EPA's risk management regulation: Communicating worst-case scenarios

✍ Scribed by John E. Auger

• Publisher: American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 274 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1066-8527
• DOI: 10.1002/prs.680150209

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

I would like to begin with a little exercise—I would like you to transport yourself back to your plant. Now, as you're back in your office, imagine for a moment that the plant emergency alarms start to go off. You catch a faint hint of ammonia as you walk to your office window. What you see can easily be described as your worst nightmare. You feel as though your heart has stopped and you freeze as if you were paralyzed. The 40 million pound (18 million kilogram) capacity double‐walled ammonia storage tank located about 200 yards (182 meters) from your office has a massive leak. Ammonia is vaporizing and being carried downwind toward the city in which you and your family live.

All right—enough of the nightmare. What went through your mind? How would you react? What would be the impact on you, your family, your community? It wouldn't be good, I can assure you.

Why have I tried to ruin your day by asking you to live a nightmare? For one simple reason—to show you what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going to make us all do under its proposed Risk Management Program (RMP) regulation. In fact, the EPA goes a step further. It will ask us not only to create our nightmares for ourselves, but to share them with the communities around our plants that could be impacted by our nightmare releases.