Last week’s headline “three chemical totes still missing from RAAP (Radford Army Ammunition Plant) after 2024 flood” is pretty scary. I didn’t know how concerned to be – as a “tote” left me wondering about its size, and the danger of the chemical it contained. I turned to the internet for a little help. Research suggested that a chemical tote typically contains about 300 gallons, so perhaps 900 gallons were in those three totes. The chemical was dibutyl phthalate. The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for dibutyl phthalate revealed it is a chemical that has some potential for harm, although not much is known about its human toxicity. Exposure may result in nausea, headache, vomiting, and dizziness, and it can affect the liver, kidneys, the nervous system and thyroid. Of course, as is the case for most chemicals, “the dose makes the poison,” meaning it takes more than a tiny exposure to actually do harm. The EPA estimates that people should not be exposed to more than 0.1 mg per kg of body weight per day over a lifetime – an extremely low amount – while also acknowledging that they have limited information from which to base this recommendation. For a 150-pound person, this would be about 7 mg, or 0.00024 ounces per day. Also known is that dibutyl phthalate is toxic to marine life. So – should we worry? I don’t know – will a slug of the chemical get through treatment and into our drinking water? Will a tote burst in a small pond and hurt the wildlife? Probably not – but it’s still scary to me to have hazardous materials out of control with locations unknown.
Of course, we need hazardous materials in our society to make the many things that we want. In this case it is to make weapons. Unfortunately, we still need weapons – and even in our politically divided country extremely few would suggest that we no longer need to produce arms to maintain a strong national defense. The current demand for arms is extremely high, as our weapons are heavily used in Ukraine and Israel. We have more political disagreement about this use of our weapons, although perhaps everyone agrees that it would have been wonderful to uphold the campaign promise to stop these wars before or immediately following inauguration day (January 20).
The RAAP’s commander has expressed a commitment to safety, and hopefully the uncontrolled release of hazardous chemicals from this facility will not be repeated. We need to consider that major weather-based disasters continue to increase. Perhaps most readers will have seen photos of the eight homes on North Carlina’s Outer Banks that were destroyed this September by offshore storms – not so far away from us. Extreme weather causes unexpected things to happen – no one predicted that so much water would flow down the New River as to flood the armory. We do know that federal assistance to extreme weather events has been reduced, increasing the burden on local preparation and response. This comes at a difficult time, as other federal reductions are putting more economic pressure on the local and state governments. Perhaps this year’s hurricane season has now passed, but winter’s storms may pose new challenges. While enjoying this glorious autumn season it remains important to prepare for the disastrous weather that almost surely will be affecting our region.
