| Chemical Board Web Site Offers Translations | |
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Already one of the most innovative and user-focused government Web sites, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has again raised the performance bar by offering online translation into 26 languages on virtually every page of its site.
Most importantly, translation is offered on all pages of the Chemical Incident Report Center (CIRC), CSB's entryway into a large and growing, searchable database of chemical accident reports from around the world.
Users can click on the flag icons, or select a language from the drop-down box at the bottom of every page. In addition, the entire CIRC database is being co-hosted in Italian by a private Web site. In addition to the 26 languages already offered, translations into Korean and Vietnamese will be added in the near future.
Since its inception only three years ago, the CIRC database has grown steadily, now containing over 1130 reports of chemical incidents collected from government sources, news media, eyewitnesses and others. Each report contains data on the type of incident, chemicals involved, location, dates, injuries and fatalities, as well as a detailed account of the overall accident.
By compiling and sharing chemical accident reports worldwide via the Chemical Incident Report Center database, CSB works to inform and inspire researchers, government agencies and others to work toward a goal of improving chemical safety.
About the Chemical Safety Board: Created by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Chemical Safety Board operates as an independent investigative agency without regulatory or enforcement power. In the legislation creating the CSB, the U.S. Senate states, "The principal role of the new chemical safety board is to investigate accidents to determine the conditions and circumstances which led up to the event and to identify the cause or causes so that similar events might be prevented."
While federal regulatory agencies like the EPA and OSHA tend to focus on violations involved in chemical incidents, the CSB works to determine the obvious and underlying cause or causes of an accident.
CSB investigated and reported its first accident, the "Kean Canyon Explosion" near Reno/Sparks, Nevada on Jan. 7, 1998.
The stated mission of the CSB is to "promote the prevention of major chemical accidents at fixed facilities."
In support of its mission, CSB also "conducts research, advises industry and labor on actions they should take to improve safety, and makes recommendations to local, federal, and state agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at the U.S. Department of Labor, the key federal entities regulating industries that use chemicals. As set forth in our strategic plan, the target date to achieve full operational status is fiscal year 2005." -- Source: Chemical Safety Board
