How WWII created the explosive fertilizer market

Smart moves in war and business can backfire

Citizens of West, Texas, struggling to rebuild lives shattered by a massive April explosion at a local fertilizer plant, were dealt another devastating blow last week as the Federal Emergency Management Agency declined Mayor Tommy Muska’s request for federal funding needed to repair roads, public utilities and schools.

Federal agencies investigating the cause of the blast that killed 15 and injured 200 would do well to include in their findings the federal government’s pivotal role in making the stuff that exploded. That might change FEMA’s attitude.

That stuff is ammonium nitrate, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of chemical fertilizers. The good Dr. Jekyll rightly claims to be a premium plant food, greening America’s pastures and giving us bumper crops. But his alter ego, Mr. Hyde, occasionally could pack enough wallop to rival the Hiroshima explosion.

TRAGIC HISTORY Ammonium nitrate, NH4NO3, was also the explosive in the 1995 terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City. Fewer than 3 tons devastated a 16- block radius, registering on seismographs 16 miles away.

The blast in West was exponentially bigger, perhaps a hundred times more powerful than Oklahoma City. But the West, Texas, blockbuster is a mere firecracker compared with the infamous 1947 Texas City explosion. An accidental fire in a cargo ship moored in the port city detonated 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate. Among the nearly 600 dead were 27 members of the Texas City volunteer fire department who were vaporized.

Amateur gardeners looking askance at their bags of Miracle- Gro should know that most fertilizers are completely safe. So why is ammonium nitrate the volatile exception to the rule?

The answer lies with the federal government.

BOMBING THEN BOOMING At the onset of World War II, the U. S. government began manufacturing huge quantities of ammonium nitrate to make bombs. Cheap and readily available, ammonium nitrate was often combined with scarcer TNT to stretch our limited supply of munitions.

At war’s end, the government had a glut of ammonium nitrate and too much manufacturing capacity. But post- war America also saw an explosion of a different kind, an insatiable new market for the chemical fertilizers needed to feed a burgeoning population. Because ammonium nitrate is rich in the nitrogen plants crave, the transition from bunker bombs to bumper crops seemed to be a nobrainer.

But the crops came with a cost, the latest occurring in West. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the dangers of ammonium nitrate.

SLOW INVESTIGATION I suspect that as long as the National Security Agency’s domestic spying scandal sizzles in the glare of public scrutiny, federal investigators in Texas will loll in the shade, taking their sweet time investigating the explosion in West. Eventually, a report will likely make its way to the White House and Congress, pointing appropriate fingers of blame, making necessary recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

The report is less likely to contain a reminder of the role our federal government played in giving us Dr. Jekyll while not paying enough attention to Mr. Hyde.