The United States Chemical Safety Board (CSB), the independent federal agency that investigates chemical accidents, has posted several videos of its investigations on YouTube. The videos depict the root causes of major real-life accidents and describe the proper safety practices that can prevent similar accidents at other facilities.

Here is one sample: Death in the Oilfield, which gives a nine-minute overview of the fatal explosion at the Partridge-Raleigh oil production field on June 5, 2006. Three contractors died and one suffered serious injuries when they were preparing to weld piping to the tanks; a welding tool likely ignited flammable vapors from the tanks.

Another video, Anatomy of a Disaster, tells the story of one of the worst industrial accidents in recent U.S. history — the March 23, 2005, explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas. Ultimately, 15 workers were killed, 180 were injured and billions of dollars in economic losses were incurred. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigated the accident and, in March 2008, produced this 55-minute video based on the agency's comprehensive 341-page public report issued in 2007.

The video includes a nine-minute animation detailing the events leading up to the blast. It also features interviews with members of the CSB investigative team who spent two years studying the causes of the accident in addition to a number of other safety experts.

For more information, see CSB.gov. To see more videos, check out the Chemical Safety Board's YouTube profile.

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