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Executive Summary

As the new home of Illinois PIRG's environmental work, Environment Illinois can be contacted with any questions regarding this report.

The events of September 11, 2001 have triggered a national reexamination of the security of airlines, drinking water supplies, nuclear plants, and other areas. Policymakers and industry have to date inadequately addressed one threat to our communities: the use and storage of highly hazardous chemicals.

Across America, thousands of industrial facilities use and store hazardous chemicals in quantities that put large numbers of Americans at risk of serious injury or death in the event of a chemical release. One hundred twenty-five (125) facilities each put at least 1 million people at risk; 700 facilities each put at least 100,000 people at risk; and 3,000 facilities each put at least 10,000 people at risk. The threat of terrorism has brought new scrutiny to the potential for terrorists to deliberately trigger accidents that until recently the chemical industry characterized as unlikely worst-case scenarios. Such an act could have even more severe consequences than the thousands of accidental releases that occur each year as a result of ongoing use of hazardous chemicals.

Frederick L. Webber, president of the American Chemistry Council, has said “No one needed to convince us that we could be – and indeed would be – a target at some future date….If they're looking for the big bang, obviously you don't have to go far in your imagination to think about what the possibilities are.” The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said in 1999 that industrial chemicals provide terrorists with “…effective and readily accessible materials to develop improvised explosives, incendiaries and poisons.”

Fortunately, there are well-established measures for reducing hazards at facilities – and making communities safer. An industrial facility could take a range of actions in response to the threat of terrorism, from switching to inherently safer systems (using safer chemicals or using chemical in safer quantities or processes) to adding on secondary safety systems (emergency valves, containment dikes) to adding physical security at the site.

But the threat of terrorism requires eliminating or reducing hazards through the use of inherently safer technologies wherever feasible. Reducing the amount of hazardous chemicals on site or switching to a safer chemical or process can reduce or eliminate the possibility of a chemical release. If terrorists continue to use airplanes or truck bombs, add-on security measures such as safety guards and physical barriers cannot prevent a chemical release. Similarly, secondary prevention or mitigation measures, such as safety valves, would be decidedly inadequate in the event of an attack like those seen on September 11.

Inherent safety is an opportunity for policymakers to remove a terrorist threat in many cases. This is an option that is not available for all terrorist risks. Airline passengers have to rely on increased security to make flying safer. For American industry, however, many chemicals have readily available safer alternatives, and many facilities could redesign processes to be inherently safer. The use of chlorine to treat drinking water is one of the best examples. Chlorine gas is one of the chemicals most prone to a catastrophic release; the contents of a 90-ton rail tank car could drift for miles if released, threatening injuries and death. However, safer options are available, and policymakers can encourage and require industries to use them. A state program in New Jersey has enabled hundreds of drinking water facilities to stop using chlorine. In the months following September 11 th , the Blue Plains water treatment facility in Washington, DC, switched from the use of dangerous chlorine gas to safer sodium hypochlorite. As a result, no longer can a terrorist trigger a chemical release that could send a deadly chlorine gas cloud across the nation’s capital.

This paper documents, for policymakers, advocates, and the general public, the terrorist threat posed by chemical use in communities and opportunities to make communities inherently safer. Policymakers should encourage and require companies to reduce chemical hazards by implementing the following:

1. Require all companies manufacturing, storing, or using hazardous chemicals in quantities of concern to conduct an assessment of technology options to evaluate hazards and opportunities to reduce or eliminate each of them. Companies should be required to explain regulators why they chose not to implement safer options; regulators should narrowly limit the acceptable reasons for allowing a risk to remain.

2. Mandate specific inherently safer technologies where they provide clear alternatives to existing hazards. A good example is the use of chlorine in treating water, which should be phased out on the most rapid timeline possible. Policymakers should mandate inherently safer technologies for the highest-hazard facilities first, such as for the 125 facilities that each put at least 1 million people at risk.

3. Reevaluate current regulatory programs for chemical risks to take into account the potential for terrorism. Because even facilities with small quantities of chemicals may be a terrorist target, policymakers should reconsider the threshold quantities of chemicals that currently trigger regulation at a specific facility and lower them where appropriate. Policymakers also should consider whether any industries or chemicals not currently covered by regulatory programs should be added.

4. Require strict accident prevention, accident mitigation, and site security measures to minimize the chance of a successful terrorist attack wherever chemical hazards cannot be eliminated. It is important that industries using high-hazard chemicals pay for these programs to internalize the cost of the hazard.

5. Maintain and improve public access to information about chemical hazards in communities and potential impacts of chemical releases.

Policymakers at the state and federal levels can and should enact these policy solutions. In addition, the Office of Homeland Security and state security agencies should adopt an inherent safety mandate in all their work with facilities that manufacture, use, store, or otherwise handle hazardous chemicals.