{"id":2974,"date":"2014-01-22T12:45:44","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T17:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=2974"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:33","slug":"another-new-wrinkle-on-the-new-mystery-chemical-in-west-virginia-spill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2014\/01\/22\/another-new-wrinkle-on-the-new-mystery-chemical-in-west-virginia-spill\/","title":{"rendered":"Another new wrinkle on the \u201cnew\u201d mystery chemical in West Virginia spill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D.<\/em>,<\/em> is a Senior Scientist.<\/p>\n

Well, this story is rapidly evolving!\u00a0 Even since my <\/span>last blog post<\/span><\/a> this morning, new information has come to light as to the identity of the \u201cnew\u201d chemical that was present in the leaking tank that led to contamination of the drinking water in Charleston, WV.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Charleston Gazette has now reported<\/span><\/a><\/i> that Freedom Industries, the owner of the leaking tank, has told government officials that the \u201cnew\u201d chemical is actually a mixture of two chemical products, both of them made by The Dow Chemical Company.\u00a0 One of those is in fact the \u201c<\/span><\/span>DOWANOL<\/span>TM<\/span><\/sup> PPh Glycol Ether<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u201d I discussed in my last post.\u00a0 The second is a closely related Dow product called \u201c<\/span>DOWANOL<\/span>TM<\/span><\/sup> DiPPh Glycol Ether<\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0(These links are to Dow\u2019s Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) for the two products.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The first product consists almost entirely (>99.5%) of <\/span>propylene glycol phenyl ether (CAS no. 770-35-4)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 The second is a mixture (see its MSDS), the main component of which (\u226560%) is <\/span>di-<\/span><\/a><\/i>propylene glycol phenyl ether (CAS no. 51730-94-0)<\/span><\/a> \u2013 a closely related chemical.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My earlier post indicated that a Dow contact had told me this morning it does not make a \u201cstripped\u201d version of its PPh product, and hence did not believe it was the supplier of the material to Freedom Industries.\u00a0 As I noted in that post, use of the \u201cstripped\u201d designation to describe the \u201cproprietary\u201d chemical listed in the <\/span>MSDS supplied yesterday by Freedom Industries<\/span><\/a> for the \u201cnew\u201d chemical had suggested the substance had somehow been further distilled.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But the latest article in the <\/span>Charleston Gazette<\/span><\/a><\/i> helps to clarify the situation.\u00a0 It cites State officials indicating that Freedom Industries\u2019 \u201cPPH, stripped\u201d is in fact a mixture of the two Dow products.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, the MSDSs for the two Dow products reference a considerably larger amount of toxicity data than does Freedom Industries\u2019 MSDS.\u00a0 It appears, therefore, that there may be more data for officials to go on to assess potential risks associated with this \u201cnew\u201d chemical.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Dow\u2019s <\/span>Technical Data Sheet<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Product Safety Assessment<\/span><\/a> for <\/span>\u201c<\/span>DOWANOL<\/span>TM<\/span><\/sup> PPh Glycol Ether\u201d 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There appear to be some disconnects between Dow\u2019s 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.\u00a0 These disconnects point to <\/span>flaws in our current chemical safety policies<\/span><\/a>:\u00a0 chemical manufacturers often don\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The number of lessons to be drawn from this West Virginia chemical spill appears to be growing by the day.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Well, this story is rapidly evolving!\u00a0 Even since my last blog post this morning, new information has come to light as to the identity of the \u201cnew\u201d chemical that was present in the leaking tank that led to contamination of the drinking water in Charleston, WV. The Charleston …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,44,56096],"tags":[39155,39171,39993,39996],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-policy","category-omboira","tag-cbi","tag-exposure-vs-hazard","tag-general-interest","tag-wv-chemical-spill"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12697,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions\/12697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}