Thursday, April 23, 2009

Bayer Responds

Earlier this week, a congressional committee released a report suggesting that last year's explosion at my local Bayer chemical plant (which killed two) could have been much much worse. Now Bayer has responded.

Not surprisingly, they deny the doom and gloom scenario in the report was ever a possibility:

Asked Wednesday if it could have resulted in an accident worse than Bhopal, Bayer CropScience spokesman Bryan Iams replied, 'We would say no - that you cannot compare the two sites because we have multiple layers of protection and those layers of protection are designed to ensure and prevent any such incident.'

* * *

Regarding the August explosion, Iams said, 'The facts are as follows: At no time was any MIC involved in the event. The storage tank for MIC was never compromised. There were no releases of MIC. We have multiple layers of protection designed to ensure safety and those worked as intended.'
I'd feel a bit better about Bayer's assurances if they hadn't stonewalled local officials and targeted critics for daring to suggest otherwise. It's sort of like trusting Dick Cheney about . . . well, about anything, really.

1 comment:

MountainLaurel said...

WE really dodged a bullet. Actually, billions and billions of microscopic invisible bullets. It was just dumb luck that it wasn't worse, and I don't trust these yahoos to watch it now. I hold my breath every time I drive through Institute.