ChemLock and DHS Chemicals of Interest
This is part of a series of blog posts looking at the potential for the authorization of CISA’s existing ChemLock program and using it as a voluntary replacement for the now defunct Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. Other posts in this series include:
NOTE: Previous articles in this series have been removed from the CFSN Detailed Analysis paywall.
An important component of the CFATS program (possibly the most important part of the risk assessment process) is the DHS Chemicals of Interest (COI) list found in Appendix A of 6 CFR Part 27. The COI list provided a list of chemicals and concentrations that served as a basis for the requirement for chemical facilities to provide an initial Top Screen report. What is frequently forgotten about the COI list is that it also formed an important part of the basis for the risk assessment done by DHS to determine whether a facility was considered to be a high-risk facility that would be covered by the CFATS program and to which Tier Level such facilities would be assigned.
While the first part of that assessment would not be required by the revamped ChemLock program being suggested by this series of blog posts (the ChemLock program is and would remain voluntary), the risk ranking would still need to be assigned to facilities seeking the Safety Act certification being proposed in this series of posts.
COI List Background
The COI list contains a little more than 300 chemicals that DHS identified as being of interest to terrorists either as potential weapons or as components of weapons that could be manufactured by those terrorists. Those chemicals were characterized by the potential threats that they raised. Those threats were categorized into three broadly defined categories:
Release: Toxic, flammable, or explosive chemicals or materials that can be released at a facility.
Theft or Diversion: Chemicals or materials that, if stolen or diverted, can be converted into weapons using simple chemistry, equipment, or techniques.
Sabotage: Chemicals or materials that can be mixed with readily available materials.
The first category of chemicals, release COI, could be expansively defined to include a large portion of the chemicals used in commerce, a way larger number than the 300+ chemicals included in Appendix A. Instead, DHS limited the definition of each of the terms to the most hazardous chemicals in each category. Part of the reason for this was political, industry, for the most part, wanted the CFATS program limited or eliminated because of the potential costs of the security programs that would be required. A more important consideration, however, was the realization that if the program was too expansive, then there would be no way for the fledgling program to ensure that the necessary security programs were established and adequately maintained; the same problem faced by the EPA and OSHA, too many facilities and not enough inspectors.
Beyond the listing of chemicals, there were two other chemical characteristics that were involved in the reportability of inventory of these COI; amount on hand and concentration. For release threat chemicals, the Screening Threshold Quantity used for each chemical was generally taken from the reportable quantity used by federal regulatory agencies such as the EPA and OSHA. There were exceptions; the agricultural industry complained about the proposed 10,000-lbs limit for propane, citing the wide spread use in heating animal storage facilities. DHS acquiesced to the political pressure and set a STQ of 60,000-lbs.
The concentration issue was more complex. For many chemicals, diluting the chemical with various solvents reduced the immediate risk of poisoning, fire or explosion. On the other hand, some solvents were flammable enough in their own right, that the dilution had little, if any, effect on the hazard associated with the listed chemical. In many cases, instead of trying to sort out the complex dilution issue, DHS took the tact of assigning the concentration of the most common commercial dilution of the chemical. Thus, for example, the concentration of aqueous ammonia was set at 20%, not unexpectedly, the chemical distribution industry quickly changed their standard distribution concentration from 20% to 19%.
What has been little discussed is the effect of quantity and concentration on the risk assessment conducted by DHS on Top Screen submission information. Since this whole regulatory effort was directed at threat reduction, DHS was of the opinion that making the details of the risk assessment process public would provide potential terrorists with guidance on how to select chemical facilities for attack. What we can safely assume, however, is that the reported concentrations and quantities were an integral part of the risk assessment process.
Potential Changes
Since the COI list would not be used as a regulatory screening tool in the proposed ChemLock upgrade (again ChemLock is and would remain a voluntary program) some changes to the COI list would make things a little less confusing. The first thing that we can do is get rid of the STQ. Since possession of the COI will no longer trigger a reporting requirement, there is no need to set a minimum amount of a COI that a facility has to worry about. Facilities will, however, still be reporting the amount of the COI that they have on hand, so some version of the minimum concentration reporting limit and the existing mixture rules from Appendix A will probably need to be retained to keep reporting consistent for the purposes of risk tiering.
Revising the COI List
This would be a good time to take a look at the current COI list to determine what changes should be made to support the new ChemLock program. The rationale for the current items on the list remains viable. These are the chemicals that if maintained in sufficient quantity in the right (actually wrong) place could be considered a target for action by certain terrorist groups.
Since the whole point for the existing ChemLock program is to provide chemical security assistance to facilities that do not rise to the same level of security risk as those covered by the former CFATS program, it is perhaps time to consider expanding the list of chemical to include those that may be somewhat less hazardous, say for example adding more flammable liquids and gasses with perhaps a flashpoint discriminator. This might be helpful for Safety Act certification purposes if there were to be a minimum risk level for the new Tier 5 that I had proposed in an earlier post.
This would also be a good time to reopen the discussion about adding reactive chemicals to the COI list. Just looking at two recent large scale incidents covered by the Chemical Safety Board (the latest one here), it is clear that chemicals like trichloroisocyanuric acid (TCCA) that decompose when exposed to water and/or heat to produce chlorine gas could pose a release threat at facilities that manufacture or store large quantities of TCCA, and thus make them a potential terrorist target.
Moving Forward
It seems clear that even with the death of the CFATS program, the DHS chemicals of interest list could form a valuable part of the upgraded ChemLock program being discussed here. Since the ChemLock program would remain a voluntary chemical security program, there would have to be some modifications made to how the rules provided in Appendix A would be applied to the new program. Further discussion is needed.