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'Toxics Bill' A Political Vehicle With No Scientific Basis (OPINION)
Jul 3, 2015 | The Oregonian
By Brent T. Burton
Senate Bill 478, a bill which would create new and complex reporting requirements for manufacturers and consumer-product distributors in Oregon, seems to still be making its way through the Oregon Legislature. -
Oregonian Misses Mark on Toxic Free Kids Act (OPINION)
Jul 3, 2015 | The Oregonian
By Margaret Ngai
As a nurse and the parent of an infant and a toddler, I respectfully disagree withThe Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board's critique of the Toxic Free Kids Act (Senate Bill 478), which is currently making its way through the Oregon Legislature. -
The Trouble With Inspection Tools for Oil Pipelines
Jul 3, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Alison Sider
Oil pipeline companies like to brag that their advanced testing methods and remote monitoring technology prevent spills. So why was a southern California beach coated in crude in late May? -
The Latest on Train Derailment: 5,000 Evacuated in Tennessee
Jul 3, 2015 | AP (In Sacramento Bee)
An official in eastern Tennessee says smoke has stopped rising from the site where a CSX train car derailed and caught fire, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents. -
Freight-Rail Accidents Fall, Despite High-Profile Derailments
Jul 2, 2015 | USA Today
By Bart Jansen
Despite high-profile train derailments in Tennessee and Pennsylvania, railroads remain relatively safe transportation for people and freight, federal statistics show. -
Despite Derailments, Freight Train Safety is Improving
Jul 2, 2015 | CBS News
By Kris Van Cleave
Oil, chemicals and other goods are shipped across the country on a network of 140,000 miles of track. This year alone, freight railroads are expected to spend a record $29 billion upgrading rails and purchasing new locomotives and cars.
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'Toxics Bill' A Political Vehicle With No Scientific Basis (OPINION)
Jul 3, 2015 | The Oregonian
By Brent T. Burton
Senate Bill 478, a bill which would create new and complex reporting requirements for manufacturers and consumer-product distributors in Oregon, seems to still be making its way through the Oregon Legislature. Ostensibly, the bill is being promoted as a measure to protect public health through mandatory reporting and to phase-out certain chemicals.
I have no financial or political interest in the outcome of SB478. However, as a public health professional, I am convinced that the bill lacks scientific foundation and is contrary to sound public health policy.
As a licensed Oregon physician, board certified medical toxicologist, former Oregon Health & Sciences University faculty member and former medical director of the Oregon Poison Center, I am a strong supporter of public health legislation that appropriately identifies a potential hazard and lays out a plan to reduce the risk of toxic injury and illness. We should all support legislative efforts that identify needs for public health intervention, and set in place strategies to reduce the incidence and severity of toxic injury and illness. For example, child-resistant packaging laws have resulted in very significant reductions in morbidity and mortality related to childhood poisoning.
However, in contrast to objective, science-based efforts to reduce potential exposure to toxic substances, SB478 merely proposes a labeling scheme that would divert public health efforts and produce confusing and inconsistent information to consumers. This bill fails to identify or define a public health problem that must be remedied or prevented, nor does it offer any solutions to supposed potential problems.
Simply put, the bill is not driven by any identifiable need or problem. Instead, SB478 appears to be formulated as some sort of political vehicle. As a public health-care professional speaking from a career dedicated to medicine and toxicology, I would suggest that science and public health needs should guide our efforts, not politics.
The most significant defect of SB478 is the exclusion of the dose-response concept — the fundamental premise of modern toxicology, i.e., "the dose makes the poison." The rejection or omission of this principal will result in reporting laws that erroneously ignore the concentration of the chemical ingredients. Moreover, the law will ignore whether any of the chemical ingredients are even in a form that can present an exposure risk. When neither chemical concentration nor absorbed doses are considered, labeling or reporting information becomes meaningless.
For example, placing the same label on (chlorinated) drinking water and also on tanks of concentrated chlorine would obviously serve no purpose, other than diminish the importance of the warning label on the more hazardous substance.
If consumer products are reported or labeled on the basis of chemical identity, and yet do not consider concentration, dose or the mechanism of potential exposure, then the consumer acquires no information from which to effectively evaluate risk and make an informed purchase decision. When warnings, either through labeling or reporting, are overused and commonplace, "warning fatigue" occurs. This leads to instances where truly important warnings are overlooked or ignored.
Public health and consumer protection, particularly regarding the prevention of toxic exposure, has always been a critical component of my medical practice. Appropriate prevention and treatment always requires reliance upon scientific data. Sound public policy, likewise, should require the same diligence to protect the public and improve public health policy. This focus also includes looking forward to advances and reforms at the federal level, e.g., the Toxic Substances Control Act. We should support efforts for beneficial legislation that reduce the risk of toxic injury and disease. But SB478 does not meet this goal. SB478 is not good legislation.
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Oregonian Misses Mark on Toxic Free Kids Act (OPINION)
Jul 3, 2015 | The Oregonian
By Margaret Ngai
As a nurse and the parent of an infant and a toddler, I respectfully disagree with The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board's critique of the Toxic Free Kids Act (Senate Bill 478), which is currently making its way through the Oregon Legislature. Protecting public health is a key function of government and, indeed, our public health system is responsible for promoting health and preventing disease. This includes taking action to limit children's exposure to known toxics.
I join the Oregon Nurses Association, Oregon Health & Science University, the Oregon Medical Association, the Oregon Public Health Association and more than 80 other businesses and organizations that support this bill, which allows the Oregon Health Authority to define and track priority hazardous chemicals in children's products.
The scientific research is clear. Early childhood exposures to ubiquitous hazardous chemicals — like plasticizers and fragrances — in everyday products can have irreversible effects on physical and neurological health. Subtle exposures over time can have profound effects, increasing the risk of future cancers, reproductive issues and hormone regulation. To ignore this science, and the public health consequences of exposures to hazardous chemicals, is irresponsible.
As a nurse, an important ethical consideration in my practice is "first, do no harm." While this applies to a clinical setting, it also applies to our broader environment and to the core principles of prevention. Limiting our kids' exposure to known toxins is part of this ethic, and is as important to me personally as it is professionally.
Sure, Oregon could simply defer to Washington for tracking hazardous chemicals in commerce. We could also defer to Washington for programs on drinking water, foodborne illnesses, lead, pesticides and radon exposure. But that would essentially be a mandate for Oregon's health officials to ignore their primary duty: Oregonians' health.
SB478 takes targeted measures to spur the adoption of safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals, where they are available. It's true: A narrowly focused phase-out won't protect our most vulnerable from all exposures. But the perfect can't be the enemy of the good. We must act to protect lifelong health, and asking the nation's largest manufacturers to lead the way will have ripple effects throughout the supply chain, making safer alternatives more widely available and more feasible for smaller manufacturers.
Federal reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act is critical — and long overdue. But we can't, and shouldn't, leave it up to the federal government when Oregon can take meaningful action now.
The Toxic Free Kids Act is a compromise wrought over several years with input from Oregon manufacturers and under intense pressure from out-of-state industry trade associations. But the bill's scope and purpose is far from "complex and hyper-ambitious," as the editorial board asserts. It is a widely endorsed practical step towards addressing a critical 21st century public health challenge. And as a mom and a nurse, it's a step that I wholeheartedly endorse for my family, for my patients and for all Oregonians.
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Margaret Ngai is a registered nurse practicing in the Portland area and a mother of two.
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The Trouble With Inspection Tools for Oil Pipelines
Jul 3, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Alison Sider
Oil pipeline companies like to brag that their advanced testing methods and remote monitoring technology prevent spills. So why was a southern California beach coated in crude in late May?
Too many executives pay lip-service to prevention while skimping on safety, said Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline-safety consultant at Accufacts Inc., which investigates leaks and spills.
“In 40 years of doing this, I’ve yet to run across a true accident—a random event the pipeline operator had no real control over,” he said.
That is because even tests that the industry considers state-of-the-art aren't foolproof, and human interpretation of test results can be flawed.
“Smart pigs,” the small devices put through pipelines to look for signs of weakness in the metal, are just the size of a football, but the gadgets return huge reams of data. It can take workers months to comb through all of it, and it is possible to miss important signs of trouble. Even when a test highlights a problem with a pipeline, executives have to be willing to sign off on fixes instead of delaying expensive repairs.
Pipeline inspection tools have come a long way in recent years, and can now spot problems like corrosion and dents. But they can still overlook some problems. And there is room for human error, since people have to pick the right testing tools, run the tests and decide how to respond to problems.
“You can have a smart pig, smart people, and dumb management,” Mr. Kuprewicz said.
Some experts also say energy companies can put too much faith in inspections that don’t always work, which may have been a factor in May’s oil spill that fouled miles of beaches near Santa Barbara, Calif.
A big pipeline moving oil pumped by Exxon Mobil Corp. broke open near scenic Highway 101 that hugs the coast, spilling more than 100,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean. Preliminary data from an integrity test performed on the line two weeks before the spill—but only analyzed afterward—showed some problems but no imminent danger.
The cause of the spill isn’t yet known, so it is too soon to blame the inspection, said Plains All American Pipeline LP, the pipeline’s operator.
“Until the investigation is complete and we know the root cause of the release, it would be premature to draw conclusions about the extent of any limitations of in-line inspection tool runs,” the company said.
In prior filings with the state, Plains assured officials that a pipeline break was “extremely unlikely” and said, if the worst did occur, state-of-the-art monitoring would quickly detect it.
Despite a control room in Midland, Texas, manned by experts remotely monitoring the pipeline for drops in pressure—which would indicate that oil was escaping—the spill was first reported to local authorities by beachcombers who smelled the unmistakably pungent odor of petroleum.
On the morning of May 19, pumps that push oil through the line were experiencing problems, according to Plains. The company shut off the flow of oil at 11:30 a.m., shortly before the local fire department got the call. Plains sent workers to the area, but didn’t notify federal authorities of the precise location of the break until nearly 3 p.m., according to a timeline the company provided federal lawmakers. The company workers had a hard time finding the exact source of the oil. Then notification was further delayed when employees in a nearby office had trouble reaching workers at the scene to get more information, because those workers were busy trying to keep more oil from flowing toward the ocean.
On July 1, federal pipeline authorities proposed a rule that would require pipeline operators to notify the U.S. National Response Center of an accident within one hour of discovering it.
An integrity test from just weeks before the incident showed the pipeline wall had thinned by 45%, which on its own isn't considered so problematic that it requires immediate action under current regulations. But when the broken pipe was actually pulled from the ground for repair, field inspectors said it had actually deteriorated by more than 80%, according to the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
‘In 40 years of doing this, I’ve yet to run across a true accident—a random event the pipeline operator had no real control over.’—Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline-safety consultant
Plains has questioned those field estimates and said it wants official measurements taken in a lab. In fact, the pipeline inspection Plains conducted before the spill flagged four other areas of the pipeline that required further investigation to check into corrosion. When crews surveyed those spots directly, they found the testing tool had overestimated the severity of the problem.
“Safe operations and protecting the environment are much more important to us than profits,” Greg Armstrong, chief executive of Plains, told investors in the wake of the spill. The company has tripled spending on pipeline maintenance and integrity over the past seven years, he said.
Plains spent $124.5 million in 2014 to keep up 6,539 miles of major, federally regulated pipelines and tanks in the U.S., or roughly $19,040 per line-mile. By comparison, a group of energy companies surveyed last year by the Association of Oil Pipe Lines spent more than $2.2 billion evaluating, inspecting and maintaining 144,800 miles of the same type of pipe, or about $15,450 a mile.
Spending more—and testing more—doesn’t always translate into better outcomes, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust.
“Companies say, we have this technology, and risk systems—then you get into specific incidents and find out they failed one way or another,” he said. “It’s a little something different every time.”
A decade ago, corroded metal pipe was listed as the cause of 90 spills, 20 of which were classified as sizable at 50 barrels or more, according to an analysis of federal data. That is enough liquid fuel to fill up the gas tanks of 100 midsize sedans. By comparison, last year corrosion was blamed for 82 spills, but just seven of those were big, affecting public property.
That is better but not good enough, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which often investigates major pipeline spills.
Certain types of defects are particularly hard to find, including small cracks in metal near seams where sections of pipe have been welded together. Tiny cracks evaded tests performed on Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline, which ripped open in 2012 and released 210,000 gallons of oil into a neighborhood in Mayflower, Ark. Damage was so extensive that many people opted never to return home.
It isn’t yet clear why the Santa Barbara line was so corroded, or why the inspection didn’t reveal that damage. Therein lies the problem, said John Stoody, a spokesman for the Association of Oil Pipe Lines.
Pipeline operators are better at preventing spills than they used to be, but today’s technology is still far from perfect and most accidents aren’t caused by one single, easily preventable problem, he said. “We definitely want to break out of the current plateau.”
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The Latest on Train Derailment: 5,000 Evacuated in Tennessee
Jul 3, 2015 | AP (In Sacramento Bee)
An official in eastern Tennessee says smoke has stopped rising from the site where a CSX train car derailed and caught fire, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents.
Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell said shortly before 6 p.m. that he and others had visited the site and the smoke had stopped.
Earlier, officials said firefighters had been unable to get close to the site because of the heat. Mitchell said there were also concerns that the fumes contained cyanide, a byproduct of burning the chemical acrylonitrile, which was leaking from the train car.
Firefighters had been hosing down neighboring train cars to cool them and trying to move them away from the flames.
The CSX train car, bound from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Waycross, Georgia, derailed shortly before midnight Wednesday.
About 5,000 people have been evacuated from a mile-and-a-half radius of the site.
4:30 p.m.
A fire continues to burn at the site of a train derailment in eastern Tennessee after a CSX train car carrying a flammable and toxic substance derailed and caught fire, and officials say firefighters are trying to keep neighboring rail cars cool as they make efforts to move them away from the flames.
At a 4:30 p.m. news conference Thursday in Maryville, Tennessee, Craig Camuso, CSX regional vice president for state government affairs, said firefighters are getting as close to the damaged 24,000-gallon tank car as they can, given the heat.
Camuso said officials don't know yet how much acrylonitrile is coming out of the tank and burning or how much remains inside.
Officials say acrylonitrile, a liquid, is a hazardous material used in multiple industrial processes including making plastics.
Kevin Eichinger, an on-scene coordinator with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said air monitoring has begun, and so far it shows air quality "around background levels."
About 5,000 people have been evacuated from a mile-and-a-half radius around the Wednesday night accident.
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12:30 p.m.
Officials in Maryville, Tennessee, say an evacuation is expected to last at least until Friday, after a CSX train car carrying a flammable and toxic substance derailed and caught fire. They also asked nearby residents not to drink well water for now.
At a Thursday news conference, Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell said CSX will provide bottled water to residents at a local middle school.
Maryville City Manager Greg McClain added that there's no indication yet whether well water has been affected by the incident.
He also advised evacuees to make plans to be away from home at least for Thursday night.
About 5,000 people in the area were evacuated along with several businesses.
CSX says the train car that derailed was carrying acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in multiple industrial processes including making plastics. Officials say the substance is flammable and is dangerous if inhaled.
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9:10 a.m.
Several law enforcement officers were hospitalized after a CSX train car carrying a flammable substance derailed and caught fire in eastern Tennessee.
Blount County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Marian O'Briant says 10 law enforcement officers had to be taken to the hospital early Thursday because they breathed in fumes.
In a statement, CSX says the train car was carrying acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in a variety of industrial processes including making plastics.
The derailment prompted officials to evacuate 5,000 residents within a 2-mile radius of the site.
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8:15 a.m.
A CSX statement says the train that derailed and caught fire in eastern Tennessee was carrying acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in a variety of industrial processes including making plastics.
CSX says the substance is flammable and is dangerous if inhaled.
Authorities say 5,000 people within a 2-mile radius of the derailment in Maryville, Tennessee, have been told to evacuate.
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7:30 a.m.
A fire official says about 5,000 people and several businesses are being evacuated in a 2-mile radius around a train derailment and fire in eastern Tennessee.
Blount County Fire Department Lt. Johnny Leatherwood says a call came in about the derailment at 11:50 p.m. Wednesday. At least one CSX train car carrying a flammable and toxic gas derailed and caught fire. Leatherwood says the fire was still burning at 6:05 a.m. Thursday.
He says firefighters and hazardous-materials crew are on the scene. He says six or seven officers had to be decontaminated but no deaths have been reported.
He could not say how many cars derailed or what substance they were carrying.
He says residents were notified by reverse 911 calls and door-to-door visits.
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6:50 a.m.
Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dean Flener says there have been no reports of fatalities after a CSX train carrying a flammable substance derailed and caught fire in eastern Tennessee.
Authorities say residents within a 1-mile radius of the derailment have been told to evacuate.
Flener says the situation is being handled locally but two state emergency management officials have been sent to Blount County in case the agency's help is needed.
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6:25 a.m.
An area high school has been set up as a shelter for residents who've had to evacuate after a train carrying a flammable gas derailed and caught fire in eastern Tennessee.
Authorities say the Red Cross is using Heritage High School in Maryville as a shelter for residents who have no other place to go.
Residents within a 1-mile radius of the train derailment have been told to evacuate.
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6 a.m.
Authorities say at least one train car carrying a flammable and toxic gas has derailed and caught fire in eastern Tennessee, prompting an evacuation within a 1-mile radius.
WATE-TV reports the CSX train derailed in Blount County, south of Knoxville.
On its Facebook page, the Blount County Sheriff's Office said early Thursday that the evacuations could last from 24 to 48 hours.
A shelter for residents has been set up at a high school.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/article26036476.html#storylink=cpy -
Freight-Rail Accidents Fall, Despite High-Profile Derailments
Jul 2, 2015 | USA Today
By Bart Jansen
Despite high-profile train derailments in Tennessee and Pennsylvania, railroads remain relatively safe transportation for people and freight, federal statistics show.
A derailment late Wednesday near Maryville, Tenn., of a CSX freight train carrying acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used to make plastics, rekindled attention in rail safety. So did the derailment May 12 of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia that killed eight people.
The number of freight-train accidents dropped nearly in half during the last decade, to 1,644 last year from 3,094 in 2005, according to Federal Railroad Administrationstatistics.
The number of derailments declined to 1,202 from 2,262 during that period, according to FRA.
Deaths and injuries dropped even more sharply than the accident rate. The number of deaths in those accidents fell to two last year from 19 in 2005, according to FRA. The number of injuries dropped to 47 from 443 during that period, according to FRA.
The number of hazardous materials releases fell to 15 last year from 39 in 2005, even as the number of cars carrying hazardous materials remained relatively stable, according to FRA.
Sarah Feinberg, FRA's acting administrator, said her agency will begin a thorough investigation of the Tennessee derailment as soon as the site is safe. The crash forced the evacuation of everyone within two miles and the train continued to burn Thursday morning.
"FRA investigators and hazmat inspectors are on site," she said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Amtrak crash, to determine why the train was traveling 106 mph through a 50 mph curve.
Freight and passenger railroads have spent billions of dollars in recent years to improve safety.
In 2008, Congress set a December 2015 deadline for trains to have automatic braking. Amtrak expects to meet the deadline, but the Association of American Railroadsrepresenting freight lines has said its members will complete installation by the end of 2018.
Freight railroads have spent more than $5 billion on the system involving high-tech equipment in locomotives and along tracks, with an expectation the total cost will be $9 billion.
Other strategies focus on education. Since 1972, a non-profit organization called Operation Lifesaver has provided safety-education programs nationwide, to reduce injuries and fatalities where tracks cross roads.
On Monday, the Association of American Railroads and Feinberg announced a partnership with Google to include 250,000 grade-level crossings on its electronic maps, in an effort to prevent collisions where tracks cross roads.
Grade-crossing collisions dropped 35% since 2000, "but too many collisions still occur and virtually all of them are preventable," said Edward Hamberger, the association's CEO. "As FRA statistics show, freight rail safety has been improving dramatically over the last several decades."
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Despite Derailments, Freight Train Safety is Improving
Jul 2, 2015 | CBS News
By Kris Van Cleave
Oil, chemicals and other goods are shipped across the country on a network of 140,000 miles of track. This year alone, freight railroads are expected to spend a record $29 billion upgrading rails and purchasing new locomotives and cars.
In the first four months of 2015, there have been seven train derailments releasing hazardous materials. It's happened at least 58 times since 2012.
But overall, the Federal Rail Administration says freight derailments are down nearly 47 percent since 2005.
"The challenge in railroad safety is that there's no one cause that you can attack," says Dr. Allan Zarembski, who teaches train safety at the University of Delaware.
"We tend to look at where are the larger concentrations of derailments and what technology is going to help find the derailment causes before they actually result in a derailment," Zaremski tells CBS News.
There is growing concern about the sometimes mile-long oil trains hauling volatile crude from North Dakota's oil fields.
The amount of crude transported by rail has jumped 4,000 percent since 2008. At least five times this year, oil trains have derailed and caught fire.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart has expressed concerns about the tank cars used to carry crude.
"Unfortunately we're using the same cars to move crude oil that we use to move corn oil," Hart says. "That is simply not acceptable."
The Association of American Railroads president and CEO Edward Hamberger says the industry's safety record is sound.
"The percentage is amazingly low -- 99.995 percent of cars get across our network without an accident," Hamberger says. "We won't be satisfied until we can get it to 100 percent safety, but right now, we're at 99.995."
The Department of Transportation has issued new stronger guidelines for rail tanker cars that haul crude, but it'll be up to five years before all cars are required to meet that standard.
Railroads are also required to install technology aimed at stopping derailments by the end of the year.© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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