Chemicals in the Elk River

It's a little while now since the spill of toxic chemicals into the Elk River in West Virginia.  For several days, after a storage tank owned by the wonderfully-named Freedom Industries leaked 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, into the river, West Virgina drinking water service was virtually shut down.

Last Sunday, the Washington Post published a useful article with a broader look at regulatory oversight of toxic chemicals.  In fact, Joel Achenbach, the reporter for the piece, leaves the impression that there’s little or none.  He reports that when officials were scrambling to deal with the leak and assess its seriousness, they had next to no information about the chemical contaminating the water supplies.  According to his article, the MCHM safety data sheet that officials were probably looking at anxiously, uses the phrase “no data available” 152 times.

That would seem unacceptable when so much emphasis is placed on the safety of the things we eat and drink.  But a spokesperson for Freedom Industries said the company was, in fact, following stricter European Union standards in the data sheet; under U.S. regulations, she said, they didn’t even need to say that much.

So the Elk River spill points out the need for better information about and regulation of industrial chemicals, right?  Right.  But the most prominent proposed legislation, drafted by the late Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and David Vitter (R-LA), both from states with sizable petro-chemical industries, would, if anything, weaken oversight.  Elk River may have raised the salience of the issue for a while, and prompted an effort towards stricter regulation.  Here’s hoping something comes of it.