(The following article by Jon Newberry was posted on the Cincinnati Post website on October 6.)
CINCINNATI, Ohio — Residents of Cincinnati’s East End and nearby neighborhoods were evacuated because of a lone railroad tank car leaking styrene vapors in August, but other chemical risks, potentially even more dangerous, are parked at dozens of businesses and rail sidings across the region.
More than 60 companies in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky use one or more hazardous chemicals in large-enough amounts that they’re required to file risk-management plans with the federal government, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Styrene is not one of the more than 140 hazardous chemicals on the EPA’s watch list.
One tri-state manufacturer stands out as posing a potential threat to more than a million people under a worst-case, albeit unlikely, scenario, according to a company report filed with the EPA.
Cincinnati Specialties in St. Bernard regularly brings in railroad tank cars filled with 180,000 pounds of highly toxic chlorine. It uses the chemical to make the artificial sweetener saccharine at a plant near Interstate 75 and the Norwood Lateral.
The St. Bernard plant is one of about 110 facilities in the United States that, in the event of a worst-case accident, could pose a danger to more than a million people in surrounding areas, according to EPA data.
Company officials say they have taken steps to ensure safety, installing equipment to detect and contain any leaks.
EPA records show the company with a good safety record, with only two minor chlorine leaks in 1994 and 1996. Two employees had to seek minor medical treatment afterward, but the leaks had no impact off the site.
But the company’s inclusion on the EPA list illustrates the potential hazards that exist in a region that still has a substantial number of chemical plants.
“You’re surrounded in this town by chemical companies,” said Steve Scherpenberg, chief of the St. Bernard Fire Department.
Hundreds of rail cars and tanker trucks filled with hazardous chemicals roll through Greater Cincinnati every day, he said, and tracking them all is virtually impossible.
The EPA’s chemical risk data was compiled from more than 15,000 industry filings in an EPA report originally issued in September 2000. It found 123 facilities that posed a worst-case risk to more than a million people. The data has since been updated, and the number of such sites is now down to about 110, said EPA spokesman Dale Kemery in Washington, D.C.
Besides Cincinnati Specialties, 11 other local facilities – including several businesses in highly populated areas and a half-dozen water-treatment plants – have filed EPA risk-management reports for their use of chlorine.
Government officials and watchdog groups have warned that hazardous chemical sites are largely unguarded and might be inviting targets for terrorist attacks. For that reason, the company reports and EPA database are not available on the Internet. The public has limited access to them at EPA libraries around the country.
According to a May 2003 study of the reports by the environmental group Greenpeace, only one of the 123 highest-risk sites was in the Cincinnati area. Ohio had 12 sites altogether; Kentucky had none.
Chlorine is delivered to Cincinnati Specialties, the only saccharine manufacturing plant in the U.S., by rail tank car as a liquid under pressure.
The liquid vaporizes into a ground-hugging gas if released into the atmosphere. Chlorine gas spreads as a heavier-than-air, olive-green cloud that causes severe, possibly fatal, respiratory and mucous membrane irritation. It was widely used during World War I as a chemical weapon. The gas produces a foul odor even at non-toxic concentrations, which can warn people to get out of the area or move to higher ground. It’s not combustible but is highly reactive with other chemicals and water or water vapor.
In January, chlorine gas released following a railroad accident killed nine people and sickened 250 in South Carolina. Six of the dead were employees of a textile mill next to the tracks.Cincinnati Specialties typically consumes one or two 180,000-pound carloads of chlorine weekly, and it often has several full or partially full rail cars on site, said Jim McKenna, the company’s president.
McKenna said it built an enclosure several years ago that can house two rail cars, only one of which is hooked up for unloading at a time. Other cars may be staged outside the building, but they’re only unloaded while inside, he said.
The doors to the building are routinely left open to move cars in and out, but if sensors detect any leak of chlorine, the doors automatically shut to keep gas from escaping. The vapor is then pulled by fans into a scrubber that neutralizes the gas and basically turns it into a table salt solution, McKenna said. Since constructing the building, its systems have not detected any accidental releases, he said.
Scherpenberg of the St. Bernard Fire Department said two chlorine tank cars were among several cars that were parked on an open rail siding for at least six months earlier this year. The siding is about 100 yards from the intersection of Vine Street and Spring Grove Avenue, near Cincinnati Specialties’ plant and Procter & Gamble Co.’s Ivorydale complex.
Scherpenberg didn’t know if the cars were full. They were moved after the styrene incident.
McKenna said he wasn’t aware of any chlorine cars parked on the rail siding and was puzzled by how or why that would happen. Chlorine has been in high demand all year, and prices have gone up repeatedly, so it doesn’t make sense for the company to allow the cars to sit idle, he said.
It’s had to shut down production three times this year because it couldn’t get chlorine in time, and it closely tracks every shipment it orders so that it knows when it will arrive, he said.
“Nothing that we have ordered has sat out there for any period of time,” McKenna said.
Cincinnati Specialties buys most of the chlorine it uses from a supplier in West Virginia, and it’s shipped from there through Kentucky to Cincinnati via the Norfolk Southern Railway.
McKenna said the plant’s security was scrutinized by the Department of Homeland Security a year or two ago when it was used as part of a training program for local law enforcement departments, but Homeland Security has not mandated additional security requirements related to terrorist risks since Sept. 11, 2001.
“When you start talking about terrorists, it’s not an area where we have a lot of expertise,” McKenna said.
“I think they were generally pleased with the security we had on site,” he said. The company also complies with voluntary guidelines recommended by various industry trade groups, he said.
The company had to submit its initial risk management plan in 1999 pursuant to new EPA regulations. It also meets seven or eight times a year with a community advisory panel of a dozen or so people to discuss environmental and safety issues. Scherpenberg and other St. Bernard officials are among the panel members.
The EPA’s Kemery said most of the worst-case scenarios included in the reports are highly unlikely to ever threaten that many people because they’re based on several dubious assumptions:
The population figures are based on the maximum distance a plume of toxic vapor could be expected to travel from the plant site. A radius of that distance is then used to draw a circle 360 degrees around the plant, and everyone within the circle is included in the calculation.
The scenario assumes that a plant’s safety systems fail completely, with no warning, that plant personnel do nothing, and that there’s no response from outside emergency responders such as local fire departments.
It also assumes that people within the impacted area do nothing to protect themselves, such as leaving. “Is it totally unrealistic? No. But it’s somewhere between almost zero and none,” Kemery said.
Cincinnati Specialties’ worst-case scenario was based on a full 180,000-pound tanker of chlorine spilling its entire contents in 10 minutes under the worst possible weather conditions – including stagnant air and high temperatures. It assumed that the toxic plume of chlorine gas would extend 14 miles from the site.
The report also included a more-likely alternative scenario in which a piping system leak allows 160 pounds of chlorine to escape over a 20-minute period. In that case, the danger would extend only a tenth of a mile and put only 72 people at risk, it stated.
In the two accidents the company reported in the five years prior to its 1999 filing, one pound of chlorine was reported to have been released in each incident. One in December 1994 was caused by human error, and another in April 1996 was caused by equipment failure, the company said.
Scherpenberg said off-site rail or truck accidents are much more of a concern to him than chemical plant accidents, because of the plants’ on-site systems and also because of the potential for interaction with the public.