants current grain handling safety rules to stay

The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) has urged the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to retain its existing grain-handling facility standard.

The NGFA also asked OSHA to exempt grain elevators, feed mills and grain processing plants already covered by those regulations from its planned development of a comprehensive combustible dust standard.

The NGFA's statement, developed in collaboration with and supported by the American Feed Industry Association and Pet Food Institute, was submitted in response to OSHA's October 21 advance notice of proposed rulemaking, in which the agency signalled its intent to develop a broad, comprehensive combustible dust standard that would apply across different industry sectors.

OSHA posed a series of questions on which it solicited public comment, and said the responses would be used as the basis for developing a proposed combustible dust standard later this year. NGFA said the agency's advance notice specifically cited its existing grain handling safety standard, implemented in 1988, as an example of how such a standard could reduce the number of incidents and fatalities in an industry sector.

But OSHA's notice did not specifically rule out developing additional regulations for any industry, including the grain, feed and processing sector. Among the questions posed by the agency was whether any revisions were needed to portions of the grain-handling standard that address fires and explosions, whether it should be harmonised with the approach ultimately taken by OSHA for other combustible dusts, whether it should be incorporated into a new combustible dust standard and, if OSHA retained it as a separate standard, whether doing so would cause portions of grain-handling facilities to be covered by two separate OSHA standards.

NGFA opposed harmonising the grain handling standard with any general industry combustible dust standard that may be developed as part of the rulemaking. The NGFA said doing so could subject the grain handling industry to two different regulations, result in compliance confusion and might misdirect industry resources from methods known to be effective in reducing fire and explosion risks.

Any attempt to harmonise these standards likely would have a detrimental impact on the effectiveness of the grain handling standard, said the association.

The information used by OSHA to arrive at a grain handling standard is specific to the grain industry and is unlikely to be improved by a general industry combustible dust standard. Having two different standards to address the same hazard would result in duplicative and unnecessary requirements that most likely would cause more confusion than reduce fire and explosion hazards, it said.

The NGFA also noted that OSHA's own regulatory review in 2003 determined that the grain handling standard should continue without change.