Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct the number of days during which EPA air monitoring found unsafe levels of chlorine and hydrochloric acid near the BioLab site.
A deep serenity used to fill Cheryl Garcia when she looked up at the clouds and thought of her late parents and her sister, who died in her 30s. Seeing the clouds made Garcia feel like they were OK.
Garcia still scans the sky when she goes outside, but now she does so in fear instead of spiritual contemplation. And now she is looking for a different kind of cloud ever since a fire at a BioLab plant in her home county of Rockdale sent a chemical plume into the September sky.
The incident prompted the evacuation of 17,000 people and shelter-in-place warnings across the county for several weeks.
“It’s definitely changed my life,” Garcia, a retired nurse practitioner, said in a recent interview at her home. “Now it’s like, I just hope there’s no smoke in the sky.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Physical symptoms from exposure to smoke from the BioLab fire resulted in more than 1,000 visits to hospital emergency rooms or urgent care facilities by residents of Rockdale and 24 other counties, according to Georgia’s public health department. But that doesn’t count the innumerable visits residents have made to their primary care providers for symptoms that include shortness of breath and irritation of their ears, noses or throats.
Garcia, for instance, said she has visited six physicians seeking answers about her own symptoms from chemical exposure to her throat and lungs.
Even more incalculable, perhaps, is the mental health toll of the BioLab incident — not only on residents who fear long-term illnesses like lung cancer from the exposure, but also those who are grieving the loss of a community they knew and are filled with mistrust of their local government. The state’s behavioral health department does not have data that would show whether Rockdale residents have been requesting more mental health services specifically due to the fire.
One of Garcia’s great joys every fall is giving away hundreds of persimmons from her fruit tree to fellow church members and other friends. After the BioLab fire, she and her husband decided not to give away or eat the fruits after finding what they believe was chemical residue on them.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Clement Wilmot said he was devastated after he and his wife, Merle, found four of their beloved koi fish, worth an estimated total of $3,700, floating dead in the pond the couple had built in their Rockdale yard. And Madelyne Reece suspects vapors released by the fire inflamed her horse’s airways so much that the animal likely will have to be euthanized.
Studies show that a healthy environment is better for people’s mental health, said Tara Powell, who studies the mental health impact of environmental disasters as an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“We are so connected to our sense of place and our environment that we feel depression and anxiety symptoms or a sense of loss of what used to be” after a disaster or an incident like the BioLab fire, Powell said.
When such incidents remove people’s safety net, it can cause anxiety, grief, post-traumatic stress symptoms, feelings of isolation and solastalgia, she said. Solastalgia is the distress caused by unexpected or unwanted environmental change, such as an environmental or chemical disaster.
Corliss Turner, a 68-year-old Rockdale resident, said she worries every time she brushes her teeth or washes dishes that her water could be contaminated. In the days after the BioLab incident, the Rockdale water authority deemed the water safe for consumption, but Turner said she still avoids drinking tap water and even the filtered water from her refrigerator.
Her doctor has increased the dosage of her anxiety medication, she said.
“Every time I come out, I have this anxiety because I don’t know if I’m safe,” Turner said. “I feel like I’m in a sci-fi movie.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
BioLab manufactures chlorinating agents used in pools and hot tubs.
In the days after the blaze, the federal Environmental Protection Agency monitored the air quality for chlorine gas and hydrochloric acid and found unsafe levels of both for about 20 days near the BioLab site, until the chemical reaction was stopped with water and a buffering compound, said Kevin Eichinger, an on-scene coordinator for the EPA.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division now is overseeing BioLab’s investigation and cleanup efforts, which include the company using vacuum trucks to collect and contain rainwater at the site. The EPD will review samples of soil, water and sediment collected by BioLab, according to EPD spokesperson Sara Lips.
In a statement, a BioLab spokesperson said the company has collaborated with first responders and local, state, and federal authorities “to successfully remediate the situation at our Conyers warehouse, prioritizing at all times the health and safety of the community.”
“We moved quickly to establish dedicated resources, responding to tens of thousands of calls and emails and assisting thousands of individuals in person with claims, reimbursement requests, and more,” the statement adds.
Though the full impact of the fire on the environment and the long-term health effects from the chemical plume are unknown, many residents are fearing the worst.
Reece, who rescued her 6-year-old gelding from a slaughter pipeline in Tennessee and now believes she will have to put him down this summer, said she wants to leave Rockdale but feels trapped.
“Who’s going to buy my house?” the 33-year-old said. “Nobody is going to, and that has been a huge weight.”
“I bought my house four years ago, and it’s my dream house and it’s my safe space,” Reece added, discussing how she felt before and after the fire. “And this really took a lot of that from me in the mental headspace aspect. I had this implicit trust in our government, trust in the safety around me, and all that has really been taken away. And I feel like, ‘What’s next?’, all of the time.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
One emotion in plentiful supply among residents is anger.
Reece and other advocates say they feel abandoned by the Rockdale County government. They note that the Sept. 29 event was at least the fourth significant fire or chemical release from the BioLab plant in Rockdale in the past 20 years.
Many residents are calling on county officials to remove BioLab’s business license and shut it down. Though the county has filed a lawsuit against the company calling for its closure, commissioners have not taken away its business license.
Oz Nesbitt Sr., who lost his reelection bid as chairman of the Board of Commissioners, initially tried to tell residents at the final board meeting before he leaves office that they could not discuss BioLab during the public comment portion of the meeting because of the litigation. He eventually gave up trying to enforce that.
“They won’t even let us speak,” Reece said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Nesbitt and other county officials could not be reached for comment.
Reece, who started the Facebook page “Stand against BioLab in Rockdale County, Ga.,” says residents would be much less upset if county officials had taken responsibility for allowing BioLab to continue operations in the county despite the previous incidents.
“It seems like they’ve done nothing at all but say nothing or point the finger at BioLab,” she said. “But you have them here, you have a business relationship with them. You’re complicit in this.”
Rockdale County and its school system received about $1.3 million this year in property tax revenue from BioLab, including for its real estate property, inventory and equipment, according to county Tax Commissioner Tisa Smart-Washington.
But residents say no amount of tax revenue can offset what they have lost — a sense of safety and connection to a place they knew.
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
On the day of the BioLab fire, Conyers resident Leslie Lambert said she and her wife hurried to move their three horses to southern Rockdale to get them further from the site of the fire. The horses stayed there for 46 days.
Lambert, 66, said the couple’s temporary separation from the horses took a psychological toll.
“It’s harmed the community,” Lambert added, referring to the fire. “I think it’s harmed a lot of people from the mental aspect, like feeling safe, and I think it’s harmed a lot of people physically.”
Powell, the expert on the mental health impacts from environmental disasters, recommended the formation of community recovery groups where people who have experienced loss from the BioLab fire can discuss and normalize their feelings and reestablish a sense of safety and connection.
Anyone who is struggling or is in crisis, or knows someone who is, can reach out to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. Or they can go to 988lifeline.org and chat with a live clinician.
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