west texas chemical explosion

The twin tragedies of last week--the Boston Marathon bombing and the West Texas Chemical and Fertilizer plant explosion--received vastly unequal media attention. While reporters pored over every detail of the Boston story (including some "facts" that turned out to be false), a study by Media Matters for America found that only two of 63 cable news segments this week about the Texas explosion have mentioned a key finding that became public on Saturday: The plant contained 270 tons of ammonium nitrate, well over the legal limit.

But it's not just the media that focus on terrorism over workplace safety; it's also the government.

Although Americans were 270 times more likely to die a workplace accident than a terrorist attack in 2011, the Department of Homeland Security's budget that year was $47 billion, while OSHA's budget was only $558 million. And while the Senate has grilled top intelligence officials about possible information-sharing failures in the lead-up to the Boston bombing, lawmakers have not looked at similar evidence that information-sharing problems may have played a role in the Texas explosion. A press release from Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said only that the plant "was willfully off the grid."

Yet at least seven different state and national regulatory bodies were tasked with overseeing the factory. The federal agencies primarily responsible for preventing chemical-plant explosions are OSHA, which oversees workplace safety, and DHS, which monitors security operations at plants containing explosive substances. Neither agency knew that potentially dangerous amounts of ammonium nitrate were stored on the site. A cash-strapped OSHA had not inspected the plant since 1985, and the plant owners had apparently shirked their requirement to report the chemicals to the DHS.

Workplace safety advocates are hopeful that the West, Texas explosion may force a new conversation on workplace hazards.

But a report published in the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday found that at least three state agencies-- the Department of State Health Services, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Office of the Texas State Chemist--did know that the plant had a large stockpile of ammonium nitrate. However, they did not share that information with OSHA or DHS.

Representatives from the TCEQ and the chemist's office told reporters that their role in regulating the plant was not to ensure fire safety, but to handle other issues, such as the possibility of environmental contamination.