Chemical Breakdown Part 4: Federal agencies are at odds over regulation of 'critical issue'

Chemical Breakdown Part 4: Federal agencies are at odds over regulation of 'critical issue'

This story was originally published on July 16, 2016.

Rickey Giddens turned off the ignition and climbed down from the cab of his tanker truck at the PeroxyChem plant in Pasadena on an overcast January afternoon.

Dressed in a plastic protective suit, goggles and a hard hat, he and three other workers had planned to vacuum out the liquid in Giddens' truck and transfer it to another tank.

That brown, oily liquid contained a chemical that people routinely use to disinfect wounds or whiten their teeth. But it was reacting with another substance inside the truck's carbon steel container, and rapidly expanding. The pressure built without warning.

At 12:28 p.m., a heavy, metal valve blew off the truck and tore into Giddens' chest. The blast threw him back into an eye-washing station and cracked his skull and every bone in his back. His lungs were found on the ground near his feet.

About the series In November 2014, four workers died at a DuPont plant in La Porte after being exposed to a toxic gas. Responding emergency workers weren’t sure what was in the air. The surrounding community wasn’t, either. This Houston Chronicle investigation explores how another fatal mistake could have the largest consequences and probes the regulatory failures that put us in jeopardy. Click here to read the series.

The Chemical Safety Board has a name for this type of accident: a reactive chemical incident. Such incidents — defined as runaway reactions that can trigger explosions, fires or releases — killed someone, on average, every two months in the United States for the 21 years ending in 2001. Then the government stopped tracking.

CRITICAL ALARM: A look at one of the more devastating explosions

But ever since, the CSB has called for stronger regulation of reactive hazards, and it remains a "critical issue," said CSB Chairwoman Vanessa Allen Sutherland.

What happened at PeroxyChem was one of at least four reactive incidents this year, including an explosion in North Andover, Mass., that injured four workers, three of them critically.

Other federal agencies have ignored even their own recommendations to more closely regulate reactive dangers, saying that the problem is too complex. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, only considers toxicity and flammability — not reactivity — under its Risk Management Program, which requires companies to take extra safety precautions.

Texas A&M's Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center considered all three factors when it evaluated more than 2,500 facilities in the Houston area in partnership with the Chronicle.

Ten of the 55 facilities posing the highest potential for harm in the analysis had chemicals ranked as highly reactive. Most are in industrialized areas like the Houston Ship Channel, Pasadena or Freeport. But not all.

One is in Spring Branch. Two are in Crosby.

Eight of the 10 are less than a mile from residences. Three are that close to a school.

"We've investigated way too many violent decompositions or runaway reactions," Sutherland said. "They continue to have a devastating effect."

***

On a September morning in 2002, five CSB board members hosted a public meeting in Houston. The board had been formed four years earlier to investigate accidents and recommend safety improvements, and its first years were spent looking at individual incidents. But that day, the board released an investigation into a whole class of hazards: reactive chemicals.

The 167 incidents tallied by the CSB over two decades spanned from Lodi, N.J., to Pasadena, Texas. One was a short drive from the meeting, in Channelview, where an uncontrolled reaction inside a liquid waste tank at the ARCO plant led to an explosion that killed 17 workers.

Board member Gerald Poje said the study evoked memories of an earlier tragedy, when a reaction between methyl isocynate and water at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, released more than 30 metric tons of toxic gas and killed 3,800 people immediately.

That disaster created ripple effects felt around the world, resulting in voluntary reforms by industry leaders and congressional action on right-to-know policies and improved emergency planning. But chemical accidents kept occurring in the U.S., and in 1990, Congress amended the Clean Air Act.

It specified that OSHA and EPA include highly reactive chemicals in new safety standards for chemical facilities.

OSHA responded by including 40 reactive chemicals in its rules. The EPA created a list of 130 chemicals for its rules but none was selected based on its reactivity, according to the CSB.

Twelve years later, at the Houston meeting, the CSB recommended that OSHA broaden its safety program to include more individual chemicals and processes that can lead to runaway reactions.

It called for the EPA to regulate reactive hazards under the Risk Management Program.

It called for industry to create a database that would allow the public and companies to learn from reactive incidents.

None of those suggestions was followed, though both the EPA and OSHA worked with industry leaders to provide guidance on reactive hazards.

The CSB has no authority to force changes. It just continues to draw attention to the problem.

It did so after a toxic cloud spewed in 2004 at an MFG Chemical plant in Dalton, Ga., which forced the evacuation of about 200 families, and after the 2006 fire at a Synthron Inc. facility in Morganton, N.C., killed one worker and injured 14.

It issued a damning report after a 2,450-gallon reactor blew up in 2007, at T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville, Fla. The explosion — the equivalent of 1,400 pounds of TNT — killed four employees, including Charles Bolchoz, a chemical engineer.

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For nearly two years, Bolchoz's family waited to hear if the accident could have been prevented.

When the CSB investigation was over, then-Chairman John Bresland offered condolences and called it a "tragic, unnecessary loss of life."

Had OSHA followed the CSB's recommendation, Bresland said, the facility might have been required to better analyze and manage its reactive hazards.

Manning Bolchoz, Charles' oldest brother, remembers CSB officials saying "runaway chemical reaction" over and over. He wondered if more oversight could have helped.

"It left you with kind of an empty feeling," he said.

The T2 explosion prompted a congressional committee to echo the CSB's recommendation to OSHA.

And again, nothing changed.

In 2013, 15 people were killed and 160 injured after an explosion at a fertilizer company in West, Texas. The fire was intentionally set and the arsonist is still at large. The CSB said the explosion of ammonium nitrate was another reactive incident, one that prompted President Barack Obama to insist on safety changes to provide more federal oversight.

The wait continues.

PeroxyChem fire marshal report View the fire marhsal report investigating the PeroxyChem accident below. PeroxyChem-fire-marshal-report (PDF)

PeroxyChem-fire-marshal-report (Text)

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The PeroxyChem accident illustrates how easily a runaway chemical reaction can occur.

The Harris County Fire Marshal concluded that the Jan. 16 explosion was caused by the rapid expansion of hydrogen peroxide inside the truck's tank. Hydrogen peroxide is unstable and forms explosive vapors when it is mixed with certain organic materials.

A spokeswoman for the company, Amie Leopold, declined comment about the incident, citing an ongoing investigation.

"Safety is our first and foremost priority in everything we do," she added in a statement.

Industry leaders have long recognized the danger. Accidents can occur if you don't mix chemicals properly; if you add them in the wrong order; if you add the wrong materials.

A runaway reaction sent three employees at the KMCO plant in Crosby to the hospital on Christmas Eve 2010.

The plant sits within a mile of a library, a kindergarten and a private school. Workers there couldn't lower the pressure in a reactor and as they tried to fix a clogged line, they accidentally mixed a caustic solution with maleic anhydride, a normally stable chemical. The result was an explosion and fire.

Some highly reactive chemicals are included under the EPA's Risk Management Program for their toxicity or flammability; others aren't covered.

Cumene hydroperoxide is one that is not covered, though it's the reason five Houston-area companies in the Chronicle/A&M analysis posed a high potential for harm. It explodes when combined with a number of other chemicals and can catch fire or explode if it is shocked or heated.

Arkema, up the street from KMCO, is one of those five companies. It reported housing up to a half-million pounds of cumene hydroperoxide. The nearest homes are less than a half-mile away.

Janet Smith, a company spokeswoman, said Arkema takes numerous measures to prevent a reactive incident. A valve on a line containing cumene hydroperoxide, for instance, requires two employees to verify that it's closed. The company's process control system automatically checks that the correct amount of the chemical is in the reactor before anything is added. Arkema does file a Risk Management Plan, but for other compounds.

Enduro Composites, with up to 5,000 pounds of cumene hydroperoxide, is less than a half-mile from a neighborhood. AzkoNobel Polymer Chemicals is authorized for a half-million pounds. It is within a mile of a hotel, homes and a Funcare Children's Center. Olin Corp. in Freeport, with up to 10 million pounds of the same chemical, is less than a mile from a church, park and day care.

The Shell Gasmer Prototype Facility, less than 2,000 feet from Westbury High and adjacent to Willow Waterhole park, houses up to 50,000 pounds of potassium nitrate, used in fertilizers and a key part of black gunpowder.

When combined with a reducing agent, it can explode. Like cumene hydroperoxide, it also can explode if it's heated or shocked.

But potassiumn nitrate doesn't make the EPA's list.

Shell Gasmer, like most other facilities, did not respond to questions about its safety precautions.

***

The EPA has maintained for years that creating a distinct list of chemicals that pose a reactive threat is too difficult.

It's important to note, said Nancy Grantham, an EPA spokeswoman, that hazards are driven more by the manufacturing process than the individual chemicals.

So the agency puts the onus on facilities to understand the risks.

Companies can be penalized for violating the General Duty Clause of the Clean Air Act if they don't operate safely, though the clause does not specifically address reactive hazards. She offered an example: EPA inspectors stopped operations at a facility storing water-reactive chemicals under sprinklers until it fixed the problem.

"Frankly, the General Duty Clause is the backup plan," said Ron White, senior fellow with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "They don't really use it at all." White said the EPA has expertise to draw on and should be able "to figure out an approach to deal with reactives upfront when they're already doing inspections."

OSHA also can rely on the General Duty Clause to assess penalties.

Amanda McClure, an OSHA spokeswoman, acknowledged it is "difficult to characterize the chemical reactivity hazard in a manner that easily suits regulation." She said rather than address reactivity and other issues "piecemeal," OSHA is including it in planned revions to its process safety standard.

The American Chemistry Council, responding to Obama's 2013 executive order on improving chemical facility safety, argued that "current regulations already adequately cover reactivity hazards, and expansion is unjustified."

Rena Steinzor, a University of Maryland law professor specializing in health, safety and environmental regulation, said the argument that companies can voluntarily regulate reactive hazards fails to account for the pressures of profit-making and mid-level managers being blind to risks.

"Self-regulation doesn't work," she said.

Rickey Giddens was killed in an explosion at PeroxyChem in January 2016. Rickey Giddens was killed in an explosion at PeroxyChem in January 2016. Photo: Courtesy Photo: Courtesy Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Chemical Breakdown part 4 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

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Countries like Germany and the United Kingdom regulate the industry differently.

Instead of writing regulations to cover every possible danger, they ask companies to analyze their hazards and show how they'll prevent an incident.

Regulators then check those reports and require improvements. It takes hundreds of highly qualified regulators to do that properly, said Trish Kerin, director of the IChemE Safety Center, an international association of chemical engineers.

Kerin thinks it's unlikely that the U.S. could adopt the European model without a massive upgrade in the number and quality of regulators.

New Jersey, inspired by two accidents in the 1990s, has decided to do what it can. State regulators more than a decade ago included chemicals rated highly reactive by the National Fire Protection Association on their list of extraordinarily hazardous substances. They also considered scientific literature on chemicals that are not ordinarily problematic but can become highly reactive when mixed.

Companies that handle those chemicals are now required to draw up release prevention plans and consider safer technologies.

McClure, the OSHA spokeswoman, said the agency is considering a similar strategy.

***



Rickey Giddens was buried on Jan. 23 in a family plot near Camilla, Texas.

His older brother, James, said Rickey was obsessive about safety and loved his job at Evergreen Industrial Services, which was hired to do the vacuuming at PeroxyChem.

Rickey, he said, had become a born-again Christian later in life and "lived by a strict set of rules." At 62, he favored suits, "liked a nice crease" and stockpiled fancy hats.

He was laid to rest in a burgundy suit and matching fedora.

Less than a month after his death, the EPA published 76 pages of proposed regulatory changes that safety advocates hoped would include reforms for reactives.

They did not.

Mark Collette contributed to this report.

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Read part 5: No answers given years after deadly accident at Texas chemical plant

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Susan Carroll joined the Chronicle in 2006 and works as an investigative/projects reporter. Along with colleagues Matt Dempsey and Mark Collette, her 2016 work on the danger posed by chemical plants in southeast Texas won awards from the National Press Foundation and Investigative Reporters and Editors. Carroll previously covered the U.S.-Mexico border for the Arizona Republic and the Tucson Citizen. She can be reached by e-mail at Susan.Carroll@chron.com or by Twitter: @_SusanCarroll

Matt Dempsey is the data editor for the Houston Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in 2014 and has worked on several major projects, including the investigation on the dangers of chemical plants. Matt previously worked for the Arizona Republic and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Contact him at matt.dempsey@chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @mizzousundevil.



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