U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

It's pretty important for anyone working around chemicals. I work around truck racks and pump houses and giant fuel tanks all day, and I'm rather glad I don't need to worry about being blown 100 feet in the air in an explosion and leave my family behind like my great uncle did. The reason I don't worry is because, partly due to the CSB, we're pretty good at knowing how to work around explosive liquids safely.

Everyone gets hung up on money and they don't pay attention to value. The CSB annual budget is less than some of the contracts I work on, automating fuel farms on military bases. They're good value for money.

When something happens, the real cause of the problem is often due to a combination of the entity (the company/person/whatever that had the "something" happen), as well as external factors. Those external factors can include rules/guidance—or the lack of rules/guidance—from multiple agencies.

If a regulatory agency is also doing investigations, they may choose to focus less on their own 'failings' (that is, their agency's rules/guidance or lack of rules/guidance), and focus more on others' failings. Or, they may choose to focus less on other agencies' failings for political reasons.

Having a third party, with no regulatory ability, helps to reduce the appearance of bias, and increase trust in the industry that the third party investigates.

The stated motivation is that the bureaucratic structure is redundant, so ideally the good work they do will be continued in another agency.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath. It's just people's lives at stake, I figure it'll go on the backburner.