Today the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a press release alerting the public to a potential safety hazard: Some propane shipped to Connecticut in early 2010 may have been inadequately odorized.
The local TV station will run reports on how dangerous propane can be, and consumers will be encouraged to regard their propane tanks as they would armed terrorists. Business as usual on a slow news day.
Even though the State Fire Marshal’s Office conducted a lengthy investigation and found it unlikely that any poorly odorized propane ever reached Connecticut, we are told this warning goes out “in an abundance of caution.”
Really? The last time any improperly odorized propane could possibly have reached a consumer was September, 2010. Four months later is “an abundance of caution?” After much thought, I find this announcement offensive.
There is, indeed, an abundance of caution, but it has nothing to do with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a press release, or a consumer hotline.
It seems the CPSC assumes that we never thought to check if our propane is properly odorized. In the propane industry we are well aware of the fact that delivering gas isn’t the same as, say, delivering bark-mulch.
Safety isn’t just an afterthought… it’s what we sell.
We test our propane for proper Odorization three different times:
* When it is delivered to our facility
* When our drivers load their trucks
* When we deliver it to each customer’s tank
If we had ever received un-odorized propane, we would know it. And yet the CPSC is basically saying: “Perhaps your propane company didn’t notice their propane had no odorant last summer.” This is like saying: “Perhaps your ice cream store didn’t notice their freezer didn’t work last summer.”
Perhaps the CPSC didn’t notice that almost a year has gone by since this supposed incident began, and not one state fire marshal’s office from Maryland to Maine has confirmed a single finding of un-odorized propane!
Perhaps the CPSC didn’t notice how big a rail-car is: If one had been full of un-odorized propane (32,000 gallons), it would already have been tested thousands of times, once for every delivery.
An abundance of caution? Perhaps people won’t notice the irony.
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