Alliance for Chemical Safety 2001 Awards 

The 2001 Risk Reduction Achievement Award.  Two facilities are worthy of this award in 2001.

The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSD) and The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) have eliminated hundreds of tons of hazardous chemicals from their sites in an effort to reduce risks to their employees and neighbors.

These companies were awarded the Alliance for Chemical Safety’s 2001 Risk Reduction Achievement Award at the group’s monthly meeting at 3 p.m., Wednesday, December 19, 2001 at the Avon Woods Nature Preserve in Paddock Hills.

In October, MSD’s Mill Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Lower Price Hill eliminated the use of chlorine gas for disinfecting local wastewater.  The chlorine, which was formerly stored on site in up to four 90-ton railcars at a time, was replaced with sodium hypochlorite, the major component in bleach.

Mill Creek had used chlorine gas to treat wastewater since the facility was constructed in 1959.  The chemical was delivered to the site in railcars and used directly from the railcars.  Although on-site quantities were typically 55 tons, as much as 360 tons could be stored.  If accidentally released to the environment, chlorine can cause chemical burns, respiratory and eye irritation and respiratory failure.

P&G’s Ivorydale Plant in St. Bernard eliminated nearly 100 tons of sulfur trioxide, a chemical used to make liquid detergents.  For 26 years, sulfur trioxide was unloaded via tanker trucks and stored in a large storage tank on site.  If accidentally released to the environment, sulfur trioxide forms a fuming acid, which can cause chemical burns and asphyxiation.

In 1999, the company decided to manufacture sulfur trioxide on an “as needed” basis, as opposed to storing large quantities on site.  This decreased the on-site inventory from 200,000 pounds to a maximum of 40 pounds.  The new process generates no liquid sulfur trioxide, only sulfur trioxide gas in very low concentrations.  The generation of sulfur trioxide gas can be stopped within 2 seconds, and the remaining sulfur trioxide gas in the system can be eliminated in 4 minutes, via a pollution control device called a scrubber. 

The likelihood of a release is now nearly non-existent.  If a sulfur trioxide release were to occur, the worse-case situation would require evacuation of a limited number of P&G plant personnel; none of the surrounding community would need to be evacuated.  Similar systems are being installed at other P&G facilities.

The 2001 Communication Achievement Award goes to Charles J. Perry, Director of the Greater Cincinnati Hazardous Materials Unit. In 1999, Charlie discovered that NOAA weather radios could be used to notify the public of hazardous material releases, as well as severe weather. He pursued this idea on a voluntary basis over a two-year period, working in concert with the Hamilton County Emergency Management Agency. On August 15, 2001, the Ohio Emergency Management Agency and NOAA’s National Weather Service in Wilmington, Ohio signed an agreement making this new alert system possible. If a life-threatening hazardous material release occurs in Hamilton County, the weather radio will sound an alert and give a verbal message instructing citizens to take shelter inside their homes (called Shelter In Place) and turn on the television or radio for more information.