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Selected tag(s): West Virginia chemical spill

We appear to have gotten lucky in the January 2014 West Virginia chemical spill

By / Published: July 15, 2016

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.

[UPDATE:  Please see additions below.  On reflection, my “got lucky” theme here may well have been a poor choice, as I certainly did not mean to imply that the spill was anything other than a nightmare for affected residents; rather, it was my attempt to again highlight the extent to which officials were flying blind at the time due to numerous systemic failures.  While the NTP study I discuss here answers some questions and I believe is cause for some relief, it did not address all concerns, leaves considerable uncertainty, and doesn’t begin to undo the damage of this incident and its continuing aftermath.  Apologies to anyone who took my phrase to imply otherwise.]

Readers may recall that I blogged extensively about the January 2014 spill of chemicals into the Elk River near Charleston from tanks used to store the chemical near the river’s edge, which disrupted the drinking water supply and the lives of 300,000 residents for many weeks thereafter.

A key concern was the dearth of health data – both publicly available and otherwise – on the key chemical components of the spilled mixture, which was used to wash coal.  As I reported in a series of blog posts, despite scant data, federal and state officials rushed to establish – and then defend their establishment of – a concentration of one part per million (1 ppm) as the “safe” level of the main component, 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM), of the spilled mixture.  I pointed to the lack of a scientific basis for that level, largely because of the lack of adequate health information.

That remained the case even after the chemical’s producer, Eastman Chemical, decided to make public its studies of the chemical that it had hidden, claiming them to constitute trade secrets.  I tried to be careful not to claim MCHM or other spilled chemicals posed health risks, but rather that the lack of safety data was highly concerning, given the widespread extent of exposure.

Among the many outcomes of the spill was an agreement by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) to undertake a thorough study of the potential health and environmental effects of MCHM and other component chemicals.  That study is now complete, and the results were released last week.   Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Health science, TSCA reform / Also tagged , | Read 2 Responses

Conflicted West Virginia chemical spill panel is repeating many of CDC’s mistakes

By / Published: April 2, 2014

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

[Use this link to see all of our posts on Dourson.]

Yesterday, the chair of a “Health Effects Expert Panel” convened by the West Virginia Testing Assessment Project (WV TAP) held a press conference to present the panel’s preliminary findings from its review of the “safe” level set by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for MCHM and other chemicals that spilled into the Elk River in early January and contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginia residents.

A final report from the panel apparently won’t be released until May, but a press release issued yesterday sounds far from preliminary in saying the panel supports CDC’s methods, assumptions, toxicity data and “safety factors.”  While providing no details, the release indicates the panel is using the same flawed and incomplete summary of a toxicity study used by CDC in its rush to set a safe level for MCHM.  And it parrots CDC’s erroneous use of the term “safety factors,” which is at odds with the National Academy of Sciences’ strong recommendation that such term should be avoided as it is highly misleading.

In addition to choosing to rely on the same summary CDC used of a 1990 study conducted by MCHM’s manufacturer, Eastman Chemical, the panel accepted at face value Eastman’s interpretation that the study identified a no-effect level.  That conclusion has been questioned and cannot be independently assessed because Eastman has not provided the actual quantitative data from the study.  Moreover, the study used a protocol dating from 1981 that has been extensively revised at least twice since then.  These are among the many problems identified with this study.

It appears the panel’s main departure from CDC was to assume the most highly exposed population would have been formula-fed infants instead of older children.  The panel’s “safe” level is 120 parts per billion (ppb), a value about 8-fold lower than CDC’s level of 1 part per million (ppm).  That seems an improvement over the CDC’s methodology.

The panel’s conflict of interest

However, the process by which the panel itself was formed and the clear conflict of interest (COI) involved – a conflict that only came to light in response to a reporter’s questions at yesterday’s press conference – are deeply concerning.   Read More »

Posted in Health science, Industry influence / Also tagged , , , | Comments are closed

A full month after West Virginia spill, many questions linger … along with the chemical’s distinctive odor

By / Published: February 9, 2014

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Today marks exactly a month since what is now said to be 10,000 gallons of “crude MCHM” – mixed with what was later found to have included other chemicals – spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River, contaminated 1,700 miles of piping in the water distribution system for nine counties, and disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of the state’s residents. 

Despite declining levels of the chemical in the water being fed into the distribution system, late this past week five area schools were closed due to detection of the distinctive licorice-like odor of MCHM and multiple reports of symptoms such as eye irritation, nausea and dizziness among students and staff.

The latest sampling data (for February 7 and 8) at locations such as area fire hydrants and hospitals and at schools shows that MCHM is at non-detect levels (<10 parts per billion) in most samples, but the chemical is still being detected in a minority of the samples despite extensive flushing.  Despite repeated calls to do so, officials appear to have yet to conduct any sampling of taps in residents’ homes.

This past week also featured a press conference by state and federal officials seeking to explain their response to the spill (a video of the entire press conference is available in four parts here; it’s worth watching).  [UPDATE 3/29/14:  As this link no longer works, here are updated links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of the press conference.]

Today’s Charleston Gazette features the latest in a long series of outstanding front-line reports by Ken Ward, Jr., and his colleagues, who have closely followed every twist and turn of both the spill and the government’s response to it.  Today’s article makes clear the extent to which federal officials were winging it in the hours and days after the spill was discovered as they rushed to set a “safe” level for MCHM in tap water.

In this post I’ll delve a little deeper into CDC’s rush to set the “safe” level and the many ways in which CDC inadequately accounted for major data gaps and uncertainties.  I’ll end by saying what I think CDC should have done instead.  Read More »

Posted in Environment, Health policy, Health science / Also tagged , | Read 2 Responses

Should we be holding our breath waiting for more information on risks of the chemical spilled in West Virginia?

By / Published: January 30, 2014

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

A hearing held yesterday by the West Virginia Legislature’s Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources created quite a stir, when a witness – West Virginia Environmental Quality Board vice-chairman Scott Simonton – said that the human carcinogen formaldehyde had been detected in several water samples drawn from a Charleston, WV, restaurant, and that people in the area affected by the January 9 spill could be expected to have inhaled the chemical, which he identified as a likely breakdown product of the spilled material, crude MCHM.  See stories in the Charleston Gazette and USA Today.

State officials and the West Virginia American Water company were quick to call Simonton’s claims “unfounded” and “misleading and irresponsible,” respectively.  The controversy led even the American Chemistry Council – which has laid low ever since the spill – to quickly issue its first statement related to the spill through its Formaldehyde Panel.

While experts are noting that data are insufficient to identify the spill as the source of any formaldehyde detected in the water samples, this new kerfuffle does point to yet another major data gap on crude MCHM.

The one part-per-million (1 ppm) “safe” level state and federal officials set was based on limited data from studies in which rats were exposed to crude or pure MCHM through oral ingestion.  Absolutely no data are available on the chemical with respect to exposure through inhalation.  Yet officials did not hesitate to tell residents the 1 ppm level would be safe not only for drinking the water, but also for bathing and showering.

(It’s curious that the Eastman Chemical Company apparently performed no inhalation studies on crude or pure MCHM, given that Eastman said its motivation for the studies it did perform was to understand risks to workers in industrial settings, and its safety data sheet for crude MCHM prominently notes the potential for health concerns for workers from inhalation.)

[UPDATE 1/31/14:  This morning, Eastman posted an updated version of its Q&A document on its website (linked to in the above paragraph), and took down the earlier version.  Here is the original version, the updated version dated 1/31/14, and a redline comparison of the two versions.]

Clearly the material that spilled is volatile – that’s why people can smell it.  Taking a hot shower in such water means that people would clearly be exposed via inhalation of the vapor; how much exposure would occur has not been ascertained.  But in the absence of any data as to toxicity of the chemical via inhalation, there is simply no scientific basis on which to say or imply that showering in water contaminated at 1 ppm level was OK.

Chemicals can be more or less toxic by inhalation than by ingestion, with one study finding inhalation to be the more toxic route for half of the chemicals examined and oral ingestion to be the more toxic route for the other half.  Benzene, for example, is estimated to be several hundred times more toxic by inhalation than by ingestion, while inhalation of chloroform is estimated to be about 25-fold lower in toxicity than it is by ingestion.

What such comparisons indicate is that extrapolating from data on oral toxicity to predict inhalation toxicity – which is effectively what government officials did in this case – is about as accurate as flipping a coin.

Posted in Environment, Health policy, Health science / Also tagged , , | Read 3 Responses

“Epic fail” in West Virginia chemical spill: Poor information, poor communications, poor decisions

By / Published: January 26, 2014

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

[UPDATE 1/28/14:  See updates at several places in this post regarding a 2011 Eastman safety data sheet on crude MCHM – which, though more recent than the 2005 version initally circulated, still does not reference the additional oral toxicity studies conducted by Eastman in the 1990s.]

Little more than two weeks after the January 9, 2014, spill of multiple chemicals into West Virginia’s Elk River, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the private and public sectors at all levels failed miserably with regard to protecting the public’s health.  There is plenty of blame to go around.

Our focus in the blogging we’ve done about this terrible incident has been and remains on the lack of reliable information available on the chemicals involved in the spill, the failure to promptly share what was available with the public, and the shaky science upon which decisions and public communications as to the critical safety questions were based.  In this post, I revisit several aspects of the initial and ongoing information gaps to add some additional perspective. 

I discuss in some detail below two major problems that I believe demand close examination in the Chemical Safety Board’s and others’ investigations into the causes and consequences of the spill:

  1. State and federal officials appear to have initially relied on Eastman Chemical Company’s incomplete and out-of-date Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) on “crude MCHM,” and as a result sowed confusion from the outset that has led to widespread public mistrust.
  2. Those same officials appear to have accepted without scrutiny the adequacy, accuracy and relevance of Eastman’s additional toxicity studies of MCHM, based only on summaries of those studies when they were finally provided by Eastman.

I end by briefly describing some of the implications of this tragic incident that need to be addressed going forward.

One caveat:  Because information on this incident has emerged in a piecemeal and haphazard manner, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of every detail provided in this post.  I have strived to the best of my ability to accurately describe the sequence and nature of events based on the available information.  Read More »

Posted in Environment, Health policy, Regulation / Also tagged , , | Read 3 Responses

Another new wrinkle on the “new” mystery chemical in West Virginia spill

By / Published: January 22, 2014

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Well, this story is rapidly evolving!  Even since my last blog post this morning, new information has come to light as to the identity of the “new” chemical that was present in the leaking tank that led to contamination of the drinking water in Charleston, WV.

The Charleston Gazette has now reported that Freedom Industries, the owner of the leaking tank, has told government officials that the “new” chemical is actually a mixture of two chemical products, both of them made by The Dow Chemical Company.  One of those is in fact the “DOWANOLTM PPh Glycol Ether” I discussed in my last post.  The second is a closely related Dow product called “DOWANOLTM DiPPh Glycol Ether.”   (These links are to Dow’s Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) for the two products.)

The first product consists almost entirely (>99.5%) of propylene glycol phenyl ether (CAS no. 770-35-4).  The second is a mixture (see its MSDS), the main component of which (≥60%) is di-propylene glycol phenyl ether (CAS no. 51730-94-0) – a closely related chemical.

My earlier post indicated that a Dow contact had told me this morning it does not make a “stripped” version of its PPh product, and hence did not believe it was the supplier of the material to Freedom Industries.  As I noted in that post, use of the “stripped” designation to describe the “proprietary” chemical listed in the MSDS supplied yesterday by Freedom Industries for the “new” chemical had suggested the substance had somehow been further distilled.

But the latest article in the Charleston Gazette helps to clarify the situation.  It cites State officials indicating that Freedom Industries’ “PPH, stripped” is in fact a mixture of the two Dow products.

Interestingly, the MSDSs for the two Dow products reference a considerably larger amount of toxicity data than does Freedom Industries’ MSDS.  It appears, therefore, that there may be more data for officials to go on to assess potential risks associated with this “new” chemical.

Dow’s Technical Data Sheet and Product Safety Assessment for “DOWANOLTM PPh Glycol Ether” list several uses for the product, none of which appear to explain why Freedom Industries would have added the product to the tank of MCHM, which is used to wash coal.

There appear to be some disconnects between Dow’s knowledge of how its own chemicals are being used and by whom, and also between the intended uses of such chemicals and their actual use.  These disconnects point to flaws in our current chemical safety policies:  chemical manufacturers often don’t have a full picture of how their chemicals are actually used, and downstream users may not have a clear picture of which uses of a chemical are appropriate or not.

The number of lessons to be drawn from this West Virginia chemical spill appears to be growing by the day.

 

Posted in Environment, Health policy, Regulation / Also tagged , , | Read 1 Response