"Business can self regulate" is one of those fantasy-land ideas that the right loves but repeatedly, the facts speak for themselves. Business consistently proves that it needs rules and is unable to operate without a proper framework. This doesn't mean crushing business and making it impossible to make a profit (as some countries do) but what it does mean is creating an environment where companies can be successful though not at the expense of employees, environment and consumers.
Overly lax federal oversight and cost-cutting by BP were factors in a 2005 explosion at the oil giant's Texas City refinery that killed 15 people and injured 170, the worst U.S. industrial accident since 1990, a government report found.
Though companies have plenty of safeguards for individual workers' safety, there is a potentially deadly lack of sound procedures to measure process safety, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which released the report Tuesday.
At a public meeting Tuesday night where the board approved the report, Chairwoman Carolyn W. Merritt vowed that the agency would follow up on the report's safety recommendations until they are adopted.
"The 15 men and women who died here two years ago must not be allowed to perish in vain," Merritt said at the meeting.
