Chemical Spill Threat Seen in California : Environment: Study says state leads nation in accidents that released hazardous materials. Officials say figures are misleading.

California leads the nation in industrial accidents that released hazardous chemicals, according to a study provided Thursday by two environmental advocacy groups that suggested many of the nation’s chemical plants are catastrophes waiting to happen.

Nearly 11 chemical spills, leaks or fires occur each day in the state, which had 4,820 accidents in a wide range of industries between 1988 and 1992, said the report by the National Environmental Law Center and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

More than 1,200 of the 34,500 accidents reported nationwide to the federal Environmental Protection Agency in those five years occurred in Los Angeles County, the report said. Statewide, 409 accidents involved deaths, injuries or evacuations during the five years, the data showed.

State officials said California’s top ranking in the study is misleading. “This state has 12% of the nation’s population. I’d be surprised if we weren’t ranked No. 1,” said Dan Pellissier, a spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency. “We also have stronger reporting requirements than any other state.”

In releasing the report, Hillel Gray, policy director for the Environmental Law Center and a co-author of the report, said the nation’s environment “is subjected to a daily barrage of accidents involving toxic chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive disorders and ecological damage. It’s not enough to contain the spills and put out the fires. We need to prevent accidents in the first place.”

Environmentalists and worker-safety advocates blamed executives of the oil and chemical industries for the lion’s share of the accidents, saying that they have been too slow in devising ways to shield employees and communities from the risks of hazardous materials.

Industrial programs concentrate almost exclusively on reactive, “Band-Aid” solutions rather than proactive prevention, Gray said.

“The underlying problem is that the production systems are, intrinsically, a hazard,” he said.

Pellissier said prevention of accidental spills is still a high priority for the California EPA but that “there’s always room for improvement.”

Industry officials played down the significance of the report’s figures.

“Do they represent a broad-scale disregard for safety? I don’t think so,” said Rod Spackman, a spokesman for the Chevron Inc. refinery in El Segundo. The plant, which once used hazardous coolants, has switched to safer chemicals in the last three years, Spackman said.

The report said accidents have released more than 680 million pounds of toxic chemicals, including 84 million pounds of chlorine, a highly acidic chemical used in water-treatment plants and paper factories, and 39 million pounds of sulfuric acid.

Companies should incorporate more safety procedures into the handling of hazardous materials and use alternative chemicals to prevent accidents, the two groups said.

Gray said he hopes that the study will counteract a fierce lobbying effort by chemical companies seeking to delay more stringent EPA safety rules.

To compile data for the study, researchers combed the EPA’s Emergency Response Notification database, which covers industrial and transportation-related accidents. The report may greatly understate the scope of the problem of chemical accidents, its authors said, because the database only includes spills and disasters reported to the federal government.

Chemical companies or industrial workers sometimes hide accidents for fear of serious penalties, according to environmentalists and workers.

“People get injured and don’t even know it,” said Henry Jones, a safety representative for British Petroleum Co. “They’ll have an acute reaction, but they’ve been on the job so long they accept it as part of the job.” Jones, who has served as a technician at his company’s plant outside Philadelphia, said failures of high-tech safety mechanisms are not unusual.