On January 9, 2014, roughly 10,000 gallons of a chemical known as methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) leaked into the Elk River, leaving 300,000 people in West Virginia without drinking water. The contaminant leaked out of a ruptured storage tank owned by Freedom Industries, a company based in Charleston, WV, that produces chemicals used by mining industries. While most discussion surrounding the spill covers problems of oversights and mismanagement by both Freedom Industries and government management bodies, such as the WV Department of the Environmental Protection (WVDEP), I would like to highlight a problem that goes beyond mismanagement.
The deeper problem here is that both the government and Freedom Industries were allowing a chemical to be produced and stored, of which they knew virtually nothing about. MCHM is a chemical currently used to clean coal. It was grandfathered in with the passing of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which means it avoided all of the necessary regulations that substances must go through in order to be produced. As pointed out in an TIME Magazine article, “according to Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), there are no human health studies available for MCHM, just a couple of Material Data Safety Sheets (MSDS) from the chemical’s producer.”
So essentially our Federal Government allows this chemical to be produced without knowing the potential dangerous effects it may have on human or environmental health. Somehow, Freedom Industries was given permission and chose to store this chemical right next to a tributary of an American Heritage River, which also serves as a source of drinking water for a large chunk of the state of West Virginia. Yes, management failures were a major part of the problem, but perhaps the disaster could have been avoided completely had there been stricter regulations on the chemical in the first place. If Freedom Industries is going to store a chemical, shouldn’t they have impact reports on the potential dangers of the chemical first? It is preposterous to me that a company would even think about storing a chemical of which they know nothing about, let alone storing it right next to a major water supply. Worse, there are 64,000 other chemicals like MCHM that were also grandfathered in with the TSCA. I think one of the first steps that Federal Government should take should be to address these chemicals and come up with stricter regulations for all chemicals with unknown impacts. Then we can start talking about management and enforcement.
Read more: West Virginia Chemical Spill: Danger to People Unknown | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2014/01/14/how-dangerous-is-chemical-spilled-in-west-virginia/#ixzz2udjRoi3c
https://www.spectrumchemical.com/MSDS/TCI-M1412.pdf