By Toby Coleman and Wade Rawlins
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Copyright 2006 The News and Observer
APEX, N.C. — Mayor Keith Weatherly on Tuesday demanded an exact accounting of the chemicals inside the hazardous waste warehouse that exploded last week after learning that arsenic, mercury and lead were stored there.
Weatherly chastised the warehouse owner, Environmental Quality Co., for doing little more than releasing a coded, 19-page inventory that revealed limited information about the chemical brew that fueled Thursday’s fire.
“They didn’t take the opportunity when they had it. It really raised my level of concern; that’s why we did this,” he said. “They had a chance to disclose it, they had a chance to spin it, and they punted.”
Town leaders have responded by getting tough. They retained an environmental consulting firm to analyze EQ chemical inventories and inspection documents, and said they planned to give EQ’s reconstruction plans “the most critical review” possible.
EQ, once an anonymous Apex business, has become an outcast in town. People who lived next to the company’s warehouse for years say they now want them out of the neighborhood.
“I kind of hope they don’t rebuild,” said Linda Porter, 60, a chemist who lives a few hundred feet away. “It doesn’t give you the warm fuzzies that they also had an explosion in Michigan.”
An EQ plant in Romulus, Mich., blew up in August 2005.
In Apex, the company gave town officials a list of compounds that included toxic heavy metals such as mercury contained in thermometers and thermostats, lead, benzene, an additive to gasoline that is carcinogenic; potassium cyanide, used in electroplating and as an insecticide; and pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative and pesticide.
Also present were chlorinated compounds such as vinyl chloride, a flammable chemical used to make plastic pipe, that can produce byproducts such as dioxins - some of the most toxic chemicals known to science. Short-term exposure can cause skin lesions, while long exposure can harm the immune system, the nervous system, and reproductive functions.
Scott Maris, EQ’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said the company has not had the time or the manpower to provide the public with a comprehensive list of the chemicals and waste caught in the blaze.
Many items, though, were household products such as aerosol sprays, paint thinner and nail polish, he said.
“It’s probably not that different from a house fire,” said Paul Nony, one of the toxicologists EQ hired to monitor air quality around Apex after the fire. “A lot of these products are in houses, probably even in the same amounts as they were in the site.”
Air tests in recent days have not found any of the burnt chemicals in the air.
Last week’s chemical fire was different from any cul-de-sac blaze the town’s firefighters had seen. Thursday night, thick plumes of smoke that town residents said smelled distinctly like pool chemicals began pouring out of the warehouse. Then, some of the hundreds of barrels inside the warehouse exploded, sending huge fireballs into the air with distinctive pops.
The fire forced thousands to evacuate their homes and sent about 30 firefighters, police officers and residents to seek medical treatment for respiratory difficulties, bleary eyes and bloody noses.
Nobody has figured out yet what was inside the noxious plumes of smoke pouring from the fire. Nony, the toxicologist, said the plume probably did not include chlorine because it did not turn the grass around the warehouse brown.
EQ has detailed only a handful of substances inside the warehouse during the fire, some of which were present in minute amounts. They include: 316 milligrams of chemicals used to make nicotine gum, eight ounces of potassium cyanide used by a boat maker, 110 gallons of cyanide plating sludge, four mercury thermometers, 213 grams of mercury from a high school chemistry lab and 6.5 milligrams of nitroglycerin used to make heart medication.
The company has been more vague about the rest of the materials. Many items listed in the 19-page inventory released by the company Monday are described, in a government-standardized code, only as ignitable, corrosive or reactive waste. The inventory does not include any of these items’ specific chemical compositions.
Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace’s toxics campaign, said the chemicals on site the night of the fire were a mixed combination of highly hazardous, flammable waste. He believes they could pose a long term health threat, something EQ disputes.
“It’s a real witch’s brew of material,” Hind said. “It’s the very things you wouldn’t want to burn.”
EQ says its toxicologists have taken more than 220,000 samples of Apex’s air in the last few days and have found no unusual pollutants since early Friday morning. Air monitoring machines detected chemicals floating around the chain-link fence ringing the warehouse while the fire was still burning.
Nony, the toxicologist, said inspectors were still processing the samples to determine exactly what chemicals were in those early samples.
911 CALL REPORTING THE FIRE
The first call came in at 9:34 p.m. Thursday, alerting authorities of a haze east of downtown Apex caused by an enormous blaze in an Environmental Quality Co. factory housing dangerous chemicals.
“There must be a chlorine leak over there,” the unidentified male caller said about the intersection of Schieffelin Road and Investment Boulevard . “Real, real strong chlorine smell and you can see the haze throughout the area where you can smell it at.”
The 911 dispatcher in Raleigh transferred the call to her Apex counterparts.
“Will you need anything from us,” the Raleigh dispatcher asked before hanging up.
“Well, I’m going to see what I’ve got,” the Apex dispatcher responded.
What they had was a fire inside a 7,300-square foot building filled with chemicals and contaminants. Dozens of firefighters from surrounding communities joined Apex, and authorities attempted to evacuate more than 15,000 Apex residents in the pathway of the noxious fumes.