Panel: U.S. lax in regulating explosive chemicals

HOUSTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has displayed a lack of urgency in the wake of a deadly Texas fertilizer plant explosion and must regulate potentially explosive chemicals immediately, a safety board said Thursday.

The Chemical Safety Board, one of several federal agencies investigating the April explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. that killed 15 people, presented its preliminary findings to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. It reported that the decades-old standards used to regulate potentially dangerous fertilizer chemicals are far weaker than those used by other countries.

"The safety of ammonium nitrate fertilizer storage falls under a patchwork of U.S. regulatory standards and guidance -- a patchwork that has many large holes," according to the report presented to the panel by Rafael Moure-Eraso, the board's chairman.

The board, which has no regulatory authority, recommended in 2002 that the EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration add reactive chemicals such as ammonium nitrate to the list of substances they regulate. That never happened.

About 30 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the plant detonated about 20 minutes after a fire was reported, causing a blast that flattened swaths of the small town of West. -- AP