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BLOOMBERG STORY ON KOCH REFINERY SHOWS
HOW DANGEROUS REFINERY SLOP IS TO HUMAN HEALTH
Bloomberg news recently published an article about Koch Industries in which it detailed the defiance and arrogance of the Koch brothers, who believe not only should that government should abandon basic health and safety regulation, but because they, the Kochs, who are big and strong, are entitled to defy safety regulation even while it is force. One of the instances of their defiance of basic safety regulation was their continued emission of benzene, a known carcinogen, from their refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. They defied the regulation by lying to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission for years that its benzene emissions were at safe levels, and lied about their practice of capturing and heating the benzene to break it down into safe components. In fact, the Koch refinery's benzene emissions were 15 times higher than permitted, they made no effort to capture it. (Benzene exposure has been recognized as a direct cause of leukemia since 1928.) Koch's lying defiance led to a fine of $10 million, and an additional required payment of $10 million to fund environmental projects. In their defiance, Koch Industries made $176 million in profits, as they threatened the health of an entire county near the facility. Regulation requires that benzene be captured from the top of the refinery column and safely disposed.
Other oil refiners maintain compliance with regulation: they capture the benzene, along with other odds and ends at the top of column, what chemical engineers call "slop," and pump it into tank trucks for propane marketers to sell as "commercial grade" propane. Benzene becomes fuel used your home, where it remains every bit as dangerous as the moment it leaves the refinery stack into the air. So by putting it in tanker trucks to make benzene your problem, while pretending it is a fuel, these oil refiners dodge the bullet of regulation without having to lie, and profit twice by selling to you as fuel what they should destroy as hazardous material.
The story of the Koch Industries Corpus Christi refinery says it all: benzene that cost Koch Industries $20 Million in court-imposed fines because they spewed into the air and lied about it, is sold to you as propane by those who sell refinery slop. If you don't want to run the risk of getting sick so someone else has a short-cut, buy only pure HD-5 propane, 90% propane, 100% of the time, available only from Thrifty Propane. |
