More than one-third of the nation’s 148 oil refineries use a toxic chemical that could put the lives of 16 million Americans at risk in the event of a gas spill or a terrorist attack, despite the ready availability of safer alternatives.
According to a report from the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News, the chemical, known as hydrofluoric acid, or HF, causes lung congestion, inflammation and other maladies, which can be deadly even up to two miles from the site of the gas escape.
HF is used to make high-octane gas, but a modified form of the acid, which can’t travel as far if released, does the job just as well. Nonetheless, 50 refineries in the U.S. continue operating with HF, and not a single one has made the switch to solid acid catalyst, which is much safer than even the modified HF.
The reason that refinery owners haven’t embraced the safer alternatives to HF is the money involved; at a cost of up to $150 million per facility, it is a pricey undertaking.
However, as the report shows, refinery mishaps can make that seem like a bargain. BP, for instance, has paid in excess of $2 billion in civil settlements and federal fines as a result of an accident at its Texas City refinery in 2005 that killed 15 people.
“These are low-probability, high-consequence events, which is why any individual company is not, by itself, motivated to make potentially expensive changes to a safer technology,” Paul Orum, a chemical expert who works with public advocacy groups, told the Center.
More worrying still is the shoddy track record at many of the facilities using HF. Federal authorities have cited 32 of the 50 for serious, willful or repeat violations of fire-prevention regulations. BPs Texas City refinery alone has been dinged more than 600 times.
HF is all the more dangerous because of how it behaves following a spill. Tests carried out in the Nevada desert during the 1980s demonstrated that rather than gathering in liquid form and essentially staying put, HF collects in a white cloud, and drifts along with the wind, endangering everyone in its path.
“Everything that’s released in an accident under conditions similar to those in a refinery goes downwind as an aerosol and a vapor,” said physicist Ronald Koopman, who participated in the Nevada tests.
