EPA conducts secret air pollution testing in Beaumont-Port Arthur
Jan. 30, 2003, 10:33PM
By DINA CAPPIELLO
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Environment Writer
PORT ARTHUR -- Call it drive-by science.
Six researchers in an unmarked Bluebird school bus have been circling the streets around Beaumont-Port Arthur industrial plants, secretly recording their pollution.
The research is part of a covert scientific operation under way since Monday night to better understand the extent of air pollution in the heavily industrialized region and how it may be affecting nearby communities.
"Our focus is outside the fence line of these facilities, where people don't have a choice," said Mark Hansen, chief of the Toxics Enforcement Section for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Dallas.
The portable laboratory, known as a Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer, or TAGA, is one of two owned by the federal government's Emergency Response Team to measure pollution at hazardous waste sites and industrial complexes, and in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.
The first one, built in the early 1980s for about $1 million, contributed to the discovery of the contamination beneath Love Canal, the neighborhood near Buffalo, N.Y., that became the country's first toxic waste dump. It was retired, and two new buses built in the 1990s were paid for by fines and fees levied against polluters.
The instruments on board the bus are capable of taking dozens of measurements in seconds and are so precise, they can detect the presence of a chemical in parts per trillion. (Imagine finding the single black Ping-Pong ball in a stadium full of white ones.)
The scientists say the rig is sensitive enough to pick up emissions from a crack cocaine pipe smoked on a city street or the dust on a person's hand after handling a bomb -- capabilities they don't like to brag about.
In Jefferson County, the bus is searching for the invisible pollutants that seep from the area's major refineries and petrochemical plants. Each night the scientists slowly steer down streets flanked with clouds of white smoke, past industrial stacks illuminated by thousands of tiny yellow lights, in the hope they will come across a plume.
The dozen or so chemicals known as volatile organic compounds contribute to smog. But alone, they can cause illnesses ranging from cancer to kidney disease. Air pollution data collected by environmental groups suggest that the amounts released are greatly underestimated by local industry.
Early Wednesday evening, at the start of the shift, the bus drove slowly by plants owned by Premcor, Huntsman, Motiva and Ethyl. These facilities, according to federal data, released more than two million pounds of air pollution in 2000 alone.
As it moves, a snorkel-like appendage attached to the top of the bus sucks in the outside air, carrying it to a device that separates and analyzes more than a dozen different chemical compounds.
At the same time, other computers and instruments record weather data and track the rig's location.
So far the concentrations detected have been low, but it doesn't necessarily mean that people living nearby are safe from the plant's emissions, the EPA said. The operation, which costs $65,000, ends tonight. The data won't be fully analyzed until this spring.
"There are a lot of people that are sensitive to chemicals at much lower concentrations. There is evidence that cancer can exist well below the standards," said Hansen.
It is also possible, Hansen said, that the TAGA could simply miss the pollution, which can pass over the bus when temperatures are cooler or flow past the air collector when winds shift.
Industry officials, who heard about the study from local news reports, said it was nothing to worry about.
The state and industry run 18 stationary air monitors in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, seven of which measure volatile organic compounds. And once or twice a year, state environmental officials come around in their own mobile laboratory, said Morris Carter, environmental health and safety manager for Premcor's Port Arthur refinery.
"The EPA van being in the area is nothing new for us," Carter said. "Every one of these monitors is out in the neighborhoods."
But unlike the TAGA, the stationary monitors sample the air only once every six days, possibly missing accidental chemical releases that can overtake neighborhoods, environmentalists say.
"There is a total lack of appropriate toxic-air monitoring in the neighborhoods," said Denny Larson, refinery coordinator for the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition in Austin. "Companies are allowed to release large amounts of chemicals into a residential neighborhood and not have a significant monitor" there.
Earlier this month, the Port Arthur Industry Group, a consortium of nine industrial plants and community groups, added another monitor to the network. It samples every 12 days.
Hilton Kelley, who lives three blocks from a Motiva refinery and six blocks from Premcor Refining Group Inc.'s refinery, just wants to know what is responsible for the chemical smell that routinely infiltrates his neighborhood.
The rudimentary air samples he and other residents have collected in buckets have indicated large amounts of sulfur dioxide and benzene wafting into the community.
"I'm hoping to get the proof that we need to let industry know what they are putting into our air," said Kelley of the Community In-power and Development Association, a local activist organization.
Kelley believes the pollution is causing people to get sick. "People here are suffering from illnesses that are not found in people not near refineries," he said.
EPA scientists are hoping someday to have enough funding to run the TAGA along the Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi to New Orleans.
In a letter to U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont, EPA administrator Christie Whitman suggested that it may be a possibility.
"This effort is the first step in our effort to conduct similar testing along the entire Texas/Lousiana Gulf Coast where a majority of our nation's chemical and petroleum refineries are located," she wrote.
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