The Wall Street Journal’s analysis of data submitted to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that serious chemical accidents in the United States are rising in both frequency and severity. Companies have reported more than 600 serious chemical incidents across 46 states since 2020, when federal rules began requiring facilities to report releases that result in deaths, injuries or more than $1 million in estimated damages.
The 2025 figures — 131 serious accidents, 48 deaths and 142 serious injuries — represent a sharp escalation. Of those 131 incidents, 89 resulted in at least one death or serious injury.
Two major incidents in May underscored the danger. A 900,000-gallon tank containing white liquor, a corrosive chemical used in papermaking, collapsed at a Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company plant in Longview, Washington, killing 11 workers. Days earlier, a chemical tank at a GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, California, overheated, forcing the evacuation of more than 40,000 residents from the densely populated city near Los Angeles. MSI previously reported on both incidents as they unfolded, including the Washington tank rupture and the Garden Grove evacuation.
Former CSB and Environmental Protection Agency officials, as well as industry safety experts, attribute much of the rise in accidents to years of deferred safety maintenance on aging plants. The average U.S. chemical plant is 46 years old, said Mike Schmidt, principal at Bluefield Process Safety, a safety consultancy. Equipment typically has a useful life of about 20 years, he said. Marsh, an insurance broker and risk advisory firm, pegged the average age of North American refining and petrochemical infrastructure at 61 years, and its analyses have shown mounting losses as plants go beyond the 30-year mark.
CSB reports have cited a range of avoidable failures, from corroded pipes to the lack of safety equipment. Some of the increase may also reflect a rebound in industrial activity in the years following the Covid-19 lockdowns, according to the Journal.
The regulatory landscape overseeing facilities holding hazardous materials has long had gaps. The EPA subjects facilities that work with a list of regulated chemicals to stringent safety rules under its Risk Management Program, or RMP. Currently about 11,500 facilities hold those chemicals above threshold quantities.
But many other toxic and deadly combinations of chemicals are not on the list. That includes white liquor, the corrosive chemical involved in the Washington incident, and methyl methacrylate, the toxic chemical used to make plastic that caused the California evacuation. While facilities that work with such chemicals are required to maintain certain basic safety standards, they are not subject to RMP rules.
The EPA said in a statement that the CSB data the Journal analyzed includes facilities that are not governed by RMP rules. For ones that are, it said, its data show accidents are down between 2014 and 2023, a sign that the industry has strengthened prevention efforts.
“Accident prevention was and continues to be a priority for EPA in the Trump Administration,” the EPA said in a statement. It added that the Clean Air Act requires any facility that handles extremely hazardous substances — even those not on the RMP list — to safely manage them.
Roughly a quarter of the incidents reviewed by the Journal occurred at sites that reported at least one other accident to the CSB since 2020. Oil, gas and chemical companies, many in Louisiana and Texas, top the list of repeat offenders, according to the Journal analysis.
Kinder Morgan, a $70 billion pipeline company, had 28 total incidents across 26 different facilities in the past six years. The company said it takes “every incident, large or small, seriously, and we are committed to continuous improvement and risk reduction.” The American Petroleum Institute, a trade association, said workplace safety is the oil and gas industry’s top priority, and industry initiatives have led to “significant declines in incidents over the past decade,” based on its own survey data.
Food and poultry plants also appear multiple times on the list of incidents. Tyson Foods has reported eight incidents since 2020, including a fatal explosion caused by a ruptured oil hose at a Camilla, Georgia, facility in 2024. The incident resulted in an Occupational Safety and Health Administration citation for a serious violation.
Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company, which operated the Washington plant, had a long history of prior state safety violations and complaints, including a worker-safety complaint filed just weeks before the accident after an employee fell into a sinkhole full of scalding pulp stock due to a maintenance oversight. The company called it a “near miss,” state labor records show. The Washington Department of Labor & Industries is investigating the complaint. Nippon and Tyson, which did not return requests for comment, have previously expressed that they prioritize worker safety.
Current and former government officials close to chemical policymaking blame bipartisan failure across Republican and Democratic administrations to adequately address the problem, according to the Journal.
After a spate of high-profile incidents, the Biden EPA in 2024 finalized new rules designed to reduce the risk of accidents, including new safety requirements such as a third-party audit after a serious chemical incident, an analysis of safer technologies and alternatives, and worker-safety measures like the authority to stop work in hazardous situations. But those reforms have yet to fully take effect, and the Trump EPA is proposing to permanently shelve them, arguing that accidents are declining. Data scientists from environmental and worker-safety groups say the Trump EPA’s analysis misses hundreds of chemical accidents they say they identified through news reports and other records, in part because the facilities are not required to report to the EPA in a timely manner.
The CSB’s board members told the EPA the reversal would be a “significant step backwards.” The EPA responded by saying, “CSB is clearly trying to prove they’re needed,” noting the two current board members are “holdovers from the Biden Administration.”
Trump has sought to defund the CSB since his first term, arguing that it duplicates the work of OSHA and the EPA. Advocates and industry officials alike say the CSB, though understaffed and lacking enforcement power, has been a crucial watchdog doing autopsies of catastrophes.
The EPA requires facilities under its purview to plan for worst-case scenarios. But those plans are shrouded in secrecy due to national security risk: They are accessible to the public but can only be viewed in specialized reading rooms with a government monitor present. Zones of impact from a catastrophe can extend from within 1 mile to 25 miles, based on the chemical, and more than a third of U.S. children live in such zones, according to 2014 reports from watchdog groups that accessed such plans for more than 3,400 facilities.
Deer Park, Texas, home to several major chemical plants, has suffered so many incidents — at least eight since 2020, according to the CSB data — that the city trademarked a cartoon turtle called “Wally Wise Guy” to teach children how to shelter in place during a chemical emergency. Jerry Mouton, the town’s mayor, said, “We work very hard with industry to make sure safety is a top priority.”
The EPA estimated in 2016 that about 177 million Americans were living in a worst-case scenario zone. And that is only for EPA-regulated facilities.
The Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, which tracks news reports of chemical incidents, counts about twice as many as the CSB between 2021 and 2025, since the CSB does not require reporting of accidents that resulted in just shelter-in-place or evacuation orders.
Studies show these incidents can have life-altering effects on surrounding communities, from depressed home values for more than a decade to increases in risk of cancer and respiratory illness.
At a June 9 special meeting convened by Garden Grove’s government, residents emotionally recounted trauma from the recent mass evacuation and questioned a GKN Aerospace executive over the narrowly averted catastrophe. Steve Carlin, the executive, said GKN is funding support for residents, and its investigation into what happened at the 60-year-old plant is ongoing.
“This company will do whatever it takes to earn back that trust,” Carlin said.