Industrial Environmental Management. Tapas K. Das
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2.6.1.1 What Happened that Evening!
Due to lack of environmental regulations, enforcement and compliance, maintenance and operation safety, the plant in Bhopal where the disaster happened started to produce “Carbaryl” in 1977. Carbaryl is mainly used as an insecticide. At first, the production was 2500 T/Y. This was no problem, as the plant had been designed for an output of 5000 T. At the beginning of the 1980s, Carbaryl did not sell very well. For this reason, the owners of the plant started to cut costs. This included employing fewer people, doing maintenance less frequently, and using parts that were made of lower‐grade steel. Closing the plant was being considered as well. When the disaster happened, there was no production at the plant because there was a surplus on the market.
The disaster happened because water entered a tank containing MIC. This caused a chemical reaction which resulted in the buildup of much carbon dioxide, among other things. The resulting reaction increased the temperature inside the tank to reach over 200 °C (392 °F). The pressure was more than the tank was built to withstand. The tank had valves to control the pressure. These were triggered in an emergency, which reduced the pressure. As a result, large amounts of toxic gases were released into the environment. The pipes were rusty. The rust in the iron pipes made the reaction faster. All the contents of the tank were released within a period of about two hours. The water had entered the tank because of a sequence of events. The tank had been maintained badly. When cleaning work was done, water could enter the tank. The leakage of MIC gas from Union Carbide Corporation, Bhopal, gave impetus to the development of environmental law and principles of quantum of compensation (Union Carbide v. Union of India 1989).
2.6.1.2 Taj Mahal Acid Rain Attack
Yellowing of a historical monument, the Taj Mahal at Agra, was attacked by acid gases due to emissions of oxides of sulfur (SOx) from foundries, coal‐fired power plants, chemical and hazardous industries, and oil refinery. The sulfur dioxide emitted from these industries, combined with atmospheric oxygen in presence of moisture and sun, formed sulfuric acid called “acid rain” affecting the marble of the Taj Mahal (Mehta 1987).
2.6.1.3 River Ganges and River Yamuna
The industries which made the water of the holy River Ganges and a river of the south Chennai toxic were found to be tanneries (Mehta 1988; Vellore Citizen 1996). In the Ganges pollution case, tanneries discharged untreated effluents in the river, and near Kanpur the water of Ganges was found to be highly toxic. In the other case, the Pallar River of the state of Tamil Nadu became highly polluted because tanneries discharged chemicals used in treating leather, which resulted in nonavailability of potable water. Recently, the Supreme Court of India ordered the closure of industries or to shift them from the territory of the State of Delhi as their untreated effluent and sludge was polluting the holy River Yamuna (Hindustan Times 2000; Times of India 2000).
2.6.1.4 Flixborough
On Saturday, 1 June 1974, the Nypro (UK) site at Flixborough was severely damaged by a large explosion. Twenty‐eight workers were killed and a further 36 suffered injuries. It is recognized that the number of casualties would have been more if the incident had occurred on a weekday, as the main office block was not occupied. Offsite consequences resulted in 53 reported injuries. Property in the surrounding area was damaged to a varying degree.
The chemical plant was designed to produce 70 000 T/Y of caprolactam, a raw material for the production of nylon. The process used cyclohexane as a feed and oxidized it to cyclohexanol in the presence of air within a series of six catalytic reactors. Under process conditions, cyclohexane vaporizes immediately upon mixed depressurization, forming a cloud of flammable cyclohexane vapor mixed with air. Reactor 5 was found to have a small crack in the stainless steel structure in the series using a 20 in. pipe, even though the reactors are normally connected using 28 in. pipe. The temporary section of piping was not properly supported and it ruptured upon pressurization, releasing an estimated 30 T of cyclohexane in a large cloud. An unknown ignition source caused the cloud to explode, leveling the entire plant facility. The resulting fire in the plant burned for over 10 days. The accident could have been prevented by following proper safety design and operating procedures, including reducing the inventory of flammable liquids onsite (CCPS 1993; Crowl and Louver 1990).
2.6.1.5 Love Canal Tragedy
Quite simply, Love Canal is one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history. But that's not the most disturbing fact. What is worse is that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again – anywhere in the United States – unless we move expeditiously to prevent it.
It is a cruel irony that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community. That vision belonged to the man for whom the three‐block tract of land on the eastern edge of Niagara Falls, New York, was named – William T. Love. Love felt that by digging a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, power could be generated cheaply to fuel the industry and homes of his would‐be model city.
But despite considerable backing, Love's project was unable to endure the one‐two punch of fluctuations in the economy and Nikola Tesla's discovery of how to economically transmit electricity over great distances by means of an alternating current. By 1910, the dream was shattered. All that was left to commemorate Love's hope was a partial ditch where construction of the canal had begun. In the 1920s the seeds of a genuine nightmare were planted. The canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite.
Landfills can of course be an environmentally acceptable method of hazardous waste disposal, assuming they are properly sited, managed, and regulated. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an operation. In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar. It was a bad buy. In the late 1950s, about 100 homes and a school were built at the site. Perhaps it wasn't William T. Love's model city, but it was a solid, working‐class community. On the first day of August 1978, the lead paragraph of a front‐page story in the New York Times read: “Niagara Falls, N.Y. – Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.”
In an article prepared for the February 1978 EPA Journal, I wrote that, regarding chemical dumpsites in general, “even though some of these landfills have been closed down, they may stand like ticking time bombs.” Just months later, Love Canal exploded. The explosion was triggered by a record amount of rainfall. Shortly thereafter, the leaching began.
Corroding waste‐disposal drums could be seen breaking up through the grounds of backyards. Trees and gardens were turning black and dying. One entire swimming pool had been popped up from its foundation, afloat now on a small sea of chemicals. Puddles of noxious substances were pointed out to me by the residents. Some of these puddles were in their yards, some were in their basements, others yet were on the school grounds. Everywhere the air had a faint, choking smell. Children returned from play with burns on their hands and faces.
And then there were the birth defects. The New York State Health Department is continuing an investigation into a disturbingly high rate of miscarriages, along with five birth‐defect cases detected thus far in the area. The father of one the children with birth defects said, “I heard someone from the press saying that there were only five cases of birth defects here,” he told me. “When you go back to your people at EPA, please don't use the phrase ‘only five cases’. People must realize that this is a tiny community. Five birth defect cases here is terrifying.”
A large percentage of people in Love Canal are also being closely observed because of detected high white‐blood‐cell counts, a possible precursor of leukemia. When the citizens of Love Canal were