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The bill, an amended rail safety measure, authorizes significant new funding for Amtrak at $5.3 billion in capital grants, $2.9 billion in operating grants and $1.9 billion for intercity passenger rail over five years.

The House approved the final version on Sept. 24.

The legislation would also toughen rail safety programs, including mandating rail companies to equip their cars with sensors to help avoid crashes (a provision that gained new-found support following the train collision that killed 25 people in California last month).

The Bush administration threatened to veto the Amtrak bill that the House passed back in June, but has yet to comment on the measure now being considered by the Senate.

Image credit: reivax via flickr under a Creative Commons License

What’s riding the rails in your hometown? A few hobos maybe, but also potentially deadly chemicals rumble through America’s communities daily. My hometown paper, The Galesburg Register-Mail, printed a series of articles on the dangers nearly every train brings to a community. And in Galesburg, IL, this is particularly important: approximately 1,000 cars travel through the city daily on two major railroads that cross town, the Burlington Northern and the Santa Fe, now known as BNSF, since the two merged.

How dangerous are some of those cars? Well, they carry some nasty stuff:

• Anhydrous Ammonia: This colorless gas may be fatal if inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin. It could explode if exposed to heat, or burn, but it doesn’t ignite readily.
• Chlorine: It, too, can be fatal if inhaled or absorbed through the skin. If a spill occurs during the daytime, people within at 1.5 mile radius must be evacuated; at night, more that 4.5 miles need to be evacuated.
• Diesel Fuel: Yep, it’s dangerous too: explosive when vapors are mixed with air, and it can burn eyes and skin.
• Hydrochloric Acid: If a container is heated or contaminated with water, an explosion could occur. Inhalation of vapors can kill, cause burns or severe injury.
• Methanol: Nasty stuff that’s flammable and explosive. Again, inhalation, ingestion or absorption by the skin can be fatal.
• Sodium Chlorate: Same thing: possibly fatal if inhaled or ingested. It can accelerate burning if involved with a fire, or it can explode.
• Sodium Hydroxide: It’s explosive but will not flame. The usual warnings about inhalation, ingestion or being absorbed by the skin.
• Sulfuric Acid: It, too, is explosive, and will burn (but not ignite). It can inflict severe burns on the skin, and is deadly to inhale or ingest.
• Uranium: The article doesn’t cover uranium, but it too is being carried by railroads around the world in various forms, from the newly mined to spent rods. Always dangerous, I just wanted to add it to the mix.

Any of these chemicals could, if spilled during a derailment, spread a fatal cloud over a community. The chance of that happening, according to the article, is about the same as winning the lottery. A spokesman for BNSF railway, Steve Forsberg, is quoted as saying that "less than three-tenths of 1 percent of all rail shipments are materials that could be turned into a toxic cloud."

Do railroads have to carry these materials? Yes, they are required by federal law to move them by the federal common carrier obligation. Would they rather not? Yes, the article says: it’s a "bet the business" public service. But then, the rails are safer than transportation by truck, where the accident rate is many times more common.

Research is underway to make tank cars more reliable in case of an accident, such as staying upright and intact in case of derailment. But don’t expect any progress soon as research has been delayed until the first of the year.

The solution, of course, is to "go green" by producing safer chemicals, but that appears a long way off. Possibly the most dangerous chemicals are chlorine, which is still used to disinfect water, and anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer base.

Accidents have occurred and will continue to do so. One of the scarier happened a short time ago when a tank car filled with chlorine rolled 20 miles through Las Vegas, past hotels and resorts on the Strip until it was safely stopped. I recall a tank car explosion in Kingman, AZ, back in the 70s that resulted in fatalities. According to Patricia Abbatte, executive director of Citizens for Rail Safety, "The doomsday scenario is that one tank car of chlorine could kill up to 100,000 people in 30 minutes."

Until something better comes along, your friendly railroad will whistle it’s way through your community, past schools and homes carrying a deadly cargo.