You may recall that 13 workers died on February 7th in an explosion at a sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia. Today, The Wall Street Journal has a fine story looking at the disaster and the dangers from dust and the failure of federal and safety officials to do much about the risks. First, what did it feel like when the explosion took place?:

The four-story building at the heart of the Imperial Sugar Co. shook. Embers and debris blasted across the 155-acre complex, and a column of flame shot hundreds of feet into the air. Mr. Sexton, who had been about 50 yards from the explosion’s suspected center, roused himself and inched through the dark plant, helping a badly burned co-worker along the way.

Superheated sugar flowed like lava until it cooled and formed rock-hard barriers. The building’s steel frame melted. It took firefighters a week to finally put out the fire. The disaster at the 91-year-old factory, known for its "Dixie Crystals" brand, killed 13 of Mr. Sexton’s co-workers and injured 45 others — the deadliest such accident in more than 25 years.

    I can’t even imagine the pain felt by those who were burned to death, not to mention those who lived. To try to clean up workplace and deal with the clear, known danger posed by dust, the House passed a bill on Wednesday–championed as usual by Rep. George Miller–that would give the Occupational Safety and Health Administration 18 months to write regulations to minimize the danger. But, surprise….:

Though the Senate must still vote, the White House has echoed OSHA concerns that the association’s recommendations are too specific to be realistically applied to the more than 200,000 workplaces where dust is a threat.

   Yeah, things are too specific when it gets to workers’ safety…you think they said that, gee, those tax cuts are way too specific? Nah. And OSHA is the crux of the problem, as the article points out:

But OSHA, which makes and enforces workplace-safety rules, has resisted for more than a year the safety board’s recommendations that it develop specific standards for the many other industries, such as sugar, that produce combustible dust.

"OSHA has a ‘gotcha’ approach," says Stephen Selk, investigations manager for the safety board. "They look hard and creatively to identify sometimes arcane interpretations of rules that were broken. We’re suggesting to OSHA that they don’t offer clear guidance. They don’t tell industry the things to do to prevent a disaster like this."

Instead, OSHA relies on cleanliness standards scattered throughout its regulations, including one that requires any workplace to be "clean and orderly and in a sanitary condition."

OSHA chief Edwin G. Foulke Jr. defends the agency’s record but says that it "will look at the possibility of" a new standard if the agency’s investigation at Imperial shows current rules are insufficient. "We’re not a Johnny-come-lately to this thing," he says. "We’re moving forward. We’ve got a lot of things we’re doing."

    So, the bottom line here is that this is just another example where the costs of protecting workers’ lives aren’t deemed a worthwhile expense. These people are expendable. All for the sake of efficiency, commerce and profit.

    This will only change when we start putting executives in jail when workers die or are injured and when workers themselves have the power, without enduring sanctions, to shut down workplaces that are unsafe–just as workers in Sweden can do.