WASHINGTON -- Chemical manufacturing companies say it's extremely unlikely Year 2000 computer snafus would cause the release of deadly poisons, but electric power failures could lead to unpredictable results.
"Our greatest exposure is unquestionably in utility failures," said Jordan Corn, an engineer at Rohm and Haas, at a Washington summit organized by the US Chemical Safety Board. Rohm and Haas, a Philadelphia-based chemical manufacturer with US$4 billion in annual revenue, plans to shut down its plants in December 1999 to avoid Y2K glitches.
While he found potential Y2K problems in computers that control the storage of chemicals, Corn said, "In just making the chemicals, we found no occurrence of dates."
Some of the conference participants said plant safety systems are designed to handle one or two isolated failures, but not dozens at the same time, drawing comparisons to the lethal Bhopal disaster. The 1984 chemical leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant killed thousands of residents of Bhopal, India.
"In order for Bhopal to occur, 13 things went wrong, not one," said Angela Summers, a consultant at Triconex Corporation.
Some companies said they were reassuring employees that if they were required to stay on the job through 1 January 2000, their families would be safe from civil disorders.
"There is a section in the contingency planning process that addresses the individual worker's concerns for his home life [and ensures] his family's safety and security," said Adrian Sepeda, director of the risk management group at OxyChem, the largest US producer of chlorine. "It's important that the worker feel comfortable enough to do his or her job at the facility."
Supply shortages are another collective worry for the chemical industry.
"Almost everyone' s contingency plans . . . have backup power generators as a key component. But I'm told that there's a two-year backup [of orders for] industrial generators," said Norman Dean, the director of the Center for Y2K and Society. China Diesel, the largest US distributor of diesel generators, said in November that shipments of its most popular consumer model are delayed six months.
