Chemical Spill in West VirginiaFriday morning, a large portion of the population in West Virginia, i

Chemical Spill in West VirginiaFriday morning, a large portion of the population in West Virginia, including the largest city Charleston, began smelling foul odors from the tap water in their homes. Within a few hours, 8 counties and several hundred thousand people were told not to drink their water. Store shelves were cleared out of bottled water, emergency water supplies were brought in, and a state of emergency was declared covering at least 8 counties.At present there are reports of a handful of people sickened, a lot of people exposed, and a decent number of people complaining of minor to moderate health issues.The culprit is a chemical spill. About 2 kilometers upstream of the main water treatment facility on the Elk River for the city of Charleston, West Virginia sit a series of storage tanks owned by Freedom Industries, including a tank which stores a chemical called 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol.The tank itself holds about 150,000 liters of the chemical, although press reports say the company believes only about 25,000 or fewer liters actually spilled.The chemical is used in the processing of coal. It is an organic molecule that does not dissolve in water and instead floats on it. The chemical is used in a process called “froth flotation” – air is bubbled through a mixture likely containing both water and this chemical at the same time as coal particles. Pure coal sticks to the bubbles and is separated from other impurities such as sulfur which don’t bond to the bubble surfaces in the same way. That type of purification improves the quality of the coal, typically preparing it for use in processing metals such as steel where purified coal is required.Once the chemical spilled into the stream, it was taken up by the water treatment facility, and there was so much that it rapidly clogged and overwhelmed the carbon filters used at the treatment facility.The chemical has been used for decades and actually replaced diesel fuel in this use, so although exposure can cause immediate problems, hopefully the long term effects on the people will be limited. However, cleanup is going to be a mess. Eventually it will probably be “dilution” that gets rid of the problem (there is some rain moving through the area on Saturday).This chemical does not dissolve well in water; instead it floats on top of it. That means water won’t just dissolve it away – it will need to be moved by flowing water and currents. The good news is that if it floats on water, it will contaminate some shorelines but whenever there’s a rainstorm, most of it will flush out. Furthermore, since it was dumped almost directly into the river, it won’t contaminate groundwater supplies which can be much harder to clean. The water treatment facility will need to replace its filters and the whole area will need to spend a few days flushing out its pipes, but hopefully the long term problem will wash downstream.The bad news is that the waters in the Elk River have a long voyage. This plume of contaminant will wash downstream through the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, eventually ending up in New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.The chemical is volatile so the odors have impacted the entire area. Depending on dilution and evaporation rates, many downstream communities may have to deal with the same odors. Hopefully in those cases it will be diluted enough to not contaminate additional water supplies, but obviously, relying on dilution isn’t a very pleasant option, particularly for those dealing with finding drinking water supplies right now.-JBBImage credit:Foo Conner/@iwasaround Press reports: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0110/West-Virginia-chemical-spill-What-s-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol-videohttp://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/10/261282459/chemical-leak-causes-water-emergency-in-west-virginiahttp://www.weather.com/news/chemical-spill-leaves-thousands-without-water-20140109http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140110-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol-chemical-spill-west-virginia-science/http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/11/3150431/photos-chemical-spill/http://www.chem.mtu.edu/chem_eng/faculty/kawatra/Flotation_Fundamentals.pdf -- source link

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