One year into the investigation, the disaster, coupled with the CTA Acoustics fiberglass insulation manufacturing plant explosion and the Hayes Lemmerz automotive parts plant explosion (with death tolls of seven and one respectively, also involving dust explosions in 2003), prompted the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) to conduct a study into the number and severity of dust explosions throughout the United States over several decades. The board's chairman, Carolyn Merritt, described the accidents as collectively raising "safety questions of national significance... Workers and workplaces need to be protected from this insidious hazard." The study reviewed how the dust explosion hazard was controlled by regulatory codes, standards, and good operating practices, and also compared the US response to other nations' solutions to the same problem, in order to produce a review of potential initiatives to reduce the occurrence of industrial dust explosions. Lawsuits followed, with Scott Scurfield providing litigation defense for West Pharmaceutical Services.