While conceding that “incidents involving ammonium nitrate may be among the most severe and highest-profile accidental releases both in the United States and around the world,” the Environmental Protection Agency proposes leaving the highly explosive chemical unregulated as it updates rules covering the storage of hazardous substances. In a report to be released Tuesday, a pair of national environmental organizations points to the Jan. 31 Winston Weaver Co. fire as clear evidence that the EPA’s approach puts lives and communities at grave risk. “Companies should be required to disclose the presence of ammonium nitrate at their facilities and have approved risk management plans in place to protect workers and surrounding communities,” Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform note in their 19-page report.
Read MoreSafe Chemicals and Facilities
Protecting fenceline communities and facility workers from toxic pollution and chemical disasters through the transition to safer chemicals
There are over 12,000 extremely hazardous chemical facilities across the nation.
Working collaboratively towards safer chemical facilities:
- We work closely with our strategic partner, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance (EJHA), to demand regulatory action to prevent chemical disasters, and implement protective policies which will benefit everyone in the U.S.—and especially the people most vulnerable to chemical disasters.
- We're calling for the EPA to strengthen its Risk Management Plan (RMP) Rule, which regulates over 12,000 high-risk chemical facilities nationwide and is intended to prevent chemical disasters. Learn more about our Chemical Disaster Prevention Program.
- We are an active member of the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, a group of organizations that tracks chemical incidents across the U.S. and advocates for improved chemical safety.
Pam Nixon grew up in the area around Charleston, WV known as Chemical Valley, where the Elk and Kanawha Rivers are lined with plants owned by chemical industry giants Union Carbide, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, Bayer, and others. Many times during her 65 years of living there, she's had to shelter in place—tape up windows and huddle inside her home—when nearby plants experienced accidental explosions or chemical leaks.
In 2008, an explosion at a Bayer CropScience plant killed two people and injured eight more. In 2010, a series of incidents at a DuPont plant included the release of highly toxic phosgene (used during World War I as a chemical weapon). Then in January 2014, a chemical storage tank at Freedom Industries leaked 10,000 gallons of toxic MCHM into the Elk River, contaminating drinking water for 300,000 people in nine counties, and costing the local economy $19 million a day for each day drinking water was deemed unsafe.
Pam and her organization, People Concerned About Chemical Safety, are working locally to prevent chemical disasters and protect their drinking water from toxic spills. She also helps lead Coming Clean’s campaigns to move hazardous facilities across the country toward inherently safer chemicals and processes.
Our research and organizing have documented the extreme hazards faced by over 124 million people across the country who live within chemical disaster vulnerability zones, and the millions more who experience heightened risk of health problems because of daily air pollution or whose drinking water could be poisoned by a chemical spill at any time. We’ve shown how these hazards don’t threaten everyone equally: people of color and low-income people are much more likely to live near hazardous chemical facilities than the general population.
"No one deserves to live under these conditions. We aren’t a sacrifice zone, and we deserve the same protections that wealthier and more affluent communities in America get.”
Related resources and reports from Coming Clean:
- Transitioning to Safer Substitutes Our infographic shows how a water reclamation plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico was able to stop storing dangerous quantities of chlorine gas on site by switching to an ultraviolet light disinfection system, after residents took action.
- Unprepared for Disaster: Chemical Hazards in the Wake of Hurricane Ida In this 2021 report, we profile three facilities in Louisiana that put communities at risk by releasing toxic chemicals into the environment after being hit with high winds and flooding from Hurricane Ida. We recommend several ways the EPA could meaningfully update its Risk Management Program to prevent chemical disasters from happening in the first place.
- Life at the Fenceline: Understanding Cumulative Health Hazards in Environmental Justice Communities Our 2015 report shows that people on the fenceline live under the threat of chemical disasters, have limited access to healthy food, and experience higher rates of cancer and respiratory illness.
- Environmental Justice for Delaware: Mitigating Toxic Pollution in New Castle County Communities
Exposure to high levels of environmental pollution is one of the many risks faced disproportionately by people of color and people living in poverty. People of color and people living below or near poverty levels are significantly more likely to live near industrial facilities that use large quantities of toxic chemicals and pose risks of major chemical disasters. The county of New Castle in northern Delaware is a case in point, according to this 2017 joint report with the Center for Science and Democracy, EJHA, and Delaware Concerned Residents for Environmental Justice.
- Who's in Danger: Race, Poverty, and Chemical Disasters Our research shows that the people most at risk from chemical disasters are communities of color and low-income communities.
- When the Wind Blows: Tracking Toxic Chemicals in Gas Fields and Local Communities a 2014 report documenting Coming Clean’s collaborative, community-based research project to monitor toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in gas fields in rural Pavillion, Wyoming and to see what same VOCs are present in the bodies of people who work and live there.
- Warning Signs: Toxic Air Pollution Identified at Oil and Gas Sites In 2012, twelve community groups in 6 states (Arkansas, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wyoming), with support from a team of national organizations and experts, decided to test the air near oil and gas development sites located in their communities. This report provides results from community air monitoring in those states near oil and gas development sites, including where hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” activities or waste disposal are taking place.
Related News
September 21, 2022
Qualco chemical plant lacked federal oversight at time of giant Passaic fire
Despite housing millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals, the Passaic chlorine plant that was almost engulfed in a massive fire earlier this year was not required to register its stockpile with the federal government or develop a special safety plan, according to a report released Tuesday by a watchdog group. The Qualco chlorine plant falls outside the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Management Plan and its most recent revisions designed to prevent chemical disasters like the one that nearly unfolded in January. "A stronger rule is needed to ensure that hazards are removed, or we will continue to see more chemical disasters," said Steve Taylor, a director at Coming Clean, an environmental nonprofit group based in Vermont. Elias Rodriguez, an EPA spokesman, confirmed that Qualco is not in the EPA's program because it "does not meet threshold quantities of RMP-regulated substances." Read More
September 21, 2022
Report recommends safety measures to prevent chemical disasters
(KPLC News) Some think more needs to be done to reduce risk from chemical leaks and explosions from industries. The explosion at Westlake Chemical in January is one of three featured in a report profiling explosions and safety measures that authors said EPA can require right now to prevent future chemical disasters. Authors of the report wrote six workers were injured and 7,000 students in a dozen schools had to shelter in place. Steve Taylor said their report includes three case studies of serious chemical incidents, including Westlake. “That happened within two weeks of each other, in January of this year, and each of those incidents and the failures that led up to them provides important insights for how EPA needs to strengthen this rule to prevent chemical disasters,” Taylor said. Read More
September 20, 2022
Louisiana plant's 'egregious' record highlighted in national push for new chemical safety rules
A new report points to a chemical explosion in Louisiana this year as a prime example of why the federal government should toughen national safety standards at petrochemical plants. The Jan. 26 blast that injured six workers at Westlake Corp.’s Lake Charles South complex and forced thousands of students to shelter at their schools was one of three chemical incidents highlighted in the report, produced by Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform. Read More
September 20, 2022
Report slams EPA's approach to chemical disasters
EPA is relying too much on voluntary industry actions to address the risks certain chemical facilities pose to the public, advocates say in a scathing new report that pushes for changes to a draft rule. Two coalitions composed of environmental justice groups, Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, in a report released Tuesday say that while EPA is seeking regulatory revisions to address the risks, more must be done. The groups lay out specific recommendations and point to recent chemical disasters in pressuring the agency for changes to its approach. Industrial and commercial facilities storing highly hazardous chemicals, the groups argue, "disproportionately endanger communities of color and low-income communities." Those areas, they continue, "also often experience disproportionate levels of toxic air pollution and other health and environmental hazards." Read More
September 20, 2022
EPA’s proposed changes to chemical disaster prevention rule don’t do enough to keep communities safe
Today, Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform released a report that profiles three chemical incidents that occurred within two weeks this January, and recommends specific safety measures that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should require in order to prevent future chemical disasters. Preventing Disaster offers actionable recommendations the EPA should include in its final rule that could prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, including: requiring all RMP facilities to consider, document, and implement safer chemicals and technologies; expanding the Risk Management Program to cover ammonium nitrate and other hazardous chemicals which remain excluded in the proposed rule; requiring RMP facilities to not only consider the risks posed by natural hazards, as proposed in the draft rule, but to take meaningful steps to prepare for those risks, such as implementing backup power for chemical production and storage processes. Read More
September 14, 2022
EPA will restore an Obama-era chemical disaster safety rule, but advocates say it doesn’t go far enough
The EPA is planning to reinstate a rule meant to prevent fires, leaks, spills, explosions, and other disasters at more than 12,000 facilities nationwide, including many oil and gas and petrochemical plants. But many safety advocates say it’s still missing crucial protection for people living nearby. Maya Nye, federal policy director with environmental health and justice group Coming Clean, said that nearby air monitors are often disabled or turned off before and during emergencies. “We think they need to have fenceline monitors and ensure that they have backup power and are never turned off,” Nye said. Read More
September 8, 2022
EPA proposes changes to chemical disaster prevention rule that looms large in Kanawha Valley
The Environmental Protection Agency has revealed, and is taking public comment on, its revisions to the Risk Management Program rule that requires facilities using hazardous substances to develop programs to prevent and limit releases of chemicals into the environment. The rule looms large in the Kanawha Valley, which has long been called "Chemical Valley" for its disproportionately high number of chemical plants. Maya Nye, federal policy director at Coming Clean, a chemical industry-focused environmental health nonprofit, grew up a mile from Union Carbide's Institute facility and believes that too many of the rule's provisions are voluntary.
"We've just seen in the past that voluntary measures don't work," Nye said. "Voluntary measures are not adequate to protect workers and the public."Nye pointed to a provision that says natural hazards, such as floods, wildfires and extreme temperatures, should be included in chemical facility hazard reviews. The rule should go further, Nye argued, to ensure that facility operators act to guard against natural hazards beyond reviewing the potential for those crises. Read More
2013 Explosion and Chemical Disaster in West, Texas