Apex
mayor - Come clean on toxins - Weatherly berates
the firm for not disclosing what chemicals burned
in last week's fire
APEX -- 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.