In Tulare, Calif., the chlorine concentrations at the recycling plant were extremely high. Three hours after it happened, the Visalia Fire Department measured the gas at 328 parts per million near the tank. It was probably much higher when the workers were trying to escape. Studies show 40-60 ppm produces lung injury; 430 ppm usually causes death in 30 minutes, and 1,000 ppm is fatal within a few minutes. Under federal standards, workers are never supposed to be exposed to concentrations exceeding 1 ppm.
"Exposure to high levels of chlorine gas from a release can cause severe health effects, including death," said Mary Anne Duncan, an epidemiologist at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry who has assisted with the aftermath of several chlorine accidents, including the one in Tulare.
Erik Svendsen, who studied the health effects of the Graniteville chlorine cloud, said researchers knew they would find pulmonary and other health problems in people exposed. But they found a lot of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders, too.
"Chlorine was used as a war gas for a reason. It was designed not just to kill the enemy but also to inflict fear in the enemy. You remember every second you were exposed to the gas. You don't know where to go. You see your clothes bleach before your very eyes. You see animals die,” said Svendsen, a Tulane University epidemiologist.
“It's not just a toxic event. It's a traumatic event. You're powerless. You're being exposed to something you can't stop. You have a metabolic stress response that has effects on the body physiologically.”
Only four months before the accident in Tulare, five workers were injured at another California recycler, U.S. Metal in Indio, when a crane worker pierced a cylinder tank and set off an explosive chlorine gas release.
And in July, at Tyson Foods Inc., in Springdale, Ark., chlorine gas was released after the accidental mixing of two chemicals, exposing 173 people and sending 50 to hospitals, including five that wound up in intensive care. Chlorine is used in the company’s sanitizing washes.
Across the country, data going back to 1993 show that chlorine accidents occur in the United States at the rate of at least once every two or three days, and about one-third of them cause injuries.
In 2009 alone, chlorine was involved in 181 reported accidents with 56 resulting in injuries, based on the latest report from a federal database called Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES). That amounts to 3.8 percent of all the reported chemical emergencies that year. Chlorine had a high percentage with victims, 30.9 percent, second only to carbon monoxide, which had 41.7 percent with victims. Roughly one-third of the states reported, and only for a part of the year, so the real number of accidents and injuries is much higher, experts say.
“Chlorine releases in fixed facilities resulted in victims and evacuations in more industry categories than any other substance," says a 2004 study by researchers from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. That study was based on HSEES data of 40,000 chemical incidents from 1996 through 2001.
Accidents involving chlorine "were more likely to result in events with victims, evacuations and decontaminations when compared with non-chlorine events,” according to another study by the same federal agency published in 2002.
Of 865 events involving chlorine alone between 1993 and 2000, 275 caused injuries, the study says. Of the 1,071 victims, 759 were workers, 235 were members of the public and most of the rest were first responders.
Transporting chlorine also poses more risks than other substances. The U.S. Department of Transportation issued a report last month weighting the most serious accidents in terms of deaths and major injuries from 2005 to 2009. Chlorine led the list with 83 major injuries and nine fatalities out of 48 rail and road accidents compared to gasoline, second on the list, which had 19 major injuries and 30 fatalities out of 1,306 rail and road accidents.
See what we're tweeting about
13 Comments
Add CommentWhat exactly is the point of this article? I read it all the way through - to the point where it just abruptly stopped. Is there some kind of conclusion or proposed plan, or something at all?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo raise awareness and let people know that this is a problem and a much greater risk than most might have assumed. The article is the action - Increase Awareness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnote the source:
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
Honestly. In Scientific American? Which readers didn't know chlorine is dangerous? Who hasn't heard of the accidents, injuries, and fatalities? I feel I'm bout average in scientific knowledge and media exposure. I don't think I learned one new thing. It's a weak article for SA; Filler
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislamorpa, "In Scientific American? Which readers didn't know chlorine is dangerous?" you are kidding right? This is the site whose comment sections are full of B.S. from climate deniers, creationists, UFOlogists, anti-environmentalists, anti-scientists, anti-sciamists, etc. So not only would I expect few of those people to know anything about the dangers of chlorine (the deniers would argue that it isn't a toxin but instead a nutrient in sea water), even fewer would know about the relative frequency of accidents, which is the main point of the article. I would argue that few sciam readers know about how often accidents occur. I certainly learned something and I have clients in some of those industries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLast time I checked, sciam doesn't use you as the measuring stick with which they determine if an article is too obvious for consumption. Get over yourself.
RS, two thumbs up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChlorine! It's for your drinking water!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally. Ask your city government. Florine, too. Plus, now, UV light. Won't surprise me when they find a drinking water use for CFC's.
.
Two thoughts related to the article: First it seems curious that there is no reference to military chlorine-exposure experience, particularly of WWI. Second, it seems that, even in county/municipal dumps, within short distance of major population centers, I have not seen controls which would identify similar hazards and eliminate the possibility of similar accidents, and I don't think my experience is unique.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, because you feel that the article was unnecessary, it shouldn't have been published? Perhaps there are others out there, like me, who would want to read it. It seems obvious that you are critisizing for no good reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article failed to mention the many unreported small accidents caused by careening pool service trucks loosely loaded with chlorine and muratic acid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHazMat Experts and Firefighters petition Dow Chemical and Union Pacific for safe rail tank cars transporting gas chlorine. Secondary containment is a necessary improvement that must be implemented. See- PETITION C KIT for First Responders Comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHazMat Experts and Firefighters petition Dow Chemical and Union Pacific for safe rail tank cars transporting gas chlorine. Secondary containment is a necessary improvement that must be implemented. See--PETITION C KIT for First Responders Comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWARNING: FIRST RESPONDERS’ use of THE CHLORINE INSTITUTE “C” KIT may cause the catastrophic failure of a chlorine tank car, instantly creating a toxic gas plume with a distance of not less than seven miles. The first mile will have chlorine concentrations of 1,000 ppm, causing death after one or two breaths with no opportunity for escape. To learn more, see PETITION C KIT, click on “First Responder Warnings.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWARNING: FIRST RESPONDERS’ use of THE CHLORINE INSTITUTE “C” KIT may cause the catastrophic failure of a chlorine tank car, instantly creating a toxic gas plume with a distance of not less than seven miles. The first mile will have chlorine concentrations of 1,000 ppm, causing death after one or two breaths with no opportunity for escape. To learn more, see PETITION C KIT, click on “First Responder Warnings.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this