US chemicals to face tougher security issues

21 July 2008 22:35  [Source: ICIS news]

BETHESDA, Maryland (ICIS news)--The US chemicals sector will face a more severe and regulated security environment in the next few years, especially with broad changes expected in the US Congress next year, an industry leader warned on Monday.

 

Joe Acker, president of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA), told the opening session of the sixth annual chemical security summit that “the past 20 years of chemical security will look like a walk in the park compared with the next ten years”.

 

Referring to the US national elections in November that will bring a new administration to the White House and an expected broadening of Democratic Party control in Congress, Acker said that “we will be governed by a new set of individuals, personalities and - yes - new philosophies”.

 

“How the new administration will govern chemical security and under what congressional authority remains uncertain,” Acker said.

 

However, he indicated that the most serious regulatory threat facing the industry is the possible imposition of a federal mandate for inherently safer technology (IST) as a security measure.

 

Legislation pending in Congress would give federal regulators authority to force specific chemical production, storage or use sites to employ alternative chemicals that are less toxic in manufacturing processes and end products. 

 

That legislation is not expected to pass in this Congress, or if passed might face a presidential veto. But if a Democrat is in the White House and Democrats have much larger majorities in both the House and Senate, many in industry fear that an inherently safer technology mandate could be enacted in 2009.

 

“Some would not be satisfied until the products we manufacture today are ‘inherently safer’ or until production moves fully offshore,” Acker told some 350 chemical industry security officials.

 

“We know that these are political arguments,” he said.  “They are not based on practicality or even sound risk assessment.”

 

“In fact, their proponents are small ‘think tanks’ funded by environmental progressives promoting ideas more appropriately addressed by non-security-related agencies,” he added.

 

Acker and other chemical industry leaders argue that inherently safer technology should be regulated, if at all, as an environmental matter but that it should not be a factor in federal regulation of chemical site security.

 

“If security at our plants relied on the design or redesign of the products in them, the world’s premier security and intelligence agencies would be demanding that this be done, but they are not,” Acker said.

 

He warned that product or process substitutions based on a government mandate for security purposes will drive still more US manufacturing offshore and “leave key components of our nation’s manufacturing sector subject to the whims of forces outside our national control”.

 

Sponsored by SOCMA and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the security summit continues through Wednesday.

 

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By: Joe Kamalick
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