How the U.S. Chemical Safety Board Can Improve Our Right-to-Know and Prevent Chemical Spills and Emergencies
An Overview by Paul Orum, Working Group on Community Right-to-Know

 

[Updated November 7, 2001]

 

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is a new federal agency established with the strong support of many environmental and labor organizations.  The Board conducts independent root-cause investigations after serious chemical fires and spills at industrial sites that use hazardous chemicals.  Based on these investigations, the Board recommends changes to prevent future deadly accidents.  The Board’s independent, root-cause public reports contribute to community right-to-know.  Further, the Board’s legal mandate to regulate industrial reporting of chemical accidents could improve public information about the scope of spills and emergencies.  In addition, the Board’s reports can identify opportunities for prevention and raise the visibility of policies to promote inherently safer design of chemical facilities.

 

The Problem of Industrial Chemical Spills and Emergencies

Each year, companies in the United States report more than 25,000 fires, spills, or explosions involving hazardous chemicals to the National Response Center, a broad but incomplete federal record of mishaps involving oil or chemicals.¹  At least 1,000 of these events each year involve deaths, injuries, or evacuations.  Combined data from additional federal sources suggest that in 1998 there were over 100 deaths, nearly 5,000 injuries, and when including small spills, almost 50,000 incidents related to ordinary industrial use of chemicals in the United States.²  Some analysts suggest that for each catastrophic chemical accident that causes a fatality, there are 30 lost-time incidents, 300 recordable incidents, and 30,000 near misses.³  Serious incidents often cost jobs, and uncounted people suffer long-term consequences from being exposed to the dangerous chemicals.

 

The Role of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 established the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board as an independent agency.  The Board investigates serious chemical spills and emergencies and produces public root-cause reports.  The Board is also intended to study chemical safety issues more broadly, including statistical and other crosscutting reviews, and to evaluate the effectiveness of government agencies that regulate industrial chemicals.  Using these tools, the Board recommends safety changes in government policies and industry practices that can prevent future deadly chemical spills and emergencies. 

 

From a public interest perspective, there are three principal things that the Chemical Safety Board can do to protect lives, property, and the environment from industrial chemical incidents:

 

1)      Find the Facts – Conduct independent, root-cause investigations and produce public reports and recommendations after specific chemical emergencies that cause death or serious injury.

 

2)      Get the Big Picture – Instigate the collection of complete, well-organized, and publicly accessible information on chemical spills and emergencies, small and large.

 

3)      Put Prevention First – Develop as the option of first resort inherent safety recommendations for government policies and industrial practices that can reduce or eliminate the possibility of serious chemical spills.

 

 

A Program for the U.S. Chemical Safety Board

 

1) Finding the Facts

In January 1998, just after the Board opened its doors as a new independent agency, Sierra Chemical Company, an explosives manufacturer near Reno, Nevada, suffered explosions that destroyed buildings and killed four workers.  The company suggested that the explosions were triggered by sabotage, to cover up theft or for some other unknown reason.  However, in its first investigation, the board used seismic and other data to demonstrate that the underlying cause was not sabotage.  Instead the Board faulted the company’s process hazards analysis, training program, operating procedures, building design, safety inspection, employee participation, language barriers, and process safety management.  In addition, the Board faulted regulatory agencies for lax oversight.

 

From a public interest perspective, such findings are very valuable.  People’s response to chemical emergencies depends on the perceived cause.  While there is always room for disagreement, the wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong cure.  From a public interest perspective, having an independent agency that can get the facts and recommend ways to fix the right problem is very important.

 

The Board’s investigation reports are public information.  Expert independent root-cause investigations with public reports are an essential element of the public’s right-to-know about chemical spills and emergencies.  (See past reports at www.csb.gov)  The Board can also engage the public in safety studies and investigations through hearings of inquiry, tip hotlines, and interviews with plant neighbors.

 

Claims of sabotage are just one issue that may arise after a chemical fire or spill.  But such claims are recurring and illustrate why root cause investigations are important to public dialogue.  In addition to Sierra Chemical, examples (predating the Chemical Safety Board) of “sabotage” claims include:

 

• Union Carbide, Bhopal, India – After the notorious 1984 spill killed several thousand people the company blamed a disgruntled employee.  However, the facts remain that five major safety features were either inadequately designed or at least partially failed: a refrigeration system was not operating; a temperature indicator was not functioning; a vent gas scrubber was inadequately designed; a flare tower was not functioning; and, water curtains could not reach the leaking gas.⁴

 

• Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Radford, Va. – After an explosion destroyed the plant and killed an employee, the facility contractor at that time suggested sabotage and that the employee had climbed the fence and left the plant.  It took an act of the Virginia General Assembly to declare the employee dead and allow his family to collect benefits.⁵

 

• Applied Technology, Norfolk, Va. – In 1991, pipe bombs were found on chemical storage tanks near Norfolk.  Attention understandably turned to potential terrorism.  In this case, however, sabotage was more on point: the owner was charged with attempting to destroy chemicals for which he could not find a buyer in order to collect insurance.⁶

 

The wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong cure.  Better site security, for example, could not have prevented any of these incidents.  At Sierra Chemical in Nevada, none of the regulatory or law enforcement agencies assembled and publicly presented evidence assessing the company’s sabotage claim.  (The Board does not conduct law enforcement, nor do law enforcement agencies ordinarily conduct root cause investigations.)  When it gets the facts on a chemical incident – no matter the cause – the Board improves public dialogue and provides an important public service.

 

2) Getting the Big Picture

As noted, some analysts suggest that for each catastrophic chemical accident that causes a fatality, there are 30 lost-time incidents, 300 recordable incidents, and 30,000 near misses.³  This “chemical safety pyramid” shows why it is important to record small seemingly inconsequential spills as well as large ones.  A small spill is one indicator of potentially more serious events.  The Board and other public health researchers need not only information on specific spills that cause harm, but also the big picture of small chemical incidents.  The big picture of all spills suggests patterns that are not evident from examining only a few high consequence events.

 

The Board has a legal duty to “establish by regulation requirements binding on persons for reporting accidental releases into the ambient air subject to the Board’s investigatory jurisdiction.”⁷  This doesn’t mean that the Board has to collect the information itself, but rather can require more complete spill reporting through the National Response Center (NRC) or other agencies.  The NRC is the central federal agency to which hazardous chemical industries report oil and chemical incidents, small and large.  Many thousands of these useful reports are on-line at www.nrc.uscg.mil/foia.htm.  In addition, the Chemical Safety Board maintains a Chemical Incident Reports Center at www.csb.gov/circ/ with information on many recent serious chemical spills.  But reporting through both of these information resources is known to be far from complete.  The Board can play an important role improving the “big picture” of spill reports for government, industry, and the public.

 

The Board should assess the capacity of current federal data collections to show where hazardous chemicals are used (e.g., by chemical, facility, industry, operator, and place), and encourage all federal agencies to further develop a comprehensive and integrated public data system to track chemical hazards and accidents at fixed facilities.  This system should enable public health researchers to analyze accident trends and specific incidents, and study epidemiological and social issues related to accident prevention.  Researchers need to be able to link low and high consequence events by, for example, type of industry, type of hazard, geographic location, size of firm, chemical of concern, and suspected responsible party.

 

3) Putting Prevention First

The terrorist attacks of September 11 show plainly that chemical plants and refineries could have a worst-case toxic gas release.  No longer can the chemical industry claim that a worst-case release can’t happen.  No longer can the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claim that hazard reduction is a local matter with no need for a national hazard reduction program.  No longer can the U.S. Department of Justice side step its duty to conduct a site security study of chemical plants and transportation,⁸ of which hazard reduction analysis as a fundamental component.^9,10  No longer can Congress overlook that federal law does not require chemical-using facilities to even evaluate hazard reduction options.  No longer can the federal government collectively impede public information about potential chemical hazards – whether from criminal activity or “ordinary” operations – while taking no obvious steps to eliminate and reduce those hazards.

 

In the early 1980s, U.S. chemical safety laws addressed cleaning up emergencies (i.e., CERCLA).  By the mid-1980s, U.S. chemical safety laws addressed preparing for emergencies (i.e., EPCRA).  From 1990, U.S. chemical safety laws addressed managing the risks of emergencies (i.e., CAAA, Risk Management Plans).  But no federal law systematically addresses eliminating and reducing chemical hazards in communities.

 

In the U.S., over 3,000 high priority facilities project worst-case vulnerability zones in which more than 10,000 people live (not all of whom could likely be affected at once); over 8,000 facilities report worst-case vulnerability zones in which more than 1,000 people live.¹¹  But prevention opportunities abound.  For example:

 

• In Washington, DC, the city’s large Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant is switching from volatile chlorine gas (stored in 90-ton rail cars, enough to reach the White House if released upwind) to less volatile sodium hypochlorite (bleach), which has far less potential for airborne off-site impact.¹²

 

• In New Jersey, hundreds of water treatment plants have switched away from or below threshold volumes of chlorine gas as a result of the state’s Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act – from 575 such water treatment facilities in 1988 to just 22 in 2001. ¹³

 

• In Cheshire, Ohio, American Electric Power selected a urea-based pollution control system rather than one involving large-scale storage of ammonia that would have endangered the surrounding community.¹⁴

 

• In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, ALCOA reduced its potential off-site impact by working with local emergency planners and ending on-site storage of hydrofluoric acid and nitric acid.¹⁵

 

All of these simple examples mean hazard reduction for workers and downwind communities.

 

The Chemical Safety Board could help guide the development of a federal prevention program for the measurable reduction of industrial chemical hazards.  Such a program could use a prevention hierarchy to address potential spills and emergencies, much as the federal Pollution Prevention Act employs a prevention hierarchy to address routine toxic pollution.  The Board could develop a standard protocol for use by government and industry to identify inherently safer processes and chemicals as the option of first resort (both for site security and accident prevention).  The prevention hierarchy protocol could help firms to:

 

• Identify and use inherently safer technologies to eliminate the possibility of reactive chemical and other hazards, wherever feasible;

 

• For hazards that cannot be eliminated, use add-on control options and management systems that reduce the likelihood and potential severity of incidents, wherever feasible;

 

• Where hazards cannot be eliminated or controlled, use emergency planning approaches to mitigate the consequences of incidents, wherever feasible; and,

 

• Where potential off-site consequences remain despite precautions, use standard buffer zone guidelines to keep hazards away from vulnerable populations.

 

This protocol will in all cases identify feasible measures to protect lives, property, and the environment from industrial chemical incidents.

Send comments on this paper to Paul Orum

 

 

Notes:

 

1. National Response Center.  The NRC is the central federal agency to which chemical companies and transporters report oil and chemical spills.  Reports to the NRC cover incidents small and large.  Reports are initial and subject to verification and change (www.nrc.uscg.mil/foia.htm).

 

2. Mannan, Gentile, and O’Connor, “Chemical Incident Data Mining and Application to Chemical Safety Trend Analysis,” Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, Texas A&M University, 2001.

 

3. Mannan, et. al, adapted from Richard H. Squire, “Zero Period Process—A Description Of a Process to Zero Injuries,” Process Safety Progress, March 2001.

 

4. Nicholas Ashford, et al, “The Encouragement of Technological Change for Preventing Chemical Accidents: Moving Firms From Secondary Prevention and Mitigation to Primary Prevention,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1993.

 

5. Testimony of Lowell P. Strader, PACE International Union, before the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the Committee on Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives, May 19, 1999.

 

6. St. Louis Post Dispatch, “Bomb Plot is tied to Waste Trade,” February 20, 1991.

 

7. Clean Air Act, section 112(r)(6)(C)(iii).

 

8. Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory Relief Act, section 112(r)(7)(H)(xi) of the Clean Air Act, as amended.

 

9. See detailed letter from twelve public interest and labor organizations to the Attorney General, August 2000 (www.rtknet.org/wcs/site.htm).

 

10. See also U.S. EPA, “Chemical Accident Prevention: Site Security,” (Facility Design), February 2000 (www.epa.gov/swercepp/pubs/secale.pdf).

 

11. James Belke, “Chemical accident risks in U.S. industry – A preliminary analysis of accident risk data from U.S. hazardous facilities,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, September 25, 2000.

 

12. Radian Corporation, Air Dispersion Model Assessment of Impacts From a Chlorine Spill at the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant, 1982; See also Chlorine Institute, Pamphlet 74,April 1998.

 

13. Information provided by R. Baldini, Bureau of Release Prevention, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, September 2001.

 

14. American Electric Power, Press Release, December 18, 2000.

 

15. Information provided by Stuart Greenberg, member, Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Local Emergency Planning Committee, 1998.

 

 

 

 

Working Group on Community Right-to-Know

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