Deer Park residents cope with aftermath
Shannon McDuff tasted something sweet in the back of her throat. She figured it was from the benzene.
While she has faith in those dealing with the aftermath of a chemical blaze at a Deer Park plant, McDuff said she cannot ignore concerns over the detection of the known carcinogen, which Thursday morning triggered a shelter-in-place order in the city lasting about seven hours.
“I am scared, though,” she said. “I’m scared right now for my body.”
The 48-year-old sat among dozens Thursday afternoon waiting for screenings at Harris County Public Health’s mobile clinic in Deer Park. Some seeking treatment at the clinic assumed that their symptoms were triggered by the fire, which formed a plume of black smoke that hung over the Houston area for days.
Intercontinental Terminals Company, whose Deer Park facility was engulfed in flames Sunday, has said it strives to comply with the law. The company stores petrochemcials for companies.
The elevated benzene levels that were detected after the fire was extinguished Wednesday, however, added to the growing sense of confusion some residents such as McDuff are feeling in the wake of the fire. Is the air safe to breathe? Can we stick around? Are leaders telling the truth?
Others, though, were more certain.
“It is what it is,” Lonnie Baker, 63, said. He threw a plastic ball to his dog at the park. “You’ve gotta live with it, I’m sorry.”
Ashley Elizondo, 26, arrived at the clinic, located at an activity center on West 13th Street, for a health screening with her husband and 16-month-old daughter. The tot couldn’t verbally express how she was feeling, but she let out a series of coughs that made Elizondo think the environmental concerns were to blame.
Below the risk threshold
A UTHealth School of Public Health medical toxicologist said that the standard applied in the recommendation of a shelter-inplace warning was a conservative one not meant to suggest benzene levels had risen to the level of a “health effects concern.”
“(The standard) was to be absolutely protective of people should a larger concentration of materials be emitted from the plant,” said Dr. Arch Carson, whose expertise is exposure to industrial and environmental toxins. “Fortunately, that did not occur.”
The shelter-in-place order was urged because benzene was measured downwind of the Intercontinental Terminals plant at 1 to 5 parts per million. The threshold for acute health effects is 50 parts per million.
At such levels, benzene can cause light-headedness, eye irritation, a rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors and confusion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people fully recover after the exposure ends, Carson said.
But one expert warned that there could be more benzene leaks in store.
“We’re in a different phase of this incident,” said Dan Cohan, a Rice University professor of environmental engineering. “We’ve gone from black smoke at high altitudes to invisible toxic gases in the neighborhood. Until the leak gets controlled, there’s a possibility we may have more temporary spikes in air toxicity levels.”
Mixed messages from the petrochemical plant and local officials have made it difficult to assess the situation, Elizondo said.
“We just never knew what to do,” she said. “At what point should we leave, should we stay?”
Elizondo and her family did leave multiple times after the onset of the fire on Sunday — and they weren’t the only ones.
Katy Powers, 17, was getting ready to leave for Austin after the shelter-in-place order was lifted Some of her family members were going to Dickinson.
“They lifted the shelter-inplace, but I still don’t trust it,” she said. “I just want to get out.”
Lauren Frazier, 37, went to work despite the order being in place.
“I feel like people are overreacting maybe,” Frazier said. “The fact that they did shelter-in-place for Deer Park put people in a panic. People are evacuating and I think it’s kind of silly.”
‘Don’t know what’s next’
She was shocked to see people walking into the nearby Food Town with towels on their faces. She had done some research, she said, and determined that it seemed safe enough to be outside.
Ingrid Cortez, 35, loaded groceries into the bed of her truck outside the grocery store. She hadn’t wanted to leave her home, but she needed water and food.
“You don’t know what’s coming next,” she said. “We might make a decision, maybe overnight, if we’re going to leave. It’s scary to be asleep and there’s stuff going on.”
Meanwhile, Stephen Wilson, 27, didn’t think too much of the change in events. Because Wilson works for a chemical cleaning service company, he’s used to the sweet, pungent odor.
“I’ve dealt with that stuff every day,” he said.