Chemical spills

Chemical spills are the uncontrolled release of a hazardous chemical, whether solid, liquid, or gas. Far more common than the public generally realizes, they often result from unsafe handling of chemicals, improper storage or storage tank ruptures, incorrect containers for chemical disposal, or non-timely disposal of chemicals.

Since 1993, more than thirty thousand oil or chemical spills have been reported annually in the United States alone. Each year, thousands of oil and chemical spills in United States coastal waters result from small ship collisions or fuel transfer accidents. Others can be classified as colossal spill events, such as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The release of oil and chemicals into waterways can kill wildlife, destroy habitat, contaminate the food chain, force the closure of fisheries, deter tourists, or temporarily shut down navigation routes. The impact of the damages of chemical spills can be felt for decades.

But waterways are not the only place chemical spills happen. Spills also occur on railways and highways, in the air, and in workplaces. Railways have long been the default method of hauling bulk hazardous material, and federal and industry statistics show that rail is a safer way to carry such materials than by truck or plane, but spills still happen. According to the Federal Railway Administration (FRA) in 2023, rail transportation was the safest way to move chemicals over long distances. The FRA pointed out that from 1994 to 2005, hazardous materials released by railroad accidents resulted in the deaths of 14 people. During the same time, hazardous materials released in highway accidents resulted in the deaths of 116 people. Dozens of industries handle hazardous materials daily so chemical leaks and spills pose threats to employees as well the environment, and to facilities and equipment.

The size of a chemical spill does not always indicate the danger it poses. Smaller leaks and spills can pose as much danger to safety and health as larger spills, depending on various other factors. Whether small or large, the number of chemical spills each year presents a significant risk to public health and the environment and can cause long-lasting damage to soil, groundwater, and living things.

Background

Chemistry students across the world had long been taught that “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Many had previously believed chemical spills did minimal damage as long as the chemical could be washed away in a river or blown away by wind. Only in the 1970s and 1980s did this casual attitude shift.

A significant chemical spill—one that has been called the worst industrial accident in history—took place in 1984 when methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from a tank at a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. The state government of Madhya Pradesh reported the death toll at 3,500 people, with 40 people facing permanent disability and 2,680 people facing permanent partial disabilities. Other estimates placed the number of dead as high as 8,000. The company, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, paid damages to the government of Bhopal to settle all litigation. Union Carbide had prior problems with chemical spills. In 1982, Tennessee health officials warned the public against consuming fish from an Oak Ridge creek because of high levels of mercury left from a Union Carbide spill in 1966.

United States authorities did not quickly learn Bhopal’s lessons, however. In August 1985, a small amount of MIC gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant in West Virginia. The potential for a Bhopal-type disaster in the United States prompted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish the voluntary Chemical Emergency Preparedness program to encourage local and state authorities to identify hazards and plan for emergencies. In 1986, Congress incorporated many elements of this program in the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986.

Overview

A significant number of chemical spills have happened in modern times, but some make the list of the worst in history for the havoc they have wreaked on humans, animals, and the environment. The Deepwater Horizon spill, in which four million barrels of oil flowed from the damaged Macondo well over 87 days, was the largest oil spill in the history of marine oil drilling operations. It killed eleven workers and caused inestimable other damages.

The Seveso disaster in Italy (1976) involved a cloud containing a kilogram of TCDD, a carcinogenic by-product of the trichlorophenol used to produce hand soaps, leaking from a chemical plant in Meda, Italy, and settling over the towns of Meda and Seveso. More than 700 people were evacuated and 77,000 animals were killed as a precaution to prevent food chain poisoning. Children developed skin conditions typically reported by military veterans.

A major toxic chemical spill took place in Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York, in 1978. From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company disposed of 21,000 tons of toxic chemical waste here. In 1978, The New York Times reported that chemicals from the canal had leaked into homes, yards, and school playgrounds after years of heavy rain had created toxic puddles. President Jimmy Carter declared a state of emergency and relocated 239 families. He declared a second state of emergency in 1981 to evacuate the rest of Love Canal’s residents, who had been experiencing high rates of miscarriage, birth defects, epilepsy, asthma, migraines, nephrosis, and more.

Many oil spills have led to environmental crises; these included the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989) and the Gulf War Oil Spill (1991). The Exxon Valdez oil tanker crashed into Prince William Sound and spilled 11 million gallons of oil across 1,300 miles. The National Park Service reported 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon died. The Gulf War oil spill in 1991 involved the dumping of 5 to 10 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf and killing 30,000 birds, according to CNN.

In China, the Jilin petrochemical plant explosions led to crisis in 2005. Six people died, seventy were injured, and thousands more were evacuated, after chemicals seeped into the Songhua River, then the Amur River at the China-Russia border, and into the Pacific Ocean. A blockage in one of the plant’s nitration towers likely caused the explosions.

In the United States, when oil spills happen in the ocean, on the shore, in the Great Lakes, or in rivers that flow into coastal waters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets involved. NOAA responds to oil spills, hazardous material releases, and marine debris, mainly through the National Ocean Service’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R). Regional NOAA scientific support coordinators organize resources to aid federal and state response efforts and work with scientists from other public agencies, academia, and the private sector after an oil or chemical spill happens.

The Office of Response and Restoration provides advanced computer modeling, necessary to forecast where a spill might travel and how it might affect the coastal environment. National Ocean Service (NOS) scientists also create environmental sensitivity index maps to describe the characteristics and uses of the shorelines near spill areas. First responders can access many other tools and information that NOS scientists provide, including job aids to determine amounts of oil spilled and best response or specialized aids for sensitive habitats such as coral reefs.

When most of the spill clean-up is complete, the Office of Response and Restoration’s Assessment and Restoration Division becomes key to NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program. Members work in teams to protect and restore coastal resources threatened by waste sites, oil and chemical spills, and ship groundings. Through natural resource damage assessment, NOS scientists determine the nature and extent of injuries to natural resources from spills and the necessary restoration actions.

When it comes to rail spills, some worry that decaying and neglected infrastructure may lead to more frequent incidents in the future, incidents that will cause as much or more alarm as a high-profile 2023 accident in East Palestine, Ohio. A Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed on February 3, 2023. After the train ran off the tracks, setting off a giant fire, authorities decided to intentionally burn the chemical cargo in some areas rather than risk an explosion or other uncontrolled disaster.

Five cars were carrying vinyl chloride, a colorless gas used to make plastic products that can cause dizziness, headaches, and drowsiness when inhaled in the short term and a rare form of liver cancer after long-term exposure.

Many residents reported headaches and rashes in the aftermath and were unhappy with the response from the rail company and public officials. The Environmental Protection Agency maintained that the air was safe as it continued to monitor the situation and said levels of the chemical causing the smell were not high enough to affect community health.

Author and political analyst Martin Sieff has noted that while the exact cause is still under investigation, the underlying cause is clear: the decaying state of the rail infrastructure in the state of Ohio, which is typical of railroad and transportation infrastructure across the United States. No significant direct investment has been put into this area of the economy or society in more than sixty years, he noted, saying new roads and new bridges hold more interest than maintaining old railroads and old roads, and that is a root cause of the problem.

What happened in East Palestine is merely an example of what can happen for millions of people living near American railways, according to Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist in the health and environment program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental nonprofit. Sass said a repeat occurrence is highly likely in other communities because rail lines traversing the country are carrying hazardous, often-explosive materials that will become airborne if released.

From 2015 to 2022, the Federal Railroad Administration investigated 110 non-fatal train derailments that resulted in a hazmat spill or release, according to National Public Radio, but the risk extends well beyond railways because chemicals also are transported by tanker trucks and by air.

Industries, individuals, and communities can and should protect themselves from potential hazards of similar chemical spills. Experts recommend working with local governments to ensure a readily available response plan that is made known to first responders, hospitals, and train companies. That response plan should include a way to alert the community quickly and efficiently and in multiple languages relevant to the local population. Critical is that the community receives the most up-to-date information when hazardous chemical spills happen.

A Guardian analysis of EPA data and data from nonprofit groups that track chemical accidents in the United States shows that accidental releases are happening consistently and frequently across the country. One estimate claims incidents are occurring every two days on average.

By November 2024, the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters had reported 229 incidents. The equivalent of nearly one incident per day occurred in 2023, which has 322 incidents. In 2022, the coalition recorded 188, up from 177 in 2021. The group has tallied more than 470 incidents since it started counting in April 2020. The incidents range widely in severity, but each involves the accidental release of chemicals deemed to pose potential threats to humans and the environment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that by August 2024, it had responded to 130 incidents involving chemical spills. In August alone, NOAA provided support for 27 incidents in eight states, one territory, and one international incident in the Red Sea. Ten of the incidents were potential or actual oil spills, three were regarding pollution from natural hazards, such as hurricanes, two were chemical spills, and two were marine debris sinkings without pollution.

Powerful storms may also result in chemical spills. Hundreds of industrial facilities with toxic pollutants were in the path of Hurricane Helene in late September 2024. Some paper mills hit by the storm had thousands of pounds of lead onsite. A retired nuclear facility near Cedar Key in Florida had storm surge as high as 15 feet, inundating an industrial wastewater pond.

The exact number of hazardous chemical incidents is difficult to determine because the United States has multiple agencies involved in response, but the EPA told the Guardian that, over ten years, the agency has “performed an average of 235 emergency response actions per year, including responses to discharges of hazardous chemicals or oil.” The coalition has counted ten rail-related chemical contamination events in two and a half years, including the derailment in East Palestine.

The vast majority of incidents, however, occur at the thousands of facilities around the country where dangerous chemicals are used and stored. Almost twelve thousand facilities across the nation have extremely hazardous chemicals on site in amounts that could harm people, the environment, or property if accidentally released, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in 2022. In all, roughly 200 million Americans are at regular risk from this kind of danger.

Industry representatives say accident rates are trending down, but worker and community advocates disagree, contending instead that incomplete data and reporting delays offer a false sense of improvement.

The EPA, in fact, reports that facility accidents are worsening and that evacuations, sheltering, and the average annual rate of people seeking medical treatment stemming from chemical accidents are on the rise. Total annual costs are approximately $477 million, including costs related to injuries and deaths.

Bibliography

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