The chemistry we never want to think about needs thought

East Tennessee got a scare last week when emergency officials were called to a chemical leak Tuesday at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, a campus that houses some of the world's most dangerous materials.

According to spokesperson Steven Wyatt, the spilled chemical was acetonitrile, a flammable solvent used in processing uranium for nuclear weapons maintenance. The chemical is not radioactive, but it is flammable and toxic so flammable and toxic, in fact, that what Wyatt described as "a gallon or less" spill resulted in about 10 people working inside the purification facility to be evacuated as soon as an alerting sensor sounded. Then, for several hours afterward, the building was closed and monitored. No one was injured.

Oak Ridge dodged a bullet or rather a chemical catastrophe. At other times, our region has not been so lucky:

An April 2004 chemical spill and vapor cloud at MFG Chemical Inc in Dalton, Ga., forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes and businesses, the hospital treatment of 154 people and a seven-mile fish kill in the local waterways, according to a news clip from the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Two years later, an investigation by the U.S. Chemical and Hazard Investigation Board termed the spill "avoidable" and noted the company had no emergency dilution system and no system to neutralize a toxic chemical release. In 2012, MFG had another spill, a water-treatment chemical called Coagulant 129 that spewed through the roof and onto buildings, machinery and cars in a nearby parking lot. This time 47 people were taken to a hospital and treated for symptoms of contamination.

Just about a year ago in Charleston, W. Va., a chemical known as 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, also called MCHM, leaked from an rusty silo tank beside the Elk River. The contamination was so dangerous that water supplies to 300,000 people in nine counties downriver almost the population of greater Chattanooga were left without water for five days. Emergency workers literally shut the water off. When it was turned on again, people were told: Don't drink the water. Don't touch it. Don't wash with it. Don't cook with it. Don't use if for anything except flushing toilets. Over the first weekend after the spill was found, about 170 people were treated in emergency rooms for symptoms of chemical exposure, including throat and eye burning, nonstop vomiting, trouble breathing or skin blistering.

Think of the hundreds of old silo tanks sitting alongside our river, and know that there is no organized, government-regulated inspection or maintenance required for them. The last inspection for the rusty Charleston tank was in 1991.

Who knew there could be such danger from these multi-syllable substances most people one have never heard of? Well, frankly, lots of folks but some of them don't really want you to know. Let's go back three decades for a little context:

On Dec. 2, 1984, a gas leak started at the American-owned Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Within half an hour, nearby residents were coughing, experiencing burning eyes and having difficulty breathing. It would take another two-and-a-half hours before sirens alerted the city and six hours before the leak was brought under control. More than 10,000 people died in the immediate wake of the disaster. Officials estimate hundreds of thousands more have been affected over the decades with birth defects, increased infant mortality, learning disabilities and other problems.

Shaken by Bhopal, American legislators began exploring regulations to prevent a similar accident here. Two years later, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which established various monitoring and reporting systems to improve safety protocols, including the Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI), which requires companies to report if they produce more than 25,000 pounds of a listed chemical or handle more than 10,000 pounds of it. A few years later, in 1990, amendments to the Clean Air Act, known as "Bhopal" provisions, established the Risk Management Program to help prevent chemical accidents and authorized the Chemical Safety Board to investigate such accidents and recommend safety procedures.

Still, those interventions haven't created the kind of protections that many advocates say we need.

The Chemical Safety Board, for instance, may only study accidents and produce recommendations; it can't issue violations or fines. The TRI doesn't have any real bite either, and it covers only 549 chemicals, though more than 70,000 are on the market. As for the Risk Management Program, companies are required to report on their production volumes just once every five years, and only on 140 chemicals.

That brings us to today. What now?

The need for improvements to ensure regular inspections, protect whistleblowers, modernize worker protection and requiring facilities to switch to safer chemicals or processes seemed never more apparent than just after the 9/11 attacks. That was when lawmakers realized that 12,700 chemical facilities in the country could be easy targets for terrorism.

The following spring the EPA prepared to issue guidance for safer technologies and facilities, but the George W. Bush administration blocked the proposals, the chemical industry lobbied against them, and Congress stalled any further progress.

Last year's fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, which killed 17 and injured more than 100 others, offered another wakeup call as did the Charleston, W. Va., water disaster.

The Texas accident spurred President Barack Obama to issue an executive order reviving a general duty clause in the Bhopal amendment. The clause states facilities must be designed and operated in ways that prevent a catastrophic release of dangerous chemicals a seemingly common-sense requirement, but one that has seen sporadic enforcement and lots of opposition from the chemical industry.

Now more than 100 groups have formed the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters and asked EPA to "prevent" chemical plant disasters rather than just "manage" them. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., wants more, too. Noting that Obama's directives amount to little more than a call for better communication and study, she wants EPA and OSHA to finally move on establishing needed protocols.

So do we.

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