Roundtable Meeting — June 2-3, 1999

Tape 7 Sides 1 & 2

Fred Millar: Recognize some kind of public accountability towards local emergency planning committees or whether it’s towards the RMPs with worst-case scenarios. And granted those are all imperfect tools, but I think permanent accountability is the key factor. And when I look on page 2 of Irv and Sam’s presentation and look at the kind of, the seven of the concrete specific safety goals that they may might recommend, I don’t think any one of these can be accomplished without the government. I don’t think any one of these is going to happen by private industry getting together and deciding to do this. I think the corporate lawyer barriers and other kinds of corporate culture barriers are way too high, and that people will be serious about this once the government starts figuring out how to make this happen. That includes the funding of training centers like what’s mentioned earlier about, in various other health fields and so forth. So, I just want us to try to stay a little bit realistic and not be thinking that a group like this can accomplish anything which in many other fields can only be accomplished when there’s some kind of government intervention. And say this is going to happen so you better help participate in making it happen.

Irv: I want to say Fred, that you’re right in that in a number of these areas government intervention would be needed, but not in all. And the question that we’re facing is what as a group do we think should be adopted as national goals over and above what is now presently being done. I still want to emphasize that we are not the only player, we want to add value. Adding value is to set public health type of goals, we are not in a position except to perhaps generate pressure to get national excellence centers that could give distinct technical advice to individual companies. So, our goal might be to establish ten technical centers for training and dissemination of information to small companies. But for us to set the goal to provide this information, or for people to do it, is not in my mind realistic. I think we have to distinguish between whether we are a public health approach or are an individual assistance approach. And I would say that in my mind this type of group is not set to do that. The same thing there are one thing that I think can be done, and that is I think the group could absent government intervention get together and do a national seatbelt campaign. There is a certain percentage of what is occurring that is occurred because people’s attention is being drawn in other directions. We can compete for it maybe, may not be able to do it successfully. We don’t need the government for that. We need the industry that is experiencing the losses to take a percentage of that loss and compliment what is being done by companies, and it’s not the Dow’s. I’m not worried particularly about the Dow’s because they’ve got heavy weights to worry about them. I’m talking about your smaller companies who can’t attend these meetings, who need to get the messages and who are really, I have not yet met someone in any industry that is anxious to hurt people. We need to be able to make them more aware. That’s a public health goal. So, I’m saying one of the first things we have to do tomorrow is decide the character of the goals. And I think that’s fundamental, then we can move on along the direction Irene has discussed and try to get a consensus around, in my opinion, no more than three.

Sam Mannan: Prepare to move forward. Irv I think, we got 'em surrounded. You and I think so much alike, it’s scary. We started the day with me speaking and then Irv presenting our paper. And I think we end the day in the same fashion, with Irv giving a summary. I’d like to make a few comments before I ask you to join us for a few cocktails out there. Just a few cocktails, because we’ve got work to do after that too. You know when you plan a thing like that you live and breathe it for days, weeks, and sometimes, months. And you sometimes wonder if things are going to work out the way you planned it to be. And I will tell you unequivocally that it has worked out exactly the way we wanted it to be. And you guys are probably sitting there thinking that well some of you are frustrated that we haven’t gotten anywhere, some of you are saying that it’s a lot of information. I see Tim Gablehouse saying, boy you get some of your information that’s exactly more that’s exactly what we’re going to know. So, let me tell you this, we have planned it this way, and just like Irv had said, tomorrow we’re going to come with our pencils sharpened and with our minds full of this overload of information and be able to do these things. Number one we have another briefing paper to hear form Paris. After we get that done, in the first breakout session, we must be able to fill up these flip charts with our ideas of what the national chemical safety goals should be. What we want to do then is to sit and discuss those national chemical safety goals, there may be 40, but let’s talk about them some more so that this whole group has an understanding what each one of those 40 means. And then we’ll do a voting process through which we will determine which one’s are the top three. My assurance to you, my guarantee to you is that by that time we will have a consensus opinion on which the top three are. Having gone through the experience of the Y2K effort I feel very strongly that once you throw a group like this which is knowledgeable, wants to participate, and has ideas on different things, it happens. So, I feel that we will be able to arrive on a consensus on three top goals. What we want to do then is take those three top goals and break this bigger group up into three breakout groups. And then lock them up into three separate rooms, and say work on these three and come back with an action plan on how we are going to establish these goals how are we going to meet these goals. To those who feel frustrated that we haven’t gotten anywhere, I tell you bear with us another few hours we will get there. Those who feel you’ve gotten a lot of information, to them I say you will need this information tomorrow. Another thing, I will tell you this, that a lot of things have been repeated, pay attention to those. If things have been repeated they carry more weight, let’s remember that tomorrow. So with those words I invite you to cocktails out there and right from there we will adjourn to dinner.

Discussion redacted at the request of Paris Stavrianidis.