Ammonium nitrate is a common chemical in farm fertilizers -- and terrorist bombs. When stored wrong it can cause huge blasts -- as seen in Beirut, Lebanon, and seven years ago in West, Texas. Experts say U.S. regulation of it is a flimsy, jumbled mess.
for improvised explosive devices and car bombs that have killed scores of soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I can tell you I was there," he says."I walked through the blast area. I searched some houses earlier tonight, massive, just like Iraq, just like the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City."its ammonium nitrate stockpile to the federal Department of Homeland Security. According to federal officials, it did not. A state agency in Texas did know about the AN. But it failed to share that information with DHS.
AN is relatively stable under the right conditions. But when contaminated by dirt, certain kinds of wood, oil or myriad other things, Hind says, AN can become powerful explosives that today"go largely unseen and under-regulated because of the magic of the chemical and agriculture lobby, the fertilizer people.""They say it's stable," Hind says."But when you look at what all the rules are...
"We highlighted the number of places that AN is stored in facilities that have not been reviewed," says Vanessa Allen Sutherland, who ran the CSB during the final stages of the investigation."We show that the landscape throughout the United States is replete with AN risks"After the explosion in West, OSHA recognized that America's ammonium nitrate rules were painfully out of date, given the potential for accidents or terrorist attacks.
David Michaels led OSHA as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health during the Obama Administration. He said on that rule and many others, the chemical, fertilizer and agriculture lobbies"opposed any attempt to strengthen regulations."
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