Louisville Paper Uses Risk Info for Watchdog Report

The Louisville Courier-Journal has used chemical risk information to do a special report on how a three-state metro area might be affected by what chemical companies do -- or don't do -- to make surrounding residents safer.

Congress in 1986 and 1990 required companies to disclose such information in hopes of averting another Bhopal-style disaster. The idea was that public scrutiny, instead of regulation, would pressure companies to make plants safer. But the chemical industry has successfully urged Congress and the EPA to restrict disclosure of such information, lest it provide a "road map for terrorists."

But  the absolute worst-case chemical release in the Louisville area could harm the health of some 810,000 people, the Courier-Journal reports -- as remote as the likelihood of such an event might be. Such hazards might as easily come from a leaky valve or operator error as from a terrorist attack.

The Courier-Journal series discusses not only the hazards, but also what companies have done to make their plants safer, the debate over access to risk information, and the bills currently before Congress that sponsors say address chemical plant security.

-- "Plants Detail Impact of Toxic Releases; Worst-Case Scenarios Unlikely, Industry Says" (and related sidebars) Louisville Courier-Journal, June 10, 2004, by James Bruggers and Gregory A. Hall, available in both web and Acrobat formats.

-- See related stories in TipSheets of Sept. 4, 2003 and Oct. 22, 2003.