LONGVIEW, Washington (From news reports) -- It sounded like a bomb, a succession of two shocking blasts, when in the winter of 1993, a white liquor clarifier tank exploded at an Oregon paper mill. Two pipe fitters lay dead. Neighbors' homes rattled as debris seemed to fall from the sky.

Nearly two decades later, on a spring morning in 2012, four workers were injured by the same chemical compound on the opposite side of the country. A valve ruptured at a South Carolina paper mill, white liquor drenching workers' bodies. They were hospitalized with burns that left skin marred and leathered, corroding the muscle, tendon and bone beneath.

And when an estimated 900,000 gallons of white liquor spilled from a ruptured tank at the Nippon Dynawave paper mill in Longview on May 26, it was the inescapable mass of those same alkaline chemicals that contributed to the death of 11 workers.

Investigators have yet to determine the root cause of the deadliest industrial accident in recent Washington history. But the grave hazards of the chemicals at the center of the disaster have long been known, yet white liquor remains minimally regulated.

Few laws directly govern the papermaking substance. White liquor, usually clear or slightly cloudy, is denser than water and more caustic than bleach. There is little mention of white liquor in state or federal environmental regulations or worker safety laws. Instead, it is largely up to the companies, not the government, to ensure its safe handling.

This is in part because the chemical compound, and the tank it was stored in, fall through gaps of more stringent regulation. Had the Longview tank been considered a pressurized or a hazardous waste vessel, it would have triggered more scrutiny. Had the chemicals been categorized as flammable or radioactive, their safe handling would have required more caution.

The pulp and paper industry has also downplayed the risk of the chemicals to regulators for years and repeatedly sought, unsuccessfully, to eliminate the few reporting requirements that do exist.

Since the May 26 accident, new scrutiny of Nippon Dynawave shows Washington state and federal authorities could have required the mill to fix known problems that instead languished, and done more to ensure dangerous chemicals did not put workers at risk.

"It is so clear that worker health and safety is a very low priority," Beth Rosenberg, a public health professor at Tufts and former member of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, said of the American workplace.

Oversight agencies, she said, "they just don't have enough man power, the fines aren't high enough for deterrent and they don't have enough people to enforce existing regulations."

'Adequately managed'

For over a century, white liquor has been used to make paper. This heavily caustic liquid is a mixture of lye, sodium sulfide and water. During the production process, the chemical is used to decompose the dense molecules of wood chips into a pulp mash, which is then churned into paper products.

Lye, or sodium hydroxide, can be found in small quantities under most bathroom or kitchen sinks, in products like drain cleaner. It's also used in an alternative form of cremation, known as liquid or water cremation.

Companies that handle larger quantities of such chemicals, like Nippon Dynawave, are required to meet federal reporting requirements and inform workers of the risks. And the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has standards for chemical safety handling, like requiring safety showers near hazards. But showers alone would do little to help workers exposed to large amounts of white liquor.

"If you were engulfed in this material, it is probably too late. You are overcome," said Stephen J. Kmiotek, a chemical engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The amount of white liquor held in the ruptured tank at Nippon Dynawave was enough to overflow an Olympic-size swimming pool.

The pulp and paper industry, in Washington and nationally, has a long history of seeking to exempt the chemicals from regulatory scrutiny.

In 1993, the state Department of Ecology allowed Weyerhaeuser, which owned the Longview mill before Nippon Dynawave, to modify its definition of pulping chemicals. This allowed the company to exempt certain toxic contaminants from the state's solid waste rules.

In 2015, as the EPA was preparing to strengthen the Chemical Data Reporting requirements, the American Forest and Paper Association, a trade group lobbying on behalf of the industry, told the federal government it should not be required to provide information about white liquor and similar chemicals.

The chemicals' risks "are well understood and adequately managed," the group wrote to the EPA in a formal petition to exclude them from the regulation.

The group argued that papermaking was an old and well-understood industry; forcing companies to report information about pulping chemicals was an "unjustifiable burden" that carried a steep financial cost. The industry, it said, was already heavily regulated by state and federal entities.

The Toxic Substances Control Act requires companies to report their large chemical inventories every four years. The paper industry said it cost more than $560,000 to compile its 2012 report for the EPA, just for white liquor.

The EPA denied the group's petition, saying the requirements were intended to ensure regulators and the public know the risks of highly toxic chemicals and how many workers are exposed to them.

But again in 2019, the paper trade group petitioned the EPA to exempt white liquor from federal reporting requirements.

"We think the agency's concern about potential exposures ... should be correspondingly low," the group wrote.

The proposal was again rejected, and in 2024, Nippon Dynawave reported that between 100 and 500 workers in Longview could be exposed to white liquor hazards.

Eve Gartner, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit, said requiring companies to report their chemical inventory was meant to create significant chemical protections for workers and the public, from air to waterways and consumer products.

The Toxic Substances Control Act "is supposed to be this really comprehensive law all about protecting human health and the environment," she said. "But it has really never fulfilled its promise."

Since the act was amended by Congress in 2016, she said, officials in the Trump administrations have "not been interested in using the law to protect human health but to protect the chemical industry," she said.

Planning for chlorine risk

White liquor is absent from federal lists of highly hazardous chemicals -- chemicals considered so dangerous the government requires companies to follow more stringent worker safety rules or environmental release requirements when handling them.

Nippon Dynawave, like all companies, is required by federal law to submit a list of all chemicals at the mill to state and local emergency planning agencies and the local fire department. This list provides brief details of the amount of each chemical, while noting the chemical properties, reactivity and health hazards.

Among the dozens of chemicals handled at Nippon Dynawave, the company is only required to submit a detailed risk plan to the EPA because of a single chemical: chlorine.

Heavier than air, chlorine is a highly reactive, pungent gas that was used as a chemical weapon during World War I. Even very small amounts of the yellowish-green gas can damage the eyes and lungs. Breathing in more than 400 ppm can be fatal within minutes.

Nippon Dynawave has to create a community and facility-wide emergency response plan, including for the "worst case scenario" for a chlorine-related accident, according to the company's most recent submission to the EPA in 2024. The plant has chlorine detectors and alarms at the mill to warn of a release and chlorine-specific training for the workers handling the chemical.

Nippon Dynawave told the EPA that, in general, it reduces the amount of hazardous substances at the plant and considers less hazardous alternatives when possible.

"When a hazardous substance is used at NDP, the equipment is carefully designed, built, and operated to reduce the likelihood of an accidental release," the company told the EPA, saying that "industry and government standards are closely adhered to."

In the event of a toxic substance release, the company wrote that "most people ... would be able to walk away from the exposure without any long-term health consequences."

Nippon added that "Some people who are particularly susceptible to the substance released could be incapacitated."

'A brush off'

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is charged with investigating chemical accidents and providing recommendations meant to prevent future harm. But there is no record of the board investigating white liquor until the Longview accident this year.

At the state level, Washington regulators have had little role in the oversight of white liquor, according to documents and environmental experts.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Labor and Industries said the agency is responsible for ensuring companies create a worksite free from hazards, but did not cite any specific chemical handling requirements for white liquor.

"Workplace safety rules in Washington make every employer responsible for providing a workplace free from recognized hazards that could injure or kill workers," said Matt Ross, an L&I spokesperson. He said the state agency's role is to ensure companies comply with those rules and fix problems identified by the state.

Washington's lead environmental agency, the Department of Ecology, also "does not inspect white liquor storage tanks," spokesperson Andrew Wineke said.

The agency has cited Nippon Dynawave for other incidents involving white liquor, including for a 5,000-gallon spill of white liquor and an incident that sprayed similar chemicals over parts of the property and cars. And the agency has issued minor penalties for the company's violations of environmental regulations.

Yet for decades, there have been clear indicators that handling white liquor could place workers in harm's way. Still, Washington operators have delayed fixing known problems involving the chemicals.

In 2023, a leak was identified on the Nippon Dynawave white liquor storage tank, known as G tank, which would rupture in May. The leak went unrepaired for months.

Ecology said this leak was outside its jurisdiction, but Jeremy Nichols, with the Center for Biological Diversity, disagreed.

"Ecology still has a duty to ensure they (Nippon Dynawave) are meeting ambient air quality standards," he said. All possible emission points, including any releases from the white liquor tank, could be subject to state oversight if Ecology had chosen to interpret and enforce the Clean Air Act more aggressively, he said.

"That would absolutely fall under their duty to regulate and protect those air quality standards," Nichols said. "It's a little bit of a brushoff."