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Policy

Terrorism And The Chemical Industry

Study suggests Homeland Security Department support a panoply of research to protect this sector

by Lois R. Ember
July 3, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 27

PROTECTION
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Credit: Photo by Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories
A chemical plant is ringed with a physical barrier of barbed wire. The study says more is needed to protect the nation's chemical infrastructure.
Credit: Photo by Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories
A chemical plant is ringed with a physical barrier of barbed wire. The study says more is needed to protect the nation's chemical infrastructure.

Claiming national security concerns, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held up the release of a National Research Council (NRC) study on chemical plant security for several months. The study, which drew only on publicly available information, contains no classified information.

In objecting to the study's release, officials from DHS's Directorate for Science & Technology, which requested the study, cited the concept of classification by compilation. They contended that the whole was greater than the parts, and therefore the study should be classified, explains Dorothy Zolandz, staff director for the NRC Board on Chemical Sciences & Technology.

NRC countered, Zolandz says, by asking DHS officials to cite specific security problems. A dialogue followed, and eventually "DHS concurred with NRC's position," which was that "the report resembles other material in the public domain," she explains.

According to DHS spokesman Christopher Kelly, "DHS officials were concerned about the sensitivity of the information contained in the study. However, upon further review, the information did not rise to the level of being considered 'classified.' "

NRC released the study, "Terrorism & the Chemical Infrastructure: Protecting People & Reducing Vulnerabilities," in late May. NRC panel chair Linda Capuano, senior vice president at Solectron, stresses that "we didn't alter any of our opinions or results."

DHS's Science & Technology Directorate was seeking guidance from NRC on how best to invest in research, development, and technology to help make the nation's chemical infrastructure more secure and more able to withstand a terrorist attack or catastrophic accident. To that end, the NRC panel was asked to focus on the vulnerabilities of the chemical supply chain and identify key chemicals and processes whose disruption could cause catastrophic loss of life or economic damage. The panel was not asked to review vulnerabilities of individual chemical facilities.

In fact, the NRC panel was specifically instructed not to duplicate ongoing government efforts such as DHS's Risk Analysis & Management for Critical Asset Protection (RAMCAP) and the Environmental Protection Agency's Off-Site Consequence Analysis, which do focus on individual sites. Nor was Capuano's panel privy to data and results collected under those efforts or to proprietary information from the chemical industry.

By having its focus narrowed, the NRC panel was not able to assess the effectiveness of current protective measures. Still, Capuano contends her panel was able to "define a charge" that wasn't duplicative of other efforts yet "would add value." Equally important, she says, the panel could "produce a report that was open, not classified."

Not having direct access to DHS and EPA data prevented "the panel from looking at a full data set, from having the most recent information available," says Greenpeace spokesman Rick Hind. He describes it "as asking them to do what they did with one hand tied behind their backs. It limited their vision."

Capuano says that "having access to specific data might have given us insight, but it's hard to know what you don't know." Some members of her panel also participated in DHS's RAMCAP effort, but were prohibited from releasing RAMCAP data to the NRC panel. "Certainly those members would have told us to make a request for data from DHS if they thought we needed it," Capuano says.

As a result of its deliberations, the NRC panel concluded that if toxic, flammable, or explosive materials are present, a single terrorist attack could result in catastrophic loss of life or injuries but would probably only adversely affect the operations of individual companies and local economies.

Given the diversity of and redundancy in the chemical industry, it would take multiple terrorist events to have a major impact on the industry as a whole, and therefore on the national economy.

A major national disaster such as Hurricane Katrina underscores those points. Detrimental effects were felt by operations in the Gulf Coast, but the rest of the industry and the national economy were not decimated.

Hurricane Katrina also spotlighted the significance of public response to a disaster. With sociological and psychological effects in play, a terrorist attack could have ramifications beyond the immediate impacted area or facility. The NRC panel stressed this point and concluded that public authorities need to understand the social amplifications to better manage the aftermath of a terrorist event. The panel recommended that DHS invest in and utilize behavioral and social science research.

Good communication is the key to moderating the consequences of an attack, the panel concluded. To that end, it recommended that DHS explore ways to better and more rapidly communicate essential data to decisionmakers and to the public during and after an emergency. And it recommended that DHS support research that will help to improve emergency preparedness and response as well as disaster recovery.

Still, the panel concluded, the best tack to take in making the chemical infrastructure safer and more secure is not to control releases but to take steps to reduce and, where possible, eliminate hazards. In fact, one sentence in the study likely to be quoted and was at a recent congressional debate is: "The most desirable solution to preventing chemical releases is to reduce or eliminate the hazard where possible, not to control it." To achieve that end, the panel suggested that DHS support R&D to promote "cost-effective inherently safer chemistries and chemical processes."

Some inherently safer technologies (ISTs) have been adopted by the chemical industry, but not widely, the panel found. Among them are process intensification and just-in-time manufacturing, as well as the use of safer alternatives or smaller amounts of hazardous chemicals and the lowering of process temperatures and pressures.

For various reasons, there is little economic incentive for industry to fund research on IST. Given this reality, the panel suggested that the government either invest in needed research or provide financial incentives for industry to do so. Furthermore, the panel said, DHS needs to support research that can identify the magic mix of incentives and disincentives that would persuade the private sector to invest in safety and security.

For the longer term, the panel recommended that DHS support research on ways to improve the safety and security of chemicals stored at fixed facilities and during transportation. DHS also needs to invest in research into sophisticated, real-time technologies for security monitoring, but, the panel stressed, the department should not overlook such low-tech solutions as inventory audits and inspections.

Despite its admonition that preventing a chemical release is preferable to controlling one after the fact, Capuano's panel didn't "blankly recommend IST" as the be-all and end-all solution to chemical plant security, she explains. "We did point out that IST has advantages," but equally important, she says, are technologies that enhance rapidresponse capabilities and address societal amplification issues. "No one recommendation stands out above the rest," she adds.

Indeed, speaking for the American Chemistry Council, Ted Cromwell, senior director of regulatory affairs, applauds the panel for "appropriately" concluding "that no one recommendation should be emphasized at the expense of other equally, or more, effective security improvements."

NRC panel member Michael K. Lindell, director of the Texas A&M Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center, says that IST "didn't get as much discussion in the report as emergency preparedness and response did." That's not because panel members felt that IST was less important, he stresses.

Rather, Lindell says, the panel "felt that mitigation−of which IST is one example−as well as operations and procedures that can reduce the size of releases and emergency response and preparedness are all important." All are necessary for "an effective response by industry and government," he adds.

In fact, Cromwell points to the study's "numerous approaches to enhancing chemical facility security that do not require process changes." He also believes the study highlights the fact that "government funding and incentives will not necessarily address the significant issues, such as shifting or creating new risks, surrounding IST."

For his part, Lindell thinks "the most important" aspect of the study is the "emphasis on the need for research that links social and behavioral research" to risk management of the chemical infrastructure. "There's research being done on how people respond to natural hazards that is not being incorporated into chemical risk analyses," Lindell says. The panel "felt it should be."

"Speaking personally," Lindell says, "it's very clear that IST is a political football." His point was amply on display at a recent acrimonious hearing on IST held by the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee.

Greenpeace's Hind says the NRC panel's inclusion of IST "as one of the tools in the security box" is "a very enlightened sign." He stresses, "That's especially meaningful now because there are people in industry and the Senate saying that IST isn't a security measure."

Hind was consulted by the panel during its deliberations. Now that the study is completed, his overall assessment is that "it doesn't bring a lot of new things to the table; it doesn't provide new information or new insights to the current situation. It's more of a desk reference."

Yet, Hind is pleased that after widely consulting with industry, which doesn't want IST mandated by legislation, the panel "still came down saying that the most desirable solution is safer technology that can be achieved through alternatives that are already available. It's good to have such an august body embrace that wisdom."

Rick Engler, director of the New Jersey Work Environment Council, isn't so sanguine. "The report appears to ignore the fact that the very rich chemical industry has failed to sufficiently adopt inherently safer approaches to plant safety and security. It wrongly emphasizes a supposed duty of government to engage in research to help subsidize corporate profits," he says. Just as important, he says, the NRC study "completely ignores the vital role of workers and unions in pointing out risks and methods to address them."

According to Nicholas A. Ashford, professor of technology and policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "The report underplays the fact that applying IST to prevent chemical mishaps is to be preferred over the practices of secondary prevention that provide Band-Aid solutions and mitigation that reduces injury after mishaps have occurred." He continues, "Where inherently safer approaches are mentioned, they are restricted to recommendations for 'cost effective' approaches that hold public safety hostage to industrial economic interests."

Absent in the study are "substantive recommendations for regulations requiring industry to consider and report IST options that could be adopted or that industry might develop," Ashford says. This silence, he says, "parallels the weaker legislative proposals now being offered in Congress."

Perhaps the study's most important deficiency in the area of IST is the absence of "recommendations fostering industry accountability for changing its technology," Ashford says.

Despite such criticism, the study is playing a unique role in policy discussions by emphasizing the essential role of science and technology in safeguarding the chemical infrastructure against a terrorist attack.

MORE ON THIS STORY

Inherently Safer Technology

No Middle Ground In Senate Debate (page 26)

Terrorism And The Chemical Industry

Study suggests Homeland Security Department support a panoply of research to protect this sector (page 25)

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