I found the article below interesting and worth sharing with the group. Chemical disasters can be devastating to local economies. Just ask West Virginia businesses whose economy lost $19 million per day after the Elk River spill in 2015. The US House of Representatives recently approved new chemical safety rules designed to overhaul federal regulation covering thousands of chemicals in daily use. It is very clear that our government is taking a very close look at Chemical Safety and security.
The EPA is now updating rules on chemical facility safety to minimize the impact of such accidents, but sadly, the planned changes will do very little to prevent chemical disasters. Instead, new chemical security rules should include prevention and information sharing in order to mitigate the risks. Of the 12,500 hazardous chemical facilities covered by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP), as many as 466 pose a catastrophic hazard to 100,000 or more people.
That’s more than 100 million people in the U.S. who could be in harm’s way following another chemical disaster – some of which could make the Elk River spill pale in comparison. By the EPA’s own admission, there have been more than 1,500 reportable incidents during the past 10 years, which have killed 60 people, injured 17,000 more, and cost more than $2 billion in property damages alone.
Click Here to Read the entire blog which was written by David Levine is Co-founder and CEO of the American Sustainable Business Council.
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