The 2014 Elk River chemical spill in West Virginia occurred on January 9, 2014. This oil spill effected hundreds of people in the area. It contaminated their drinking water. The chemical spill happened in WV when a storage tank at freedom industries corroded had a few holes that inspectors had found, leaking more then 10,000 gallons of the chemical called MCHM into the Elk River. After investigation the chemical spill ended up putting at least 300,000 people without water. More than 300 people were put in the hospital due to chemical damage. They waited 12 days after the leak to even investigate so that if anything new were to happen they could tell the residents in the area and include in the news article. They discovered it from a above ground tank through two different holes. The chemicals drained into the gravel and soil. The order sanded across portions of nine different countries. The people who were effected by this chemical spill were restricted from drinking or bathing in the water for nine days, depending on their location. The patients’ symptoms included nausea, rashes, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea following exposure to the water through inhalation, ingestion and/or skin contact. Hospitals never could confirm that the chemical spill caused those symptoms. Gary Southern, the former president of Freedom Industries, was sentenced in federal court in 2016 to one month in prison, six months supervised release and a $20,000 fine. They were not letting pregnant women drink the water way after they said it was safe to drink due to harm to the child or mother. Chemicals in the US do not need to prove that a chemical does not pose a health hazard in order to get it into the commercial market. Angela Lagomasino, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank, said: “I don’t think that more regulations are going to make us safer. The key is controlling exposure, because that’s where the real risk is.” My opinion on the 2014 Elk River oil spill is strong. I say this because I could never even imagine being pregnant and loosing my baby due to something that isn’t checked like it needs to be. Like I said before this, they don’t even have to prove that the chemical can harm or not harm someone. I think that they should make sure that its safe before just letting someone use a random chemical for something that no one really truly knows what it is. It also said in the article that the chemicals are innocent until proven guilty, I see that as that they are just waiting for something bad to happen then freak out and fix it when they should make sure its safe before using the chemical.