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Sunday, January 12, 2014

How Dangerous Is the Coal-Washing Chemical Spilled in West Virginia? by David Biello from Scientific American


Do not drink the water but it's also not time to panic
By David Biello

elk-river

ELK RIVER: A chemical spill has contaminated the Elk River in West Virgina. Image: DM / Flickr

Water is a universal solvent, capable of dissolving most elements on Earth. But it fails when it comes to completely cleaning coal. That's where 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, MCHM for short, comes in.
MCHM is used in washing coal, helping separate the burnable fossil fuel from the unburnable rock and dirt and other impurities. In the taxonomy of chemistry, it’s an alcohol, which means a molecule with a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom bound to one of its carbon atoms.  And despite the methanol in its name, it not the same compound as the "wood alcohol" most famously found in moonshine and known to cause headaches, blindness and even death.
Many West Virginians received a disastrous introduction to MCMH this week, thanks to a spill of thousands of liters of the industrial chemical into the Elk River, which serves as the water supply for the counties in the middle of the state. Some 300,000 people in the region have been advised not to drink the water, for now.
Officials know little about the chemical at this point. Because it is not used in consumer products but rather in industrial settings, its toxicity and other effects on humans are largely unknown. "It's a little bit of an obscure compound," says chemist Rolf Halden of the Center for Environmental Security at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.
That said, some of MCMH’s basic properties are known, both helpful and harmful to humans.
What is it and what is it used for?

Chemists classify MCMH as an organic solvent. That means it dissolves other compounds and is made from chains of carbon bonded together. In this case it is used to separate coal from non-coal components in mined material. It is one of a long list of liquid chemicals used to wash coal, and such chemical or physical washes are commonly applied to most mined materials, whether minerals or ores. "It doesn't have a lot of obvious other uses," Halden says. "It's not a chemical you find in consumer compounds. That means it’s a chemical that has not seen a lot of safety reviews." That situation is likely to change as a result of this incident.
How dangerous is it?
MCMH should not be swallowed and may readily cause skin and eye irritation but it is not known to pose major risks to human health and safety. That said, the colorless liquid chemical has not been studied extensively—its effects on cancer or inducing mutations in DNA is unknown. It freezes at 0 degree Celsius and it evaporates slowly, but not as easily as, say, gasoline. It smells like alcohol, according to safety reviews, but some of those exposed in West Virginia described it as smelling more like licorice. Its solubility in water is "appreciable," according to one of its Material Safety Data Sheet, information required by regulation for any chemical in industrial use.
MCMH can burn but only when concentrated and at relatively high temperatures above 112 degrees Celsius. It is not explosive. It is not corrosive (although it could cause problems for things like rubber seals in the water system). MCMH also adheres to some of the compounds in soil. It is poisonous but only at relatively large doses; in rats it killed half of the animals tested at concentrations above 825 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Given that MCMH has spilled into a river this time, it might be more relevant that it killed half of fathead minnows exposed at concentrations of roughly 57 milligrams per liter of water.


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  1. 1. David Cummings 05:45 PM 1/10/14
    State investigators discovered the material was leaking from the bottom of a storage tank, and had overwhelmed a concrete dike meant to serve as "secondary containment" around the tank, Dorsey said.

    "That was going over the hill into the river," Dorsey said. "Apparently, it had been leaking for some time. We just don't know how long."

    --from: http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401090044?page=2&build=cache

    Sounds like a failure of management to me.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  2. 2. rkipling 06:34 PM 1/10/14
    It is an unforgivable management failure unless someone sabotaged the tank, the containment dike and alarms. Regular rounds should have discovered this problem even if alarms were sabotaged. Everyone in my company down to entry level employees understands the importance of proper hazardous material storage, containment, monitoring and use. They are tested on knowledge of the MSDS.

    The containment volume should be sized to hold more than the entire contents of the tank. More than one alarm should have alerted employees to the problem. I could write pages upon pages of why this should never have happened. The CEO of this company should resign in shame along with everyone else in the chain of responsibility. We would fire anyone who allowed the conditions for this potential spill to exist under their responsibility. If we were buying an existing facility, the deal would not close and come under our management until an exhaustive safety review had been completed and appropriate fixes made.

    The more I think about this the angrier I get. They have defamed the entire chemical industry and industry in general. Just unforgivable. Someone should see jail time.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  3. 3. David Cummings in reply to rkipling 07:42 PM 1/10/14
    well said
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  4. 4. jerryd 09:30 PM 1/10/14

    And the water managers needed to walk the river they get drinking water from to see what dangers to the water supply upstream there is.

    Should those tanks been allowed 1/4 mile upriver the water intake?

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  5. 5. acsci 09:42 PM 1/10/14
    Of course not. But this kind of thing happens in West Virginia all the time. Government officials, managers and even workers routinely ignore safety violations because pointing them out would be financial suicide, and often professional or political suicide as well.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  6. 6. rkipling in reply to jerryd 10:06 PM 1/10/14
    With proper installation and management there would never have been a problem. These storage tanks can be failsafe from a spill. If this is typical of WV operations then the WV State environmental quality dept. and the EPA have work to do.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  7. 7. LeeChen 10:32 PM 1/10/14
    For all the concern expressed over a alcohol-derivative, the clearly hypocritical element here is the absolute lack of widespread protest and anguish over the forced fluoridation of the water supply. For what? Teeth?! Does anyone truly believe that?

    Fluoride in the water supply is illegal in the European Union. The AMA themselves said that they could -never- endorse drugs in the water supply because *dosage*could*not*be*controlled* But the ADA knows better? For teeth?!

    Wake up, people.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  8. 8. delfordc in reply to jerryd 11:44 PM 1/10/14
    The tanks were there decades before the water treatment plant was built.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  9. 9. David Cummings in reply to delfordc 08:22 AM 1/11/14
    Ok, so the tanks were there before the water treatment plant was built. That still doesn't let numerous authorities -- in all relevant sectors -- off the hook. Inspections? Mandatory maintenance schedules? Disaster planning?

    Do any of those concepts mean anything in West Virginia?
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  10. 10. Jesse2 08:42 AM 1/11/14
    What you have is what happens in a small state when someone with some political clout can skirt the regulations with no consequences. It is cheaper to give political contributions than pay for the safety features.

    A good expose would be a look at the background of this company, its owners and there political contributions in WV.
    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
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