Plant's chemical release probed

A Montgomery County manufacturer that has been criticized for legal emissions of a suspected carcinogen had an accidental release last week of what may have been many times the permitted limit.

About 3:50 p.m. Tuesday, an alarm at Superior Tube in Collegeville indicated an equipment malfunction that resulted in the release of trichloroethylene, or TCE, a degreaser used in the production of extremely narrow metal tubing.

The company's permit requires it to notify the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection within two hours of an abnormal release. Both the DEP and a letter from the company to the agency say, however, that the first notice was relayed to the state at 11 a.m. Wednesday - about 19 hours after the incident.

TCE is listed as a hazardous air pollutant in the Clean Air Act, but neither the state nor the federal government caps how much TCE can be in the air.

When DEP inspectors arrived at Superior on Thursday, they confirmed that the problem had been fixed. On Friday, the state announced that "more than 100 pounds" of TCE had been released over a period of about 21/2 hours.

In letters to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Gov. Rendell, however, State Sen. John C. Rafferty Jr. (R., Montgomery) wrote that initial field estimates indicated a leak of 500 to 1,200 pounds.

DEP spokeswoman Lynda Rebarchak said she could not confirm Rafferty's figures. "The only thing we know positively was that it was more than 100 pounds," she said yesterday. "We'd like to wait for an accurate, confirmed number," which she said the company would determine through an examination of its records and inventory.

Superior Tube's state permit allows a release of 15 pounds an hour from the unit that malfunctioned. The 100-pound figure would mean a release nearly three times the allowable maximum. The greater amount would be an average release of up to 480 pounds an hour - 32 times the permitted limit from that piece of equipment.

Company president and CEO Tony Jost declined to comment on the particulars last night.

"Certainly, we're conducting a comprehensive investigation of all aspects of the incident," Jost said. "That effort is ongoing, and we continue to collaborate and cooperate with the DEP. We will provide additional information as it becomes available."

Rebarchak said Superior could be fined both for the release and for the delayed notification. The DEP has air monitors nearby that take readings at set times, and Rebarchak said officials would check to see whether they detected heightened TCE levels.

Earlier this year, air monitors near Superior Tube and a similar facility, Accellent in nearby Trappe, detected the highest levels of TCE in the state.

Both companies were operating within their permits, according to the DEP. The companies later agreed to voluntary TCE emissions reductions, although Rafferty and the environmental group Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future have called for the state to institute enforceable limits.

Mandatory new federal limits on TCE emissions were announced this year for a wide range of uses but exempted "narrow tube" industries such as Superior and Accellent. The state and the environmental group have sued in federal court to have the exemption reconsidered.

In an interview yesterday, Rafferty said he was "totally upset with this company's manufacturing habits" and "the fact that the people who live around that tube company are at risk."

Within the last five years, Superior has had three other unpermitted TCE releases, according to the DEP.

The same degreaser that malfunctioned last week did so in 2003, Rebarchak said, although it she did not know how much TCE was released that time.

Of the two other occasions, she said, 21 pounds of TCE was released when different equipment failed, and 20 gallons of liquid TCE was spilled, resulting in the gradual release of up to 244 pounds of TCE gas as it evaporated.

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