EPA, It's High Time to Prevent Chemical Disasters

  • by: Susan V
  • recipient: US Environmental Protection Agency

The deadly fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas last April could have been prevented - if only EPA had acted responsibly.

EPA has had over a decade to adopt stricter safety measures for reactive chemicals, including the ammonium nitrate that fueled the Texas explosion. The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) says the Clean Air Act dictates that these kinds of reactive chemicals be classified as “extremely dangerous” and subject to handling under an EPA-approved plan. Yet EPA has still failed to follow CSB recommendations, and Senator Barbara Boxer wants to know why.

At last week’s Senate hearing, Boxer lit into an EPA official whose testimony failed to even address the April explosion, and she insisted the agency give a timeframe for adopting these urgent preventive measures. 

Plant workers and the public have a right to expect EPA to stop this irresponsible dawdling and take immediate action to protect them from chemical disasters.

Tell EPA it’s high time to prevent them.

We, the undersigned, expect EPA to do a much better job of preventing chemical explosions like the one that occurred in West, Texas this year.


According to news reports, the excuse given by the EPA official for his agency's failure to act on the Chemical Safety Board’s recommendations was that CSB didn’t “explicitly” include ammonium nitrate as a chemical needing stricter regulation, adding that EPA needs a “better understanding” of the issue.

But how could EPA act as if they needed this chemical specifically listed as extremely dangerous when the "worst industrial accident in US History,"which also occurred in Texas, involved the explosion of a ship carrying tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.


Not to mention that the EPA has had over a decade to “understand” this issue. Though the Bush Administration not surprisingly completely ignored the recommendations, we are now over four years into the Obama Administration, still without proper regulations adopted.


Greenpeace had already, last year, petitioned EPA to take immediate action on CSB’s recommendations, and it also criticizes EPA’s claim that it still needs “understanding” of the issue before acting responsibly. According to Scientific American, “Greenpeace has listed 483 chemical facilities in the U.S. where 100,000 or more would be at risk from explosions” like the one that occurred in West, Texas.


We join Senator Boxer now in demanding EPA come up with a timeframe and stop dawdling over this very serious and urgent action needed to prevent chemical disasters.


 Thanks for your time.

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