Chemical Safety Board and Qatar Proposed Chapter

Abstract

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is a board responsible for carrying out investigations on chemical hazards and accidents that take place in the chemical industry in the United States of America. The Board consists of five appointed members by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and its members reached 35 professional staff in 2008. The mission of CSB is given to it by the Congress and no other agencies can influence or affect the Board’s activities as stated in the law. Its main purpose is to maintain the safety of the people and work environment in chemical plants. Once an accident has been selected for investigation, the CSB members follow a set of procedures to find out the causes of the accident and give recommendations to the industry and also to the regulatory agencies about what should be done to avoid such accidents. The completed investigations, as well as the current ones, are made available to the public in order to limit the number of accidents that take place in the chemical industry in the U.S. In this paper, a Qatar chapter of CSB, Qatar Safety Board (QSB), is proposed. Unlike CSB in the U.S., QSB will cover not only the accidents in the chemical industry, but also accidents that take place in the medical, industrial, sea and transportation sectors in Qatar. QSB will give recommendations to the industries on how to avoid the accidents. It will also try to raise awareness among everyone in the work environment in Qatar by making its reports on the accidents available, free-of-charge to the public. QSB will ensure a safer and healthier work environment in Qatar.