gallons of latex emulsion that leaked from a burst pipe at a Trinseo chemical plant in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania, has made their way into the Delaware River, threatening Philadelphia’s water supply. But I’m still contemplating showering —
maybe just for 5 minutes, just to get the grime off of me? Surely latex painting fluids can do that, right? Amber alerts are blaring on an hourly basis, and I’m coming to the stoic realization of what “no tap water use” actually means. That means using bottled water — but it’s sold out in nearby stores. It means no cooking, which surely we can handle in the beginning of Ramadan. It means showering before 3:30 pm, because according to the Philadelphia Water Department, this is when the chemicals aren’t going through the pipes.
In 2007, a pipe burst at the chemical plant, leaking gallons of chemicals, and a fire ensued, growing closer and closer to Mary Devine Elementary School. My school was, and we were bused to the local high school to finish out the rest of the day. I was in the first grade. At that time, the plant was operating under a different company. The more digging I did, the more I realized that the former Rohm and Haas chemical company is infamous forand pipe bursts. In 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency investigated the plant’s release of 1,760 pounds of methyl methacrylate — a chemical compound which causes numbness in the nervous system and skin rashes, among other effects — as the company attempted to move the chemicals to a separate storage tank.