As discussed in earlier posts we are researching the hazardous chemicals (toxic, flammable and explosive) that travel through our town. This is part of a larger effort to write a White Paper with the title “The Ashland Third Main-Line: Unsafe, Destructive, Costly”.
Information to do with the chemicals that go through town is provided in Attachment A of the White Paper. Today we mailed (not emailed) a letter and Attachment A to the DRPT project team. We assume that they are conducting a similar analysis and we hope that our research can be helpful to them.
The letter is shown below. It states, “It is my conclusion that the transport of these chemicals through town is already hazardous — adding a third rail and a lot more freight traffic makes an already serious situation completely untenable.”
Attachment A is 10 pages long; if you would like a copy of it or of the full draft White Paper please contact me. In the meantime we show the current list of chemicals that wend their way through Ashland. This list is “organic” — we are constantly adding new materials to it. Please help us in this effort.
ashlandrail 
Wow, Ian! This is really so impressive! I thank you for all your hard work and efforts in keeping all of us in Ashland safe!
Barb
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Thanks for the comment. The next step is to model the impact of a release. Even this cursory look at the Highly Hazardous Chemicals traversing town gave me a list of 20 substances. The next step is to choose which ones to use in the modeling scenarios. I am current leaning toward three of them:
• Isobutane — explosive, highly flammable and easily ignited.
• Chlorine — forms a vapor cloud that is highly toxic.
• Phosphoric acid — this is not a chemical that I have worked with but I suspect that it has a large environmental impact.
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