“This we designated as our shelter-in place room… this is a full-face respirator.”
Summer Spencer is from Torrance, California, a city roughly 20 miles south of Los Angeles.
“I’ve been in Girl Scouts for a couple of years, so I have the tinier sashes with
other things on them.”
For her final Girl Scout project, Summer created a safety plan in the event of a specific kind
of chemical leak at the nearby oil refinery.
A major leak here could endanger everyone within several miles – and around the U.S.,
there are many refineries just like it.
The chemical’s called hydrofluoric acid, or HF.
It can burn skin, damage internal organs, or even kill with relatively little exposure.
You might know it as the acid used in the show Breaking Bad to dissolve bodies.
Walter White: “Hydrofluoric acid won’t eat through plastic.
It will, however, dissolve metal, rock, glass, ceramic…”
But what makes the acid truly dangerous in real life is its ability to form a low-hanging,
fast-moving deadly cloud of gas.
In the 1980s, a group of government scientists, led by Dr Ronald Koopman, conducted experiments
in the Nevada desert to see exactly what might happen in the event of a serious hydrofluoric
acid leak.
Ron: “What you're seeing is a cloud of hydrofluoric acid.”
For two minutes,the scientists released hydrofluoric acid out of a golf-ball sized hole.
Then they measured how far the resulting gas cloud traveled.
Even two miles away from the point source, HF levels were twice the concentration known
to cause death.
Ron: “it went further than we had expected and was more of a hazard than we had expected”
HF is often used in enormous quantities in the production of high quality gasoline
— it increases that octane designation you see when you fill up at a gas station.
There are chemicals that do the same thing as HF while posing less of a threat, but many
oil companies say these alternatives are too costly or unproven.
According to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News, over 16
million people in the U.S. are at risk in the event of a serious hydrofluoric acid release.
Fortunately, there haven’t been any worst-case scenarios, but there continue to be near misses.
“A crane dropped a piece of equipment, severing a line to a tank of very dangerous hydrofluoric
acid.”
“Safety precautions failed to stop a release of a little-known, but highly lethal chemical
–” “Tens of thousands of gallons of HF will
have to be neutralized…”
More recent close calls in Wisconsin and Philadelphia pushed
the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board to say
“next time, workers and those living nearby will not be so lucky.”
Which takes us back to Torrance, California.
The plant has already had a really close call.
Six years ago, there was an explosion at the refinery that launched an 80,000 lb chunk
of debris into the air.
CBS Anchor: “That piece landed a few feet from a form of hydrofluoric acid.”
Summer: “I didn’t think much of it, other than, maybe I’ll get to miss P.E.
But that day when I got home, my dad explained to me that...if the explosion had actually
punctured that tank, me and my classmates could have died that day
ALT: Summer was only a kid, but the explosion left a deep impression.
The 2015 explosion and near HF-tank miss left an impression on Summer.
Years later, she decided to take matters into her own hands,
and designed her Gold Star Girl Scout project around what community members could do in
the case of an HF leak.
“I don't think it really became real to me until I was a little bit older.
Very few people know about the issue and so very few people are concerned about it….
I started to question ... why isn't the school prepared for a release?
Why does nobody know about this?”
Summer felt the need to inform and protect fellow Torrance residents.
She consulted with experts and created a document containing all the necessary safety information
about HF Summer: “I tried to make it as simple as
possible.
[00:07:24 ]it is for the everyday person to read and for the everyday person to be able
to create their own shelter in place protocols.”
With the help of her father, Case, an environmental engineer, Summer also designed a series of
interactive maps so Torrance residents could find out their potential risk of exposure
to a chemical release.
Summer: “They're called death and injury maps… people could actually search their
address...see where it fell in their circles…
And it really broke it down for people so they could really understand very easily what
the results would be on the body and what they could -- what type of measurements they
needed to put in place to cost effectively protect themselves and the people around them.”
Summer is quick to point out that her safety guidelines don’t do anything to actually
lower the possibility of a catastrophic HF release.
That would require additional safety measures, which would have to come from a government
body or the refinery itself.
The city has tried to make changes in the past.
In 1989, Torrance filed a lawsuit against the company that is now Exxon Mobil, calling
the refinery a ‘public nuisance.’
It cited over a hundred incidents of negligence including a fireball and a toxic cloud – unrelated
to HF – that killed a motorist and two workers.
In response to mounting pressure, Mobil agreed to dilute their HF solution, switching to
what they called ‘Modified Hydrofluoric Acid’.
but experts say that's not necessarily good enough:
Ron: “the consequences of releasing modified H.F. are not really different than the consequences
of releasing HF...
I've never been convinced by the industry's response that it was sufficient.”
In Torrance, activists have continued to demand meaningful change, but have been frustrated
with the lack of action.
At a national level, there are examples of progress.
Refineries in Utah have recently rolled out new alkylation units that use safer catalysts
than HF -- meaning they won’t vaporize and aren’t nearly as explosive.
But the current Torrance refinery owner, PBF Energy, like others in the industry, continues
to argue that switching to an alternative chemical is too costly or not proven enough.
But if a serious HF leak were to happen, the results would be devastating... and there’s
only so much that residents can do.
“So you’ll notice that here, there’s no windows and one door, so this is an ideal
room to shelter-in-place in.”
Summer is proud of her work, but says the responsibility for a community's safety shouldn't
be up to individuals alone.
Summer: “I think that the refinery should be looking into other ways to refine gasoline
because it's really just such a huge risk put on the citizens.
They made a risk and accepted it on behalf of thousands, tens of thousands of people
and that’s something that's not right.”