Toxics Release Inventory, pesticides

Endrin is no longer manufactured in the United States. Velsicol Chemical Company, Memphis, Tennessee, was the producer of endrin until the final voluntary cancellation of registration with the Office of Pesticide Programs in 1991 (Bishop 1984, 1985, 1986 EPA 1983e USDA 1995). It is estimated that 2.3-4.5 million kg (5.1-9.9 million pounds) of endrin were sold in the United States in 1962, while less than 450,000 kg (990,000 pounds) were produced in 1971 (IARC 1974). More recent estimates of domestic production of endrin could not be found (HSDB 1995). As with many toxic chemicals, information on production or use of pesticides is often proprietary, and quantitative estimates of production of endrin are virtually impossible to obtain (Bason and Colbom 1992). Chemical manufacturers in the United States however, can legally produce pesticides for export that are currently banned or not registered for use in the United States (FASE 1996). No information on the production of endrin was available from the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) because endrin is not one of the chemicals that facilities are required to report (EPA 1995a). 

The EPA s latest Toxics Release Inventory report indicated that pesticides comprised 1%, PCBs 12%, mercury and mercury cottqroimds 36% and polynucleararomatic hydrocarbons 44% of die bioaccumulative releases to the environment in 2000. A total of 12.1 X 10 pounds of bioaccumulative releases were reported out of a total 7.10 X lO pounds of all toxic releases in the United States. The total is down from 7.7 X 10 pounds in 1999. These releases have decreased 48%, or 1.6 X 10 pounds, for chemicals since 1988. ... 

The Flixborough nylon plant accident in the UK (1974) was caused by an open-air explosion of a flammable gas released into the air. It killed the 28 plant employees present and caused extensive property damage in the surrounding area. The failure to perform a full technical assessment of a modification was given as the main cause of the event. The Seveso pesticide plant accident in Italy (1976) is well known for the dangerous release of dioxin due to poor plant safety features and to the underestimation of the possibility of a runaway reaction. The Bhopal incident in India (1984), at another pesticide plant, killed an estimated 4000 (although the total number is still unknown). This disaster was attributed to too large an inventory of toxic substances and to very poor staff attention to the operability of safety features. 

Phosgene is a very toxic chemical, and storage of it in large quantities poses a serious safety problem. A continuous tubular reactor is developed to make this chemical for immediate consumption. So an inventory of only 70 kg of gaseous phosgene has to be maintained when compared to an inventory of 25,000 kg of the liquid in the storage in the old batch process. Methyl isocyanate (MIC), the infamous chemical that was released at Bhopal, can be generated and immediately converted to the final pesticide in a tubular reactor that will contain a total inventory of less than 10 kg of MIC. 

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