Concerns Rise Over Chemicals as prepositioned weapons of mass destruction

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Published on Tuesday, June 1, 2004 by the Boston Globe

Concerns Rise Over Chemicals as Targets

by Charlie Savage

WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security watchdogs call them "prepositioned weapons of mass destruction" for terrorists: huge tanks of concentrated deadly gases that the chemical industry stores near densely populated areas and that railroads bring through cities en route to somewhere else. The United States harbors more than 100 chemical facilities where an accident would put more than a million people at risk, according to documents filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. One is in Boston: A chemical distributor acknowledged in its filing that in a worst-case scenario if a tank holding 180,000 pounds of vinyl acetate -- a highly flammable liquid -- ruptured, it would send a 4.9-mile-long toxic cloud through the city.

As federal security officials warn that Al Qaeda is poised to strike the United States again, the presence of these highly toxic chemicals in the midst of cities may be the most vulnerable point in the nation's defenses. But proposals to reduce that risk by requiring the use of alternative chemicals or rerouting hazardous tankers around a city have faltered.

Fear of such an attack on a chemical facility prompted bipartisan momentum in Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for requiring the chemical industry to switch to less dangerous processes where possible. Although many Republicans supported the measure initially, many changed their minds after intense industry lobbying, and the bill died on the Senate floor.

Nearly three years later, the laws regulating chemical plants remain the same as before Sept. 11 -- a striking exception to an otherwise transformed security landscape. Similarly, support has emerged for new regulations on railroads that carry dangerous materials such as chlorine through urban areas. Rupturing a chlorine rail tanker would produce a 40-mile-long cloud of the same deadly gas used as a weapon in World War I. But a first-in-the-nation proposal by the District of Columbia City Council to reroute tankers carrying such hazardous cargo around the nation's capital has been stalled for months: The chemical and rail industries objected, with backing from the Bush administration.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group, both industries heavily back the Republican Party. In the two election cycles since the Sept. 11 attacks, the railroad industry has given $9.5 million to political campaigns -- 77 percent of it to Republicans. The chemical manufacturing industry has given $11 million -- 78 percent of it to Republicans. ------ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0601-03.htm

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1. Would the Bushies ignore potential chemical targets.....

...like they did for the airlines to keep expenses down and their campaign donors happy? Remember...every dollar spent on keeping chemical target secure is one less dollar they can donate to the Bush* campaign.

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2. How many cities around the US have vast storage facilities...

...where various types of chemicals are stored? I would think this would apply to almost every major city.

- Are these toxic chemicals protected from homegrown or foreign terrorist attacks?

[billybob537]

3. Not hardly

These are called soft targets. Home land security has nowhere near enough people or money to secure these.

[sybylla]

4. Good lord, we have always had prepositioned movable chemical bombs

in place and it doesn't take much of a brain to figure out how to make them work. This is what boggles me with people talking about terrorism like it is something that never would or could have happened before 9/11. And they are just now thinking about our huge stockpiles of chemicals?

And it doesn't take much to cause a huge explosion. Someone with a martyr complex can get a job driving a chemical tanker around and crash it into any one of the billions of substations dotting our urban and suburban landscape and thousands of people are dead.

Are they going to close all the gas stations within 10 miles of Pennsylvania Avenue?

OSHA makes companies provide to employees a list of chemicals stored and used in the work environment. How many millions of potential dirty bombers are there in this country who know where to get what they need? If John Ashcroft had a brain in his head he'd be peeing in his pants and calling for his mommy.

We can cry that the sky is falling forever and it doesn't change the fact that this is just how we live: keep chemical A away from igniting agent B. And, like it or not, we'll have to trust our neighbors, our employers and our government not to kill us.

Just so that I'm clear, I certainly think there should be some regulation here. This just sounds like another attempt to ratchet up fear in order to invade privacy. Next Asskrack will be copying our birth certificate and recording our SS# just so we can dispense with a little uric acid.

There is no certainty in life except death and taxes. This administration has to stop using fear over something we really can't do much about to invade our privacy and enrich their friends.