Trade Secrets
Employers must make available all information necessary to comply with PSM to those persons responsible for:
- compiling the process safety information,
- developing of the process hazard analysis and operating procedures, and
- incident investigations, emergency planning and response, and compliance audits.
Information must be made available without regard to the possible trade secret status of such information. Nothing in PSM, however, precludes the employer from requiring those persons to enter into confidentiality agreements not to disclose the information.
The Future of PSM
In December 2014, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) formally announced that to "Modernize U.S. Process Safety Management Regulations" is the Board's newest Most Wanted Safety Improvement, concluding that implementation of key federal and state CSB safety recommendations will result in significant improvement of Process Safety Management (PSM) regulations in the United States. The CSB recommended that OSHA make the following PSM improvements:
- Expand the rule's coverage to include the oil and gas exploration and production sector;
- Cover reactive chemical hazards;
- Add additional management system elements to include the use of leading and lagging indicators to drive process safety performance and provide stop work authority to employees;
- Update existing Process Hazard Analysis requirements to include the documented use of inherently safer systems, hierarchy of controls, damage mechanism hazard reviews, and sufficient and adequate safeguards; and
- Develop more explicit requirements for facility/process siting and human factors, including fatigue.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
9-5. According to the PSM trade secret requirement, employers must make available all information to which of the following?
You forgot to answer the question!