BP Disaster Shows Challenges in Federal Decision-Making Structure on Safety Policies for Cleanup Workers, CPR Report Says

Today CPR releases a new white paper, From Ship to Shore: Reforming the National Contingency Plan to Improve Protections for Oil Spill Cleanup Workers (press release), a look at how decisions were made about safety protections for cleanup workers in the aftermath of the BP oil spill -- and the lessons for the future.

The federal government's pre-disaster planning on worker safety issues didn't adequately consult the safety experts, and that meant the decision-making in the immediate wake of the spill couldn't be adequate. Too many cleanup workers in the Gulf were given inadequate training on the use of personal protective equipment. Employers and individual workers were left to determine on their own how to resolve the difficult question of what level of protections, such as respirators, to use.

OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are constrained to limited roles for planning for and implementing regulations related to oil spill disasters under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the statute governing oil spill response. As a result, the federal government's advance planning for disaster response doesn't adequately incorporate agency expertise best suited for planning for worker safety issues in disaster cleanup.

Our report credits OSHA and NIOSH staff for developing workable solutions to problems with training, air monitoring, personal protective equipment, and recordkeeping in the weeks following the spill, demonstrating how invaluable their expertise is during the response—and would have been in developing initial regulations, had they been involved in that process. The recommendations in the report are mostly changes that could be made by the EPA and the Coast Guard.

The report's recommendations also call for the White House to seek an emergency, supplemental appropriation for OSHA to replace the substantial extra resources consumed by this unprecedented response.

The white paper was written by CPR Member Scholars Rebecca Bratspies, Alyson Flournoy, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, and CPR Policy Analyst Matthew Shudtz.

© 2014 The Center for Progressive Reform