The disastrous chemical leak five years ago in Bhopal , India, inspired the idea. Last week's explosions at a Pasadena chemical plant may finally bring it to realization.

The concept is simple - a new investigative agency, modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, to help prevent chemical accidents.

Some members of Congress, backed by the national environmental movement, also are calling for requirements that industry assess the hazards of specified chemicals and that the Environmental Protection Agency develop accident-prevention regulations.

This legislative debate over how to enhance chemical safety was well under way when explosions and a huge fireball consumed much of the Phillips Petroleum Co. plastics plant in Pasadena last Monday.

The Phillips accident, in which 22 workers are known or presumed to have died, makes it likelier that one of three proposals federal lawmakers are considering will pass, said Bill Becker, director of a national organization of state and local air pollution program administrators.

"It will be very difficult for any member of Congress to vote against a bill calling for greater protection from accidents caused by a catastrophe such as the one that happened this week," Becker said.

Chemical industry officials assert that their industry has an excellent overall safety record. But proponents of a new safety board cite EPA statistics that cataloged, from 1980 to 1988, 11,048 chemical accidents that killed 309 people and injured more than 11,300.

About 30 percent were transportation accidents, with more than half the remainder at chemical production facilities.

Environmentalists argue that these figures support their call for a better governmental approach than is offered by current programs, which they characterize as well-intentioned but inadequate.

Efforts by the EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration to prevent chemical accidents are "meager," said Jerry Poje, an environmental toxicologist who delivered congressional testimony on the issue last month for the National Clean Air Coalition.

"Tinkering with (the current approach) and nurturing it is not going to protect people in Pasadena from another catastrophic explosion," Poje said. "We need independent investigations to say whether EPA and OSHA regulations need to be changed."

Whether the chemical board should be independent or part of the EPA is a key issue in the congressional debate. A Bush administration proposal would place it under the EPA administrator. Two bills in the House and Senate would make it independent and would call for chemical hazard analyses and procedures for developing accident-prevention regulations, provisions lacking in the administration's bill.

Many in the chemical industry traditionally have resisted regulation of their production processes, said Poje, an employee of the National Wildlife Federation who serves on a safety advisory board for the chemical industry.

Kyle Olson, Chemical Manufacturers Association director of safety and plant operations, said the industry has not tried to avoid reasonable regulation.

In general, the idea of a new chemical safety board "is of interest to the industry," Olson said, and such a panel might be valuable if it were structured properly.

The industry probably would withhold support from a new board that is "simply one more layer on top of the authority already at the EPA and OSHA," Olson said.

In the aftermath of the Bhopal accident and a toxic leak at a chemical plant in Institute, W.Va., Congress set up a program within EPA to increase community awareness about nearby chemical risks and enhance emergency preparedness.

Environmentalists maintained that this program was valuable but said it failed to address accident prevention.

In a pilot program, the EPA is conducting "safety audits" at selected chemical plants with the goal of preventing accidents, spokesman Roger Meacham said.

Over the past year, four of these inspections have been made in the region, including one at the Fermenta Corp. in Houston, he said.

Inspired by concerns after the Bhopal and Institute leaks, OSHA set up a yearlong "special emphasis" program of in-depth inspections at chemical plants handling substances that pose especially severe risks. Nine plants on the upper Texas coast received the four- to five-month examinations. Nationally, 40 of 12,000 chemical plants were inspected.

Since September 1987, after the special program ended, the OSHA office in Houston has conducted a few such inspections in this 26-county area, area director Gerald Baty said. These are performed when routine inspections at plants with highly dangerous chemicals fail to yield "the right answers" to safety questions, he said.

Environmentalists question the adequacy of such federal efforts and of some state programs.

"Accident prevention has not been a high priority within the EPA over the last several years," Becker asserted. "There's not any regulatory program in this regard."

Poje emphasized the need for an independent chemical safety board, saying the "pale imitation" in the president's bill might not be free to challenge regulations issued by the EPA, its parent agency.