http://www.ncpirg.org/in-the-news/chemical-safety-project/chemical-safety-project-in-the-news http://www.ncpirg.org/in-the-news/chemical-safety-project/chemical-safety-project-in-the-news/blue-ridge-plant-in-canton-is-still-a-risk By Dale Neal ASHEVILLE – The Blue Ridge Paper Products plant with its stores of chemicals used to bleach paper is “an accident waiting to happen,” a spokesman for a North Carolina watchdog group said Wednesday. But after spending $330 million in renovations since the 1990s, Blue Ridge Paper Products is running a much safer system than the former Champion plants’ bleaching process that used deadly chlorine gas, said Bob Williams, the plant’s director of regulatory affairs Even with the limited stores of chlorine dioxide it now uses, Blue Ridge poses a risk to 260,363 residents in a 25-mile area around Canton, according to a new report released Wednesday by the North Carolina Public Interest Research Group. Nationwide, the report identified 74 pulp and paper plants endangering more than 5.7 million people by using chlorine or chlorine dioxide to bleach paper. “Fortunately, there are safer technologies available that pulp and paper mills can use to replace the extremely hazardous chemicals used to whiten paper,” said NCPIRG advocate Rob Thompson. “We’ve known since the 1980s about how the Canton mill’s use of chlorine puts Canton at risk for a major chemical disaster,” said Gracia O’Neill of the Clean Water for North Carolina environmental group. “The mill has much less chlorine on-site these days, but it does not take much chlorine to create a chemical security risk.” http://www.ncpirg.org/in-the-news/chemical-safety-project/chemical-safety-project-in-the-news/blue-ridge-plant-in-canton-is-still-a-risk Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:57:59 -0500