Gas leak: Let’s see what the investigations turn up

Last Thursday was a tense morning for Greater Sudbury. I was just leaving for work when my phone started going off as news of a possible gas leak at Vale’s Copper Cliff hit social media.

Things progressed quickly from there. With the piercing tone of the emergency siren at the smelter carrying for kilometres, people were understandably concerned.

When word reached the media that police were closing all roads in and out of Copper Cliff and photos of a coloured cloud of gas hit Twitter and Facebook, that concern became fright for many people.

I have to admit, I succumbed as well. I phoned my wife, told her not to be concerned, but to please close all the windows in the house. I live in Coniston, folks, a long way from Copper Cliff. Hindsight is 20/20, there was little actual cause for concern on my part — it was an emotional response, not a rational one.

I was concerned for the health and welfare of my wife and children. That said, if I hadn’t been manning the news desk to ensure we had the latest reports available on the website, I wouldn’t have thought twice about grabbing a camera and heading to Copper Cliff. That’s the reporter in me, I guess — we tend to run toward danger, rather than away from it; the siren call of a good story is too much to resist. Now, when I say “good,” I don’t mean good in the positive sense. I mean good in the important sense, in the sense that this is information people need to know and it’s our job to get it to you come hell, high water or the possibility of exposure to toxic gas.

So that’s what we, like the city’s other news media did. We tried to get as close as police would allow to get you the most up-to-date and accurate information that we could.

When the all clear was given, we, like you, let out a sign of relief. The immediate emergency was passed. We were told the gas was a mixture of nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxide, created, somehow, in a large quantity as a byproduct of routine maintenance in the acid plant at the smelter. And with no reported injuries that we know of, it seems to have passed without any human health effects at this point.

We know nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a major component of smog. We also know long-term exposure can have serious health effects. We know NO2 can be fatal in high doses. That’s why governments monitor the content of NO2 in the air and set standards of safe levels of exposure.

We know the leak at the smelter hit the edge of that safe threshold, but only very briefly — “instantaneously” is the way Vale described it, which I take to mean it hit the peak for just a moment. How significant this is, I can’t say.

Hopefully, with three separate investigations having begun into the leak, we will get answers. Vale and the United Steelworkers are conducting a joint investigation, while the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of the Environment are each doing their own.

How did routine maintenance result in such an unusual outcome? Vale said a small amount of NOx (a mixture of NO2 and NO) is created during maintenance in the plant, but that’s not what happened last week. The investigations will look at why.

When did the leak begin? The Ministry of the Environment monitoring station near downtown Sudbury showed gas levels began rising in the late evening, and appear to have peaked at 2 a.m. The investigations will explore this.

Will there be any environmental or biological effects from the leak — more specifically, is there any reason to be concerned today? Given that the emergency lasted a morning and everything returned to normal relatively quickly, given that no health officials or government ministries have been silent on that question, I think we are to infer from that that everything is fine.

But again, we will have to see what the investigations turn up.

One final note, large companies are easy entities to criticize — NorthernLife.ca has criticized a few in its time — but during last week’s emergency, Vale, city officials and the Greater Sudbury Police kept the lines of communication clear for media, allowing us to provide you with the most timely information.

I, like you, am looking for answers. There’s no word on how long the investigations will take, but these are not the sorts of things you want to rush through, anyway.

Because we don’t just want answers, we want the best answers. There’s no substitute for good information.

Mark Gentili is the managing editor of Northern Life and NorthernLife.ca.