Bayer Safety Lapses 'Could Have Eclipsed Bhopal' (WV)

[MountainLaurel]

If that canister had rocketed one direction instead of another . . .

Significant safety lapses by management of Bayer CropScience's Institute plant caused a fatal August 2008 explosion that could have turned into a disaster worse than Bhopal, according to evidence presented Tuesday to a congressional committee.

Bayer plant officials continued to use long-deficient equipment, leading employees to bypass safety gear in the plant's Methomyl-Larvin unit where the explosion occurred, U.S. Chemical Safety Board officials told a House subcommittee.

The runaway explosion sent a 5,000-pound chemical vessel rocketing into the air and across the plant, where it could have easily smashed into a nearby methyl isocyanate tank, "the consequences of which could have eclipsed the 1984 disaster in India," congressional committee staffers concluded in their report.

"Had I known then what I know right now, I would have ordered an evacuation," Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said after testifying and listening to other witnesses at the hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in Washington, D.C.

And one of my favorites:

"Our goal with People Concerned About MIC should be to marginalize them," Green wrote. "Take a similar approach to The Charleston Gazette."

Not to mention

William Buckner, Bayer CropScience's CEO, conceded in his prepared testimony that his company had hoped that a set of obscure Coast Guard secrecy rules for plants along waterways would allow it to avoid the explosion probe turning into a debate on the Institute plant's huge MIC stockpile.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200904210805?page=2&build=cache