You too can break into a chemical plant.

• Author: Levine, Art

Lax security at our nation's chemical plants may endanger the millions of Americans unlucky enough to live near them, but it's been a boon for investigative journalism. It's become practically commonplace for intrepid reporters to demonstrate the ease with which one can penetrate a dangerous facility. But after journalists like Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review started visiting plants in 2002, leaving his business card on storage tanks and bringing along 60 Minutes camera crews, I wondered: Could I still mosey onto a plant's property and get close to chemicals that could kill thousands of people?

To find out, I enlisted the help of James Bryant, a tall, courtly, retired chemical engineer and executive who has become an industry critic in Delaware, home of DuPont. When Bryant was an executive for Standard Chlorine in the mid-1990s, he helped write the predecessor to the American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care code, a self-policing program hailed as a national model by Department of Homeland Security officials and industry representatives. Marry Durbin, the ACC's amiable chief lobbyist, told me, "The real-world impact is that our employees and the communities we reside in are much more secure and safer." Bryant is less effusive. "It's not worth a damn, because there's no follow-up," he says in his relaxed southern drawl.

Bryant takes me to DuPont's Edge Moor plant, around the southern section of the Delaware River, near Wilmington. It's an overcast October day, a few weeks after the passage of an industry-backed regulatory bill. Fittingly, we're driving a black Mercedes SUV like the ones in Hollywood action thrillers that come packed with black-masked terrorists. As a member of ACC, DuPont is presumably compliant with the self-assessment requirements of Responsible Care. In an e-mail, DuPont assured me that the company "has a 200-year heritage of safety as a core value." I plan to test this claim with the eyes of a jihadist who's willing to blow up chemical facilities with a rocket-propelled grenade--an RPG--or a bomb. Admittedly, I'd make an imperfect Islamic extremist. Not only am I a Jewish guy who doesn't expect to have my way with seventy-two virgins in Paradise, I also have a back problem that would probably prevent me from lifting heavy weaponry. Still, I'm curious to see how easy it would be for fanatics in better shape to blow up toxic chemicals.

We arrive outside Edge Moor's mesh fence. In 2005, Edge Moor reported to...