Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

foota

Is it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?

fc417fc802

I'd be curious how it came to pass that 40k people were living within the blast radius of a plant processing toxic chemicals. Isn't this sort of thing the primary justification for the existence of zoning laws?

yungbeto

Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...

MarkusQ

More fire / explosion risk than the "toxic cloud engulfs city" rhetoric people have been spreading. https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=AC127140100&...

pfdietz

The LD50 of methyl methacrylate in rates is 7-10 g/kg. In comparison, the LD50 of table salt in rats is 3 g/kg. So it's not a highly toxic chemical.

mmooss

They say it will fail for sure, either leak or explode. I wonder why they can't drain the tank into another facility. Maybe they just lack an appropriate container.

mkw5053

Where are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.

toponijo

They talk about the possibility of a spill going into the environment, but if they know it might spill, can't they make it spill and capture it?

hoppyhoppy2

I love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California. There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.

jakzurr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak

keepamovin

Why can’t they drill it and pipe it off into some drainage pipe for cooling or collecting in trucks? Divide and conquer

deet

If you would like to learn more about these types of incidents, the US Chemical Safety Review Board has a fantastic series of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB They explore the root causes of historical accidents. Importantly, they do it from a broad perspective: not just the chemistry, but the human factors, the decision making, and the process failures that led to the accident and how to prevent such things in the future.

DannyBee

MMA (this stuff) hardens when exposed to sunlight. The tank and valves are outdoors. I would not be surprised to learn that is why the pipes/valves/etc are "gummed up" (to use the term from the article) - people who touch the valves/etc probably have mma on their hands/gloves, and then because those are outdoors, it eventually hardens. Or something similar.

3240957042358

> Toxic chemical leak vs. > They were also creating dikes and dams to contain any chemicals if the tank spilled So, no leak.