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People who live near the BioLab chemical plant in Conyers can finally go outside at night, 19 days after a fire fouled the air, the Rockdale County Emergency Management agency announced.
The decision to lift a dusk-to-dawn shelter-in-place order came Thursday after air- quality monitoring tools found no instances of chemical contamination exceeding concerning levels for 72 hours, Bryan Vasser, on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said during a press conference.
“All the community air monitoring was pointing that the shelter-in-place could be lifted,” Vasser said.
Noticeably absent from the news conference: BioLab officials, the target of community ire over a lack of communication about the cleanup, the company’s poor safety record in the town and elsewhere, and skepticism about aid.
“Our community has been held hostage for a number of days, a number of weeks,” County Commission Chairman Oz Nesbitt said.
Many businesses closed or reduced hours as the polluted air hung over the town, extending over the metro Atlanta area at times. Rockdale County schools had students attend classes remotely. They will return to in-person learning on Monday.
“We extended an invitation to BioLab to participate in this press conference and, quite frankly, I think it’s a slap in the face” that the company did not participate, Nesbitt said. “Enough is enough.”
On Friday, the company issued a press release, saying, “We are also profoundly thankful to the entire community for enduring what we recognize has been an extraordinarily challenging time, and we are committed to making things right.”
BioLab has established a 24/7 call center and a local assistance center it said would help residents with reimbursements and other claims related to the fire. The phone line has received 7,500 calls and the community assistance center has helped about 300 people, according to a company press release.
On Friday, an online system to set up an appointment at the in-person assistance center showed no available appointments until at least 2027. A message on the website encouraged people to file claims using the 24/7 call center.
A coalition of community groups led by the Georgia Conservation Voters Education Fund has organized a “Shutdown Biolab” campaign that will include a rally at 3 p.m. Saturday.
4 million pounds of acid neutralized in cleanup
Residents remain concerned about the health impacts of the fire.
Fire Chief Marian McDaniel said trichlor, or trichloroisocyanuric acid, was the main chemical involved. Clean-up of the swimming pool disinfectant involved neutralizing 4 million pounds of the chemical and taking it to a hazardous materials waste facility.
Nakita Bravo, who owns two local restaurants, visited an urgent-care facility on Oct. 4 after having difficulty breathing and chest pain. She received a breathing treatment and steroids.
She said Friday she was still worried about air quality.
Her 15-year-old son, who plays soccer, was prescribed albuterol for breathing difficulties after the fire, but he’s had to use it less over the past week. On the other hand, her mother had to go to urgent care for a breathing treatment, Bravo said.
Chima Ekeke, the owner of a downtown convenience store, said this week he began to feel sick, experiencing dizziness and vomiting. He could not work and had to visit urgent care, where the doctor told him his symptoms were due to exposure to chemical irritants. His blood pressure has also increased, he said.
His wife is also continuing to have mild symptoms. Ekeke said he plans to file a lawsuit.
“I have never felt this way before,” he said.
Public health officials monitoring symptoms
The Georgia Poison Center has been keeping a log of people who phoned in with symptoms after the fire, interim district health director Dr. Lynn Paxton said.
And the state Department of Public Health has monitored symptoms related to the fire using what’s called “syndromic surveillance,” agency spokesperson Nancy Nydam said.
Syndromic surveillance is a method of collecting real-time data from emergency rooms and urgent-care clinics to provide data about emerging health concerns.
In this case, the system was coded to look for key symptoms like eye, nose and throat irritation and coughing, along with keywords like BioLab, chemical fire, and Rockdale County, Nydam said.
It may not have captured every case because hospital and clinic participation in the system is not required but “it helped us get a broad picture of what was unfolding as it related to health effects, the severity of the effects, and where people were located who were experiencing them,” Nydam said.
The purpose is to gather “a broad picture of common symptoms and severity of symptoms,” although the system may not capture every case because hospital and clinic participation is not required, Nydam said.
Most of those seeking medical help were adults with mild symptoms like coughing, eye and nose irritation, sore throat and headaches, Nydam said. And they mainly came from from Rockdale County, as might be expected, she said. There were also some reports from neighboring Newton County.
More people sought medical attention in the first few days after the fire with the number decreasing over time, Nydam said.
“In an event like this, that’s what we want to see – decreasing numbers daily,” Nydam said.
Even though the findings lined up with common-sense expectations for a fire like this, monitoring is still important Nydam said.
“Had it been otherwise, it might have indicated other mitigation or prevention measures were necessary or possibly more investigation into what was in the plume,” Nydam said.
“What we are doing is we’re looking at it [the data] in the whole to see what has been the number of cases that have come up,” Paxton said. “Is there an indication that it has reached certain levels in different parts of the county?”
Paxton said analyzing the data collected will take more time but she does plan for “careful epidemiologic analysis to give a picture of effects.”
The public health data lined up with experiences at the local hospital, Piedmont Rockdale.
There, the emergency room saw a 15% to 40% increase in patients during the first 10 days of October, following the Sept. 29 fire, spokesperson John Manasso said. Patients came in with symptoms including cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, itchy eyes, headaches, nausea, vomiting and dizziness.
Most didn’t require admission.
“Most exposures in this incident resulted in only minor symptoms,” Paxton said, that shouldn’t last more than a week or two.
People with symptoms, especially those with more serious respiratory conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, should consult with their medical providers as needed, Paxton said.
Cleanup shifting from fire department to BioLab
Now that air quality has improved and some of the hazardous chemicals have been removed, the onus of the cleanup process is shifting from Rockdale County Fire Rescue to BioLab, Nesbitt said.
“It’s now left up to BioLab and all of the contract services that they’ve hired to come in and continue to do the rest of what they need to,” Nesbitt said.
The fire department would still be involved, and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration would also have representatives on site, he said.
“Overseen by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, this will include safe waste disposal, remediation of the facility property and nearby retention pod, and debris recovery from residents and the community,” BioLab said in a press release.
Nesbitt promised to ensure the company is held accountable for the fire.
“This board, this administration will be entering and engaging in some very serious conversations with the corporate leadership and management of BioLab,” he said.
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.