The effectiveness of U.S. OSHA process safety management inspection – A preliminary quantitative evaluation

Abstract This study attempted to evaluate the inspection effectiveness of the U.S. OSHA process safety management (PSM) standard using statistical correlation test. A total of 6578 citations of past 1277 OSHA PSM inspections from 1992 to 2006 were quantitatively compared with the findings of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) investigations on root and contributing causes of 19 major chemical accidents. Nonparametric Spearman's coefficient of rank correlation tests showed a moderately strong agreement between OSHA PSM inspection citations and CSB findings at p

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