
Right-to-Know—But What?
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S OPINION
EVERY year, four-billion tons of hazardous materials are carried by rail and road in 90-million individual shipments across the United States. If these figures don’t give you reason to pause, consider that millions of tons of materials called hazardous are manufactured, stored, used, and sold in this country every year.
“Why hit us with these figures again?” you ask. “Hazardous materials have been beaten to death.”
I would have tended to agree with you—a year ago. But Bhopal and Mexico City have redefined the urgency of the subject. They have refocused attention and renewed public furor over an obvious lack of control of a skyrocketing industry. In one week’s time: 30 different chemicals in one shipment of 45 containers derailed and burned; a 5,000-gallon tanker leaked cleaning fluid onto a commuter clogged freeway; 2,500 gallons of poison leaked into an urban sewer system; and a nitric acid leak sent five people to the hospital. In the same week, the Union Carbide plant in Institute, WV, released poisonous aldicarb oxime into the atmosphere, sickening 134 people. The public’s right to know is receiving a good deal of sympathetic attention.
However, we, the emergency responder, really don’t know what we have a right to know. And the “juice” is still getting out of the can. The environmentalists (and the chemical industry’s track record) tell us that industry can’t safely handle toxic substances. We have a right to know that.
Some supervisory, automatic leak detection systems cannot monitor that which they are intended to monitor. We have a right to know that.
Experts, paid to function within plants during emergencies, are either unable to or don’t. Delays in alarm notification, system control initiation, data gathering, etc., are reportedly due to ignorance, ineptness, or corporate hand tying. We have a right to know that.
Transporters are often unable to operate the manual control systems built into the vessels that they handle on our roads and rails. We have a right to know their training level or lack of it.
Materials considered safe for the public may be violent and dangerous in a fire or other emergency condition to which we respond. We have a right to know that also.
Right now, there are bills active in Congress that are going to spell out what “know” we have a right to. Become familiar with the legislation making its way toward the law and make your influence felt.
We need a no-nonsense base, a legal “floor” from which we can operate nationally, regionally, and, even more important, locally as safe as possible in emergency incidents. We do not need any more watered-down, selfinterest, vague “ceilings” that limit our access to usable real world information that we need to shape our decisions and that will possibly affect our lives in hazardous material responses.
What do you think?