Garden Grove, California chemical evacuation and chemical leak. What is methyl methacrylate?

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Let's talk about what's in these tanks that are causing an evacuation in Garden Grove, California right now. That's methylmethacrylate.

[00:00:08]It's a volatile organic compound and it's used to make plastics. In this case, for the aerospace industry. I was a laboratory chemist for years and I want to give you the good information about what's in there. So, the good news is is that this compound degrades quickly once it's in the environment. It will impact like especially waterways, fish, and wildlife if it gets to them, but it's short-term. It's not DDT. It's not Agent Orange. It's not going to cause some of these long-term disasters we've seen. Um, it's also not a cardcogen that we know of. We've tested it and we don't think it is. However, it's a huge irritant. Most of these VOCC's, volatile organic compounds, are irritants to the respiratory system, mucous membranes. If you breathe it in, if you get it on your skin, it's not so great. So, that's why they're evacuating the area. Near misses like this, industrial chemicals and laboratories are a lot more frequent than you think.

[00:01:00]Usually, we get to them preventing them sooner than this. They might have to do like a controlled explosion or some kind of controlled venting here to get that down. Right now, the temperature control uh cooling it is helping, but who knows how long that'll last. So hopefully everybody's to safety in that