The safety issues the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uncovered in a July 2012 inspection of ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge, La., refinery are the same issues that are prevalent in many U.S. refineries, including those that were the sites of two fatal disasters, the United Steelworkers (USW) say.

The just released full EPA report highlight problems that are “universal” throughout the industry that is dominated by aging refineries, which, the union says, requires refiners to:

Be diligent with inspection and repair schedules to keep them in a safe operating condition. It is not enough that a refinery has a good written plan; it needs to follow the plan.

The EPA report uncovered the lack of mechanical integrity in refinery equipment, which, says USW, “has been a contributing cause in many of the worst accidents this industry has experienced.”

Mechanical integrity was a factor in the recent Chevron refinery fire, for which CalOSHA fined the company nearly $1 million; the April 2010 Tesoro Anacortes refinery explosion, which killed seven people; and the infamous BP Texas City refinery explosion and fire where 15 people were killed. 

Other issues at the Baton Rogue refinery that the union says are commonplace in the industry included lack of adequate staffing need to respond to emergency situations; not having the necessary level of detail for each step of a procedure so that operators could complete each step; failing to address the incidence of nonessential personnel being near an operating unit during start-up; not documenting and determining an appropriate response to the findings of their own corporate compliance audit; and not fixing a known material incompatibility design flaw that resulted in a leak. Also says the USW:

ExxonMobil’s failure to take appropriate action on items they identified as a concern disturbs us. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated issue but an industry-wide problem. When equipment is identified as being outside a safe operating range, it should be replaced or mitigated as soon as possible. To ignore these items should be a criminal offense because the company is knowingly placing workers and the community at risk.

Read more from the USW and see the full EPA report.