workers
safety and health
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“I'm just talking as a human being – one that lives
real close to your plant. I still have burning eyes, burning nasal passages. I
still have diarrhea. I'm still lethargic. Period. My concern is that there are
people in the neighborhood that do not have insurance,” stated a downriver
community resident exposed to chemicals from the July 14 Atofina explosion. Over 125 downriver residents, many with
symptoms similar to those of methyl mercaptan exposure, attended a risk
communications program five days after the explosion at Atofina Chemical Company
in Riverview. The event, held at St. Elizabeth Church in Wyandotte, was
co-sponsored by SEMCOSH and the Sierra Club to share information about the
incident and the health effects of exposure to the toxic chemical that spewed
across several downriver communities, southwest Ontario and the Detroit River.
The performance of governmental agencies responsible for emergency evacuation
was reviewed. A majority of those attending the forum
had symptoms from the exposure. Downriver residents complained of nausea,
burning in the nose and throat, diarrhea, vomiting, hair falling out, thyroid
problems, increased asthma, heaviness in the chest, and increased blood
pressure.
Residents were concerned about evacuation procedures. Asked one,
"Why was Reno St. not evacuated? The reason why I'm asking is that I woke
up Saturday morning with a swollen throat. I still have it as of today. Someone
needs to reevaluate this (evacuation) process. How can they determine which way
the wind was blowing at 4am in the morning?" Local fire officials, responsible under
Federal law for determining evacuation needs and procedures were not in
attendance. SEMCOSH and Sierra Club representatives were joined by
Steven Tackett, Wayne County Environmental Health Department, Michelle
Jaster, US Environmental Protection Agency, Lieutenant Hemp from the US Coast
Guard, and a representative of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The forum became heated at times.
Residents of Riverview, Grosse Isle and Wyandotte raised questions about the
evacuation strategy and EPA air monitoring. Several individuals reporting what they
fear are chemical exposure symptoms asked why they had not been evacuated.
Others wondered why they received phone calls instead of having local police
officers going door-to-door to get neighbors out. The unplanned release of Methyl
Mercaptan began around 3:55 am but EPA officials were not notified until four to
five hours later with EPA monitoring beginning ten hours after the incident,
around 1 pm. The hours immediately following a release are the most critical for
air monitoring because that is when the highest exposures occur. In this case
that exposure occurred before EPA was informed and the delay in collecting data
increases the uncertainty of health officials regarding exposures. Residents reported calling Atofina’s
“health hotline number” and not getting their questions answered. Instead
the company nurse asked them questions for thirty minutes. The “health”
hotline, feel residents, is a smokescreen for the chemical company’s legal
concerns. Atofina Plant Manager Joe Ali was
repeatedly asked questions by the audience most of whom were not satisfied with
his answers. He did pledge to provide answers through the ‘hotline’. The chemical industry is capital
intensive, few workers tend highly automized processing plants, moving huge
volumes of often untested chemicals through mixing and reacting procedures. In
the chemical industry any accident has the potential of being catastrophic like
the incident in Riverview. Atofina generally seems to have recognized this, the
company’s public OSHA record is quite clean and it has adopted an intensive
union-developed, safety training procedure. At the end of the evening Dr. Jeff
Moran, from the Center for Toxicology and the Environment, siezed the microphone
at the front of the room and began answering questions about health concerns. He
dismissed any notion that Methyl Mercaptan had anything to do with symptoms
presented by anyone in the room. When someone asked “who pays you?” Moran,
who claimed to be a “consulting toxicologist” did not deny that he is being
paid by Atofina. On August 15 SEMCOSH and the Center for
Occupational and Environmental Medicine co-hosted an educational forum for
nurses and doctors in the downriver area. Michael Harbut, MD a practicing
occupational and environmental specialist at COEM and a professor at Wayne State
University discussed in depth how medical professionals can identify the
different diseases – often with quite similar symptoms – of patients who
have inhaled chemical toxins. Harbut explained the tests to perform as well as
the uncertainty of resulting from chemical releases in an industrial area. An explosion like the one in Riverview
releases chemicals into an environment full of other chemicals. This causes the
formation of different chemicals from exposure to sunlight (chlorine turns into
phosgene) and interactions between the chemicals in the air. Ongoing air
monitoring by government agencies is not comprehensive and the emergency air
monitoring didn’t begin until ten hours after the incident. |
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