This train in Graniteville, South Carolina, crashed while carrying chemicals called "toxic inhalation hazards." Transporting these chemicals is extremely dangerous, and rail companies think chemical companies should share some of the insurance burden. (Photo courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)
Toxic Inhalation Hazards are a class of chemicals with a notorious name: if you inhale them, you die.
On the flip side, they’re useful: Take chlorine. It purifies drinking water. Another is anhydrous ammonia. It’s used for corn fertilizer.
The government feels some toxic inhalation hazards are so important it forces railroads to ship them, even though insurance is expensive.
Shawn Allee says rail lines now want the chemical industry to chip in:
Transcript
Toxic Inhalation Hazards are a class of chemicals with a notorious name: if you inhale them, you die.
On the flip side, they’re useful. Take chlorine: it purifies drinking water. Another is anhydrous ammonia. It’s used for corn fertilizer.
The government feels some toxic inhalation hazards are so important it forces railroads to ship them, even though insurance is expensive.
Shawn Allee says rail lines now want the chemical industry to chip in:
To understand why the railroad industry wants help with insurance, you should know what happened in Graniteville, South Carolina.
Phil Napier is Graniteville’s fire chief. Napier tells me, one night in January 2005, he got paged about a train wreck.
He hopped in his truck and before long, he found the train engineer.
“I stopped to roll the window down and this gentleman told me they had a chemical leak and he couldn’t breathe and he fell to the ground. And immediately, it hit me. It basically took my breath and all I remember is taking a U-turn heading north but I ended up south. There’s a time-zone in there that I have no memory.”
When Napier came to, he got word from his radio: the train carried chlorine and a toxic cloud was spreading.
Napier evacuated Graniteville. Later, he got a look by helicopter.
“We did a flyover. I mean, it was like a Twilight Zone – you could see cars all up and down the highways, with the doors open.”
Nine people died in the Graniteville derailment and chlorine spill. Since then, the railroad industry worried an accident like this could ruin them.
“The lesson we drew from that was, if there is a major catastrophe by the railroad carrying this material, could be forced into bankruptcy and be forced out of operation.”
That’s Ed Hamberger, the head of the Association of American Railroads.
Hamberger calls the Graniteville accident a tragedy for the town and a financial mess for the railroad responsible – Norfolk Southern.
“The accident in Graniteville resulted in damages of 400 to 500 million dollars.”
Norfolk Southern won’t confirm the figures, but consider this: it’s still in court over an incident involving nine deaths.
Experts say if a similar derailment happened in the middle of a big city like Chicago, it could kill at least 10,000 people.
Hamberger says railroads can’t insure against that.
You might think they would refuse to carry toxic inhalant hazards, but the government says they have to – because rail has the best safety record.
“The freight railroad industry has what is known as a common carrier obligation to carry these toxic by inhalation materials. Several of our members have said if they were not forced to, they would not carry it because of that liability threat.”
Hamberger says if the government won’t lift the obligation, it’s fair to require chemical companies to pay some insurance.
And, he says, it would make the public safer.
The argument goes, if chemical companies paid more to insure against transportation accidents, they’d create safer chemicals.
“With regard to the argument the chemical industry needs an incentive to make safer products, frankly, we have all the incentive in the world.”
Marty Durbin is with the American Chemistry Council.
He says chemical companies already pay insurance against accidents in their factories.
And they are looking for alternatives to chlorine and other toxic inhalant hazards.
Durbin says, besides, when trains leave their factories financial risk should be out of their hands.
“You have to have liability throughout the chain that helps motivate safety improvement.”
The chemical and railroad companies will battle this out in front of government agencies for a while.
In the meantime, each year, trains will make 100,000 shipments of toxic inhalation hazards along the nation’s railroads, even if some freight rail companies don’t want to.
For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.