Chemical Accident Data Won't Be Bottled Up

October 8, 2014

Information on chemical accidents is a key tool for environmental reporters. Since the deadly ammonium nitrate explosion at West, Texas, in April 2013, the idea that government neglect and public ignorance are the right approach to chemical safety and security has lost some credence. But the information is still hard to come by.

First, the good news. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) last year made public a database of some 8,000 chemical incidents since 2001. The bad news? Reporter Michael Morisy of the Boston Globe had to request it under the Freedom of Information Act.

On another front, there is news about the National Response Center's database of oil and chemical spills. Once publicly available online and searchable, the Coast Guard-run database was a key tool for chemical disaster reporters. But it was taken offline on February 21, 2014, with no public explanation. Only after dogged inquiry did the Coast Guard reveal that the outage was for rebuilding to comply with Defense Department security standards. Since databases are securely published in a matter of a few days all the time, that did not inspire confidence. It went back up in September. That may be good news. But the bad news is that the site is no longer searchable — merely offering static data files for download. Finding newsy information about current or recent spills is nearly impossible.

The CSB's reluctance to share its database publicly seems to stem from the fact that it is not comprehensive and could therefore be criticized, if explanations on the CSB website are to be believed. The CSB's current policy of not publishing its database is a retreat from February 2006, when it published an informative report summarizing data in its "chemical incident screening database."

The CSB's chemical incidents database is currently only available in raw (comma-separated-variable) format, making it difficult for reporters not experienced with data journalism to use.

The incident recalled the much earlier publication by the CSB in 1999 of the famous "600 K Report," which synthesized available data on chemical incidents over a decade, drawing a broad and meaningful picture of industrial chemical threats to people's safety. Industry protested, claiming the information was imperfect, and the CSB responded by un-publishing the report.