Chemical plant inundated with complaints from nearby residents

Residents close to a chemical plant
have been getting sick, they say.

PASCAGOULA – An Environmental Protection Agency inspector, during a tour of Mississippi Phosphates in 2009, walked through a puddle so acidic it ate leather off the inspector’s steel-toed boots.

The inspector’s vivid account is one of dozens from an inspection that year that yielded a biting administrative order from the EPA to the company, using the words “imminent and substantial” danger when referring to the possible impact on human health or the environment.

The federal agency ordered the company to fix uncontrolled leaks and spills of sulfuric acid on its grounds, and stop untreated discharges to the adjacent bayou and uncontrolled spills and leaks of phosphoric acid to unlined ditches.

The agency found more issues in 2011, and in 2012, reinforced its orders to clean up.

Then last year, the state Department of Environmental Quality shut down two plants at the fertilizer manufacturer because they were creating an acid mist that caused neighboring industry to evacuate workers.

All the while, a neighborhood less than a mile away says it was unaware of the reports. Cherokee Forest has 132 homes along heavily industrialized Bayou Casotte in east Pascagoula, where several industries contribute heavily to air emissions.

Residents have been complaining in recent years about thick dust, strong acrid smells and health problems.

They’ve told regulators what’s in the air and what’s on the ground at neighboring industry is coming into their yards, onto their cars, onto their skin and into their lungs.

The company says it has fixed its problems from the 2009 inspection.

“EPA conducted a final compliance inspection in October 2010 and confirmed that MPC had implemented all the corrective action items addressed in the 2009 order,” it said in a statement to the Sun Herald.

Over the last five years, MPC has continued to invest in its operation and environmental programs and work with the EPA and Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to ensure future environmental compliance at the facility.”

So what’s the significance of the EPA inspector’s boot?

Howard Page, a community coordinator with the STEPS Coalition in Biloxi, who helped organize the neighborhood into a group, said although Mississippi Phosphates has made improvements, he believes the story of the acid puddle is relevant today.

“It shows how very real the threat is,” Page said. “It’s not the most recent event; things the company has been cited for and had to correct. But it captures the issue — how strong that acid is.

“If it does that to a boot, just imagine what it does when you’re breathing it as a mist. It’s a concrete example of what people are facing, not just odors or a possible concern.”

Mississippi Phosphates said it pledged more than $2.5 million to cleanup what the EPA found in 2009, has made other improvements and more recently has offered air monitors in the neighborhood to detect sulfuric acid.

But Page said he believes the chronic history of problems, “not one or two times, but a long series of incidents” presents a health threat to workers and nearby residents.

He said there’s a need to control the risk to workers and neighbors.

“The process they operate there that involves acid is a potentially dangerous process if it’s not managed and overseen well,” he said.

Page said one issue for the neighborhood has been substantiating their complaints. And though other industries are putting dust and chemicals in the air, remarks of trained EPA inspectors at Mississippi Phosphates in the 2009 report sound familiar to residents:

• “the sampling team tasted a metallic flavor in the air that permeated to the back of the throat. Sampling team members complained of burning, stinging and itchy skin and eyes. The metallic taste remained with EPA personnel for at least two days after leaving the site.”
• “The ongoing inhalation of sulfuric acid mist may pose substantial harm to personnel at and visitors to the facility.”
• “The effects of discharges . extend far beyond the initial discharge zone, reaching to the other side of Bayou Casotte, and far into the commercial turning basin (of the bayou).”
• “Low pH liquids facilitate the mobilization of metals such as arsenic, cadmium and chromium. Metals are readily leached from the soils and or sediment into groundwater upon contact with a solution of pH less than 3.5.” The puddle one inspector stepped in had a pH of less than 2 (the company’s permit allows a range of 6 to 9).

Today, the residents, complaining of health issues, find it is up to them to chase complaints and prove their case. And Page pointed out local government, the Department of Environmental Quality and the industries are also at the table looking for solutions.

Source: Hattisburg American

Concerned about the air quality at work or in your area? Electrocorp offers industrial-strength air purification units with activated carbon and HEPA that help provide cleaner and more breathable air, removing airborne chemicals, vapors, gases, odors, particles, dust and more. Contact Electrocorp for more information and a free consultation.

Xylene detected by employees

Xylene and other airborne chemicals
can be harmful to human health.

Located in the southwest corner of Midland County sits the City of Odessa’s Bob Derrington Water Reclamation Plant; almost invisible to anyone driving south on East Loop 338.

It was here that alert employees discovered the presence of a chemical waste that was dumped into the city’s sewers from a manhole cover, according to an Ector County lawsuit.
Ben Jordan, assistant director of utilities for Odessa, said the discovery occurred Jan. 8 and almost by accident.

With employees doing maintenance at the “top of the plant,” or the area where raw sewage initially comes in, Jordan said the employees noticed a difference in the way the air smelled.

Explaining that after working near sewage for many years, Jordan said the employees can usually detect something different in the water by the way it smells.

“It was sweet, almost like Pine-Sol,” Jordan said. “We just knew it was a different smell.”

Taking a sample, they sent a sample off to be tested and did a second sample on Jan. 30. However, because the sample was not the same quality as the Jan. 8 samples, Jordan said they did not send it in for testing.

“I make sure to do it the same way; that way our tests have integrity,” he said, adding a third sample was sent on Feb. 10.

When the results came back, it showed that there were high levels of xylene in the water.

Xylene, a liquid hydrocarbon obtained by distilling wood, coal tar, or petroleum, and used in fuels and solvents, and in chemical synthesis, is also highly flammable and causes irritation of the skin and birth defects if ingested.

Lab reports done by Ana-Lab Corporation indicate the test in January reported that the water had 17.04 micrograms per liter of xylene in the water.

In a separate test conducted in February, water from the plant again showed elevated levels of xylene, this time at 14.14 micrograms per liter.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website states that federal law allows no more than 10 microgram per liter of xylene in the city’s sewer system.

But the xylene also did more than that. Jordan said it killed all the microorganisms that are used to treat the sewer water.

As the raw sewage comes in, various types of microorganisms start eating at the sewage, and each other, eventually dropping all the fecal matter out of the water as it goes through the process, Jordan said.

Next, chlorine is poured into the water and then taken out with sulfur dioxide because any runoff from the plant goes into the Monahans Draw, which is about a mile south of the plant, Jordan said.

“The state says you can’t have water with chlorine go back out,” Jordan said.

But once the xylene hit the plant, Jordan said it started to kill off the microorganisms, which started to slow down how fast the plant could process water.

Sitting in the tanks halfway through the process is a large amount of dried sludge, which sits on top of the pools, and forces the running water to go under it. But at the end of the process, Jordan pours out some water which is clear.

Because of state standards, Jordan said the water is tested every day, with the employees walking around the plant during shifts to make sure everything is flowing smoothly.

The xylene that came into the plant was the result of 90 barrels of the waste poured into the sewer system by employees with Roywell Services Inc., a lawsuit filed by Ector County alleges.

When Odessa and Ector County law enforcement officials did their investigation, an unnamed employee with the company said he saw two employees use a pump to drain the contents of a lined pit —identified as a mixture of acid, chemicals and water — from the property and into a manhole, the lawsuit stated.

The mixture that was reportedly dumped into a manhole cover at the property located at 2425 West Interstate 20 was “hot,” and was dissolving caliche rock and dirt.

Additional interviews with employees stated that they dumped about 90 barrels of the waste into the sewer system and lifted the manhole cover with company-owned equipment at the direction of one of their managers, the lawsuit stated.

Source: OA Online. The article has been edited for length.

Worried about airborne chemicals in your workplace? The "sweet" smell of xylene or sharp odors of chemicals may be harmful to human health. But even if there is no smell, airborne chemicals may be present. Indoor air can be treated with one of Electrocorp's air cleaners for industrial or commercial settings. The air cleaners for odor control are highly versatile, easy to use and effective and Electrocorp also offers air cleaners for waste water treatment plants.  

Contact Electrocorp for more information.

Sick Building Syndrome related to VOCs

The VOCs released by mold can
make people sick, researcher says.

As a specialist in mold toxins, Joan Bennett didn’t believe in sick building syndrome.

Then Hurricane Katrina struck, Bennett’s home was flooded, and she evacuated.

A month later, she returned to the house to sample her home for mold. Her house smelled horrendous and even with protective gear, she felt awful – dizziness, headache, malaise. She walked outside and felt better.

Then it struck her: “I think there’s something in this terrible mold I’m smelling.”

But she still believed in her old arguments against the theory. She knew how much mold toxin we ordinarily get exposed to from mold in food, and she still knew that it was far greater than any we could breathe from spores in the air.

But the smell of mold was another matter. Most things we can smell are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and some VOCs are known to make people sick.

“I knew that a minor theory was that sick building syndrome might be caused by the VOCs that make fungi smell moldy,” Bennett says.

And then she thought, “Maybe there is such a thing as sick building syndrome, and maybe it has nothing to do with the fungus toxins I’ve been studying all my life!”

That moment transformed her research career.

The Sniff Test

She focused on a VOC called “mushroom alcohol” that is the primary component of the typical smell of mold. It’s formed especially when molds eat linoleic acid, which occurs both in many biological cells and in building products like oil-based paint.

When fruit flies breathed in the mushroom alcohol, she found that they started moving strangely. They trembled, moved slowly, fell over, lacked coordination. They looked like insectile Parkinson’s patients.
Bennett knew that Parkinson’s could be caused by exposure to chemicals like pesticides. So could mushroom alcohol be doing the same thing? Could these fruit flies in fact have their own version of Parkinson’s?

To find out, Bennett and her collaborators gave the stricken flies L-dopa, a medication that reverses the effects of Parkinson’s in humans. And indeed, the flies moved more naturally, indicating that the mushroom alcohol was operating on a similar pathway.

It’s a long way from a fruit fly to a human, so Bennett and her team tested human cell lines as well. A human cell in a test tube can’t tremor with Parkinson’s disease, of course, but Bennett found that the mushroom alcohol was toxic to the cells, killing some of them off. She published her findings recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thus, Bennett says, VOCs from mold may be an important contributor to Parkinson’s disease. It would explain a long-standing mystery:

Every known toxin that causes Parkinson’s is man-made and relatively recent, but Parkinson’s has existed for thousands of years. Bennett says that a variety of natural neurotoxins – mushroom alcohol as well as other VOCs – may lead to the disease.

Elliott Horner, an indoor air quality researcher at Atlanta-based company UL, says that he wasn’t surprised that a fungal VOC affects the physiological functioning of animals.

Moldy buildings, he says, have long been suspected to make people sick through VOCs as well as through mycotoxins, small particulates, and allergens. But he says that it’s a “huge step forward” to have an animal model that will allow researchers to study the impacts of these VOCs.

Source: Discover Magazine

Remove VOCs, mold and other contaminants from the ambient air with Electrocorp’s industrial-strength air cleaners containing activated carbon and HEPA air filters. For more information and a free consultation, contact Electrocorp today.

Experts say nose can be re-trained for better sense of smell

A new study gives hope to people who are losing their sense of smell.

A loss of smell can be the result of disease or aging,
experts say.

New York University researchers have identified possible ways to reverse the loss of smell due to aging or disease and say training may be the answer.

Human sense of smell is not easily explained or treated, the authors suggest.

The olfactory bulb, a structure beneath the frontal cortex that receives nerve impulses from the nose, also has direct connections to the amygdala, which controls emotions and physiology, and to higher-order regions like the prefrontal cortex, involved in cognition and planning.

"Unlike information from your eyes and ears that has gone through many connections to reach the frontal cortex, the olfactory system is just two connections away," says Donald A. Wilson, PhD, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and senior research scientist at the Emotional Brain Institute at Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, who led the study.

"The result is an immediate pathway from the environment through our nose to our memory."

Loss of smell linked to disease, aging

Many illnesses can bring about a loss of smell, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, and it is also often associated with normal aging.

While the exact cause remains unknown, the researchers discovered the part of the brain where loss of smell may happen, and they showed in the lab rat study that training can affect it for better or for worse.

“In some cases it may be a 'use it or lose it' phenomenon," says Dr. Wilson, adding that smell training therapies have the potential to restore smell function in some cases.

The study’s findings are published online in Nature Neuroscience.

Source: New York University

A bad smell may be linked to poor indoor air quality and potential health effects. Find out more about industrial-strength air cleaners with activated carbon plus HEPA or contact Electrocorp directly.