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The mysterious chemical that tainted drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians this past January may have been more toxic than what was previously reported, according to new federally funded research released this afternoon.
Environmental engineer Andrew Whelton tested crude MCHM — a chemical mixture used in the coal production process — and found it to be much more toxic to aquatic life than was reported by Eastman Chemical, the company that makes it. Whelton said he used exactly the same process to test the chemical that Eastman did — the same water chemistry, temperature, quality, and organisms — but found a drastically different result than what was reported on Eastman’s Material Safety Data Sheet for the chemical.
“To be frank, [the drastic difference in results] could be for a number of reasons,” Whelton told ThinkProgress, noting that Eastman did its research on the chemical in 1998. “It could be is that the composition of the crude MCHM they tested in 1998 was different than the crude MCHM [Eastman] sent us in 2014.”
The company responsible for letting 10,000 gallons of a mysterious chemical seep into West Virginia’s drinking water supply this past January was fined $11,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor on Monday, just two days before the six-month anniversary of the historic spill.
After inspecting the facilities at Freedom Industries’ chemical storage site in Charleston, the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that, at the time of the spill, Freedom Industries’ chemical tanks containing crude MCHM had been surrounded by a wall that was not liquid tight. That violation that warranted a $7,000 fine.
OSHA also hit Freedom Industries with an additional $4,000 fine for not having railings on an elevated platform used for loading and storing the chemical in the tanks. Both violations were labeled by OSHA as “serious,” warranting monetary penalties.
The agency also found that Freedom Industries failed to properly label one of the chemical tanks, which was marked “Glycerin” instead of “Crude MCHM.” But that violation was considered “other than serious,” and did not include a fine.
Lawmakers from both parties planned to join Obama on Wednesday for the ceremony, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, environmental advocates and industry groups that backed the legislation. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the bill, which passed with broad bipartisan support, was an outlier in a political climate in which the two parties agree on little. "Any time you see Democrats and Republicans come together on a piece of legislation, it does reflect a measure of compromise, which means that there may be some people who will criticize it because it's not perfect," Earnest said.
In addition to updating rules for tens of thousands of everyday chemicals used in household cleaners, clothing and furniture, the bill also sets safety standards for dangerous chemicals like formaldehyde, asbestos and styrene. The goal is to standardize on the national level what is currently a jumble of state rules governing the $800 billion-per-year industry.
Congress spent more than three years working on the bill, which rewrites the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and aims to "bring chemical regulation into the 21st century," according to the American Chemistry Council, which backed the overhaul. The bill passed the Senate on a voice vote, reflecting an unusual degree of consensus for legislation that gives the EPA new authority to assess the safety of new and existing chemicals. In recent years, many Republicans have worked to pull funding for the EPA or eliminate it entirely.
But business groups had sought a single, federal standard to eliminate the complexity of dealing with state regulations that don't always line up with each other. Still, some Republicans opposed the legislation and called it an overzealous Washington takeover of a matter they said should be left to the states. The bill's namesake, former New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, died in 2013 after having worked for years to fix the law.
Obama to sign toxic chemical rules; 1st overhaul in 40 years
