"DuPont Rejected Safety Options for Belle Plant, Records Show"

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It was May 1988, and DuPont Co. engineers and managers were debating how to best build a facility where their company's Belle plant could turn the poison gas phosgene into valuable chemicals for products to protect crops.

One option was to buy phosgene in one-ton cylinders from an outside vendor. Cylinders would be hauled to Belle, and phosgene transferred by hose to the plant's reactor.

Another possibility was building a unit to make phosgene at Belle. That proposal called for totally enclosing areas where phosgene was made and used, so workers and plant neighbors wouldn't be exposed to potential leaks.

DuPont experts estimated the enclosed plant would cost an additional $2 million. But it would also be safer, saving an estimated 14 lives over 10,000 years, according to a theoretical project put together by DuPont.

DuPont -- a company that prides itself on its much-touted commitment to protecting the safety of workers, the environment and the communities where it operates -- rejected the safer option, citing concerns that it would set an unwanted standard for other decisions about handling dangerous chemicals."

Ken Ward Jr. reports for the Charleston Gazette July 9, 2011.