How Can Pollution Prevention (P2) Projects Within Your Facility Add Value to National and Local Security Efforts?

Individuals within organizations can enhance protection of the environment, staff and facilities, by employing pollution prevention. Parallels exist between P2 and security, and both disciplines stand to benefit by meshing some of the opportunities common to each.

Listed below are a few benefits that P2 offers to enhance security. Broaden the range of protection to areas, resources, organizations and communities over the protection provided by strictly-security measures; Minimize the severity, losses, risks, and potential liabilities of some types of potential attacks; Help take a bite out of the investment and operating costs of security improvements; Reduce long-term reliance on imported resources, especially oil, that increase vulnerability; and Help conserve resources (which can reduce the vulnerability associated with dependence on water, oil and other imported resources). In addition, pollution prevention projects, whether intended solely to improve security or not, also reduce regulatory burdens and improve insurability.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "123 chemical facilities located throughout the nation have accidental toxic release 'worst-case' scenarios where more than one million people?could be at risk of exposure." This figure does not account for other industries such as natural gas and oil distribution.

The following examples illustrate potential benefits of practicing pollution prevention as an added security measure:

• Numerous water treatment facilities have replaced chlorine with sodium hypochlorite, greatly reducing risks associated with chlorine handling and storage. Why is chlorine such a risk? Per the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard, a large leak of chlorine gas can travel two miles in only 10 minutes and remain acutely toxic to a distance of about 20 miles. (Source: Greenpeace)
  
• After the Bhopal chemical accident in 1984, Dupont eliminated all storage of methyl isocyanate (the chemical released in Bhopal) by switching to a closed loop process that only manufactures as much of the chemical as is used immediately in the process. (Source: Environmental Media Services). Studies also show that process integration on the Bhopal facility could have reduced methyl isocyanate inventories from 41 tons to less than 10 kg.
  
• In Cheshire, Ohio, American Electric Power selected a urea-based pollution control system rather than one involving large-scale storage of ammonia that would have endangered the surrounding community. (Source: Environmental Media Services)
  
• In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, ALCOA reduced its potential off-site impact by working with local emergency planners and ending on-site storage of hydrofluoric acid and nitric acid. (Source: Environmental Media Services).