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This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. On a summer night in 2023, an explosion at one of Louisianas biggest petrochemical complexes sent a plume of fire into the sky. More explosions followed as poison gas spewed from damaged tanks at the Dow chemical plant, triggering a shelter-in-place order for anyone within a half mile of the facility, which sprawls across more than 830 acres near Baton Rouge. For more than a year, a little-known government agency has been investigating the incident. But the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board will likely shut down before completing its probes of the Dow explosion and other such incidents across the country. President Donald Trumps administration has quietly proposed shutting down the board, an independent federal agency charged with uncovering the causes of large-scale chemical accidents. Near the end of a 1,224-page budget document released with little fanfare on May 30, White House officials said shutting down the agency, commonly called the CSB, will help move the nation toward fiscal responsibility as the Trump administration works to redefine the proper role of the federal government. The CSBs $14 million annual budget would be zeroed out for the 2026 fiscal year and its emergency fund of $844,000 would be earmarked for closure-related costs. The process of shutting the agency down is set to begin this year, according to CSB documents. Eliminating the CSB will come at a cost to the safety of plant workers and neighboring communities, especially along the Gulf Coast, where the bulk of the U.S. petrochemical industry is concentrated, said former CSB officials and environmental groups. Closing the CSB will mean more accidents at chemical plants, more explosions and more deaths, said Beth Rosenberg, a public health expert who served on the CSB board from 2013 to 2014. This shows that the Trump administration does not care about frontline communities already burdened with this industry, said Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project, an environmental justice group in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Were the ones who have to shelter in place or evacuate whenever theres an explosion or [chemical] release, and now there will be less oversight when these things happen. The CSB did not respond to a request for comment. The proposed closure of the CSB follows several other moves by the Trump administration to slash staffing levels at the Environmental Protection Agency and ease federal health and safety regulations. Founded in 1998, the CSB investigates the causes of petrochemical accidents and issues recommendations to plants, regulators and business groups. The CSB doesnt impose fines or penalties, instead relying on voluntary compliance or on enforcement by other agencies, such as the EPA, to mandate safety improvements. Of the more than 100 investigations the CSB has conducted, Texas leads the country with 22 cases, followed by Louisiana with 8. Those numbers tell us that Louisiana and Texas really need the Chemical Safety Board, and there will certainly be negative impacts here if it closes down, said Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. Along with the Dow chemical explosion, the agency has four other active investigations of incidents in Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, and Virginia. CSB investigations often take several months to complete. In an update of the Dow explosion investigation last year, the CSB hinted at several events of concern at the chemical complex between Baton Rouge and the town of Plaquemine, Louisianaan area that forms part of the industrial corridor known as Cancer Alley. Among the targets of the investigation were at least two mechanical problems, multiple smaller explosions after the initial blow-up, and the release of more than 30,000 pounds of ethylene oxide, a colorless gas the agency noted is a cancer-causing substance. The CSBs last completed investigation was a fatal 2024 explosion at a steel hardening facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The CSB identified several safety failures and at least three other dangerous incidents involving similar hazards at other facilities owned by the same company, HEF Groupe of France. HEF failed to ensure that information about those incidents and lessons learned from them were shared and implemented organization-wide, the CSB investigation, released early this month, found. A chain reaction of mishaps at the Chattanooga facility resulted in an eruption of hot molten salt that killed a worker, according to the investigation. On average, hazardous chemical accidents happen once every other day in the U.S., according to Coming Clean, an environmental health nonprofit. Coming Clean documented 825 fires, leaks, and other chemical-related incidents between January 2021 and October 2023. The incidents killed at least 43 people and triggered evacuation orders and advisories in nearly 200 communities. Trump called for the CSBs closure during his first term but settled for leaving many investigator and agency leadership positions unfilled. Slowing the agencys work resulted in a backlog of 14 unfinished investigations by the time former president Joe Biden took office in 2021. Under the first Trump administration, investigations were hampered by staffing shortages and monthslong conflicts between the board and the agencys Trump-appointed director, according to a federal inspectors report. In the new budget proposal, the Trump administration indicated the CSBs duties could be handled by other agencies. The CSB duplicates substantial capabilities in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate chemical-related mishaps, a CSB budget proposal said. This function should reside within agencies that have authorities to issue regulations . . . This justification is a lie, said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary of OSHA and a former CSB recommendations manager. While OSHA and the EPA are limited to assessing specific violations of their existing standards and regulations, the CSB can look far more broadly and at the deeper causes of accidents, including worker fatigue, corporate budget cuts, and lax oversight, Barab said. Even when other federal agencies appeared to ignore CSB recommendations, communiy groups and local governments could cite them when pushing for improved safety standards, Ozane said. It was scientific evidence we could all use to pressure the state or the federal regulators to do something about pollution and safety in the places we live, she said. This is just another tool and another resource thats been taken away from us. Tristan Baurick This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-quietly-shutters-the-only-federal-agency-that-investigates-industrial-chemical-explosions/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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Tesla launched its Robotaxi service Monday in Austin, Texas, with a limited pilot featuring a small fleet of self-driving cars. Tesla has encountered challenges getting its Robotaxi service up and running, and now it’s facing a new hurdle of its own making: the Robotaxi logo. The self-driving taxis feature a “Robotaxi” logo written out in a graffiti style on the car’s front doors. The scrawled typeface is reminiscent of the branding for the video game Cyberpunk, and hearkens directly back to the Tesla Cybertruck logo (a puzzling choice considering how poorly the Cybertruck has been received). With its sharp edges and careening forward slant, the logo doesn’t exactly scream safe. And yet, that’s exactly what a new autonomous vehicle brand should be doing. AVs require a higher level of consumer trust than your average product or service, since you’re putting your life in its hands. A logo that looks spray-painted doesn’t communicate that, nor does the pilot program’s flat $4.20 ride fee. The logo looks sloppy and casual, not reassuring, Eben Sorkin, art director of the type foundry Darden Studio, tells Fast Company, calling it aesthetically anachronistic and out of sync with current cultural vibes. Would you board a flight with an airline logo that looks like this? he asks. [Photo: Tim Goessman/Bloomberg/Getty Images] The Robotaxi rollout represents a chance for the beleaguered electric vehicle company to change the narrative after CEO Elon Musk’s unpopular foray into government. And indeed, after the Robotaxi announcement, Tesla’s stock rose. From a branding perspective, though, the Robotaxi wordmark isn’t suggestive of a company moving away from the Cybertruck aesthetic that has now become associated with Musk’s DOGE efforts. Rather than using a visual identity that communicates safety, trust, or reliability, the logo is a sign that the company sees the graffiti-style cyberpunk aesthetic of its Cybertruck as the model for branding future products and services. A good logo always tries to convey the brand promise, says type designer and Hoefler & Co. founder Jonathan Hoefler. And this one definitely foreshadows the tragic collisions ahead.
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It doesn’t matter how you spell ithomophones can get you sued for trademark infringement. The startup iyO has filed suit for trademark infringement against former Apple designer Jony Ive’s company iowhich spells its name differently but sounds the same. OpenAI acquired Ive’s io last month for $6.5 billion with the goal of creating a new family of AI devices; iyO, which launched as an independent company from Google’s moonshot initiative X in 2021, makes an AI device of its own. The company describes its iyO One, an AI wearable worn like an earbud that’s available only as a preorder, as “the world’s first audio computer.” It reportedly pitched to Sam Altman’s investment fund and Ive’s design studio in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Following a ruling from U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson, OpenAI erased any mention of its deal with Ive over io on its website Sunday, including a promotional video. The company told The Guardian it took action because of iyO’s legal complaint, which will be addressed in a hearing come October. This page is temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name io. We dont agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.https://t.co/suwMRPTHqB— OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) June 22, 2025 OpenAI has reason to take iyO’s claims seriously. Trademark infringement has been found in plenty of cases in which defendants mark is spelled differently from plaintiffs but pronounced the same, even when the two terms have different meanings, Alexandra Roberts, a professor of law and media at Northeastern University tells Fast Company. The key question in infringement cases is likelihood of confusion. The singer Pink filed suit last year over Pharrell Williams’s proposed P.Inc trademark, for example, and infringement has been found in cases like Seycos and Seiko, both watchmakers, and X-Seed and XCEED, which both made agricultural seed. Courts assessing the likelihood of confusion between two marks consider a number of factors, including the similarity of the marks, relatedness of the goods and services, strength of the plaintiff’s mark, and sophistication of the relevant consumers, Roberts says. Similarity weighs toward a likelihood of confusion, and lack of similarity weighs against it. The I/O naming convention, which stands for Input/Output, is popular with AI companies since their products generate AI output from user input. For iyO, blocking OpenAI from using the io name is about protecting its brand against the combined power of the maker of ChatGPT and a designer who’s worked with Apple on products like the iPhone and iPad. The outcome of the legal dispute could play a role in naming whatever the AI giant and design legend end up creating together.
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