A near-catastrophe in Garden Grove, California, where a 7,000-gallon tank of methyl methacrylate threatened residents for days, and a fatal explosion at a paper mill in Washington have thrust industrial chemical safety into the spotlight. But experts warn against overinterpreting these incidents: major chemical disasters remain extraordinarily uncommon in the United States.
The Chemical Safety Board investigated only five significant chemical spills or explosions across 2024 and 2025, a minuscule number considering the scale of industrial chemical handling in America. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration oversees roughly 12,000 industrial sites that manage hazardous chemicals under its risk management plan.
Stephen Kmiotek, a chemical engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, frames the actual danger as vanishingly low. "Almost any place you look, any industrial site that you can think of, there are tanks with any number of hazardous chemicals in them," Kmiotek said. "The risk of a tank failure is really very, very low. They're made to very exacting standards. The risk to the general populace is really very low."
Hazardous chemicals permeate modern life in ways most people never notice. Oil refineries process combustible petroleum products. Refrigerated warehouses across the country rely on ammonia, a corrosive and flammable refrigerant. Paper mills use hydrogen sulfide, a compound whose accidental releases have killed six workers in three separate incidents over the last three years.
The relative safety record stems partly from hard lessons learned decades earlier. The 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, when a Union Carbide plant leaked 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas and killed 3,800 people immediately while exposing at least 100,000 others, reshaped global industrial standards. That catastrophe triggered sweeping reforms in the United States, including an overhaul of Osha regulations and passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which eventually established the storage tank requirements now in place.
When disasters do occur, the consequences can be severe. Tuesday's explosion at a paper mill in Longview, Washington, left at least nine people dead with two workers still missing. The blast occurred when a tank holding white liquor, a caustic alkaline solution, ruptured and spilled into a nearby drainage ditch.
Kmiotek compares chemical risk to aviation safety. Both industries maintain exceptional safety records, but when failures happen, they tend to be catastrophic. "It's kind of like with airplanes," he said. "Their safety records are very, very good. Unfortunately, when something bad happens, it's often really, really bad."
The fact that hazardous industries often operate within densely populated cities means potential impacts remain serious, even if likelihood remains slim. Residents can learn which chemicals are stored near them by checking with their local fire department, Kmiotek noted, adding that unfamiliarity breeds fear. "With chemicals, we don't understand them," he said. "And so they're scary."
Author James Rodriguez: "Two deaths in a week grab headlines, but the numbers show American chemical regulation actually works. That doesn't mean complacency is justified, but it does mean we're comparing odds, not inevitability."
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