Sitting and talking with people about industrial operations and some of the hazards they can present is one of my favorite subjects. I have given dozens of talks over the years trying to share some of what I learned the hard way. There are thousands of different types of industrial operations and hundreds of thousands different products they make. To examine each individual industry one by one would be impossible, so this chapter does not deal with a very specific subject. Industrial operations are everywhere, including some unexpected places. This overview can provide some guidance to find out if the ones near you present an oversized risk.
Not all industrial operations are polluters and need to be avoided. However, most industrial operations have at least some part of their process that, if not handled correctly, does present a hazard. It may be the materials used in their manufacturing process itself that could present a danger. It also may be the waste products emitted during manufacturing or needing disposal afterwards that are hazardous and potentially dangerous.
Most people would agree that having some industry and business in their town is a good thing. And it is beneficial for many reasons. It brings jobs into the community for the local residents and tax revenues into the local economy to support the budget. Taxes paid by industrial and commercial properties help keep residential taxes lower. In many cases, local businesses may also donate money and support local organizations and community events. We have seen many Little League teams and other youth sports supported by wonderful businesses in towns.
As great as the benefits to having some manufacturing and light industrial business in town are, there also may be a negative side to some of them that we need to look at very carefully.
The first step is to determine what type of facility a given place is. Once we know what the operation does, there are places to get information so we have an educated idea about what we possibly may be exposed to, at least as much as we are able to find out based on information available and any conclusions we can draw from it. The first place to start would be finding out what specific businesses already exist in your town. There is a big difference between a company that makes wood trusses or manufactures windows for housing and a company that makes chemicals, paper products, or plastic pipes. The impact or environmental footprint the company has on the quality of life and the environment of the town can be drastically different. A single business making windows may have a very small negative impact or perhaps none at all. But, a single business such as a cement plant or solid waste incinerator can have a huge negative impact.
Determining what sorts of potentially hazardous materials the facility works with is usually the hardest part. Many businesses do not make that information easily available to the public. Sometimes they even withhold important information from the regulatory agencies trying to protect the public. We usually, though, are able to get enough information to make a well- educated decision. Even if the best we are able to find are generalities based on industry information, we can still make an intelligent decision. Usually, it is a safe bet that if the rest of the industry is using a certain group of chemicals and that the emissions from those types of facilities usually contain hazardous chemicals–for example, like high levels of mercury or dioxins–we can assume the plant in our town does as well.
We have to do the legwork to determine what exactly local industrial operations are releasing into the environment because the total amount of chemicals the EPA allows to be emitted each year is staggering. In 2018 industrial polluters in the state of New Jersey reported to the EPA they had emitted a total of six million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water, and soil. In just one year they emitted that total. Considering how densely populated the state is and how tightly packed many of the industrialized areas in the state have become, the people living anywhere near these facilities and sections are breathing these millions of pounds of chemicals.
This isn’t a problem unique to New Jersey, either. It is shocking what the EPA will allow chemical companies to manufacture and emit into our air, water, and soil. Even more shocking is to find that chemicals that are so deadly they are banned in most of the world are allowed to still be manufactured right here in the United States at the company down the street from where you may live or work. Pentachlorophenol is a pesticide used as a wood preservative. Because it is so toxic and dangerous to the environment, 168 countries banned it from use. The last company in North America making it is located in Mexico, but it will be closing due to support of the ban. Sensing opportunity and profit, a chemical company in Orangeburg, South Carolina, decided they would go into the manufacturing of it due to the United States having not joined the other 168 countries banning it. After tremendous public opposition in Orangeburg and the surrounding area, the company backed down on its plans and decided not to.
Some places in the country have had one large company operating at the same location on sprawling complexes for decades. At some of these complexes, the amount of pollution is vast, affecting thousands of surrounding homes and contaminating groundwater for hundreds of thousands. Dupont, for example, who operated a facility in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, since 1902, dumped millions of gallons of hazardous waste into unlined ponds and lagoons on their industrial campus.
When inspections from environmental officials back in the 1980s raised alarms due to what the inspectors saw, the company tried to downplay the impact the waste disposal had. The solvents they had dumped for decades migrated through the groundwater and entered hundreds of nearby homes, vaporizing up through the soil and into the buildings. People in the neighborhood were already dealing with mercury and lead contamination, and now there was evidence of the industrial solvents TCE and PCE in their homes and air. The people discovered their neighborhood had elevated levels of some cancers including kidney and non-Hodgkin’s cancer. Several hundred homes needed to have special air venting systems to keep the toxic gases to a safe level in their homes.
Dupont resisted testing numerous homes and denied much of the pollution came from their site for years. In what once appeared to be a settlement between the state and the company, Dupont agreed to give the state 70 acres of woods for the public to use and enjoy. It turned out a large portion of that property was contaminated with arsenic and lead and, by giving it away, the company hoped to absolve itself of the responsibility and cost of clean up.
The Dupont story is only one of thousands we need to be aware of. Companies that have been polluting their lands for decades are in many places across the country. Dupont has other facilities just like this one. There are refineries, chemical companies, steel plants, and many other types of industrial operations that have a toxic past to be avoided at all costs. We highly recommend extreme caution before locating near any of these long-time manufacturing facilities. The disposal of hazardous wastes was unregulated for many of the years these businesses operated, and there are many secrets the property has yet to reveal.
There are also some individual companies that emit chemicals in quantities far greater than those allowed by their permits, even chemicals that are known to cause cancer. When self-reporting of these emissions is allowed to take place, underestimates and outright deceit is far more common than the EPA tells the public..
There are also companies that work with and emit large quantities of chemicals that are known to be extremely dangerous but because of weak or non existing regulations on these emissions, people living near these factories are subjected to the toxic chemicals. One example of this is the company Sterigenics. Sterigenics is a known emitter of a highly dangerous and cancer causing chemical, ethylene oxide. Their emissions totaled as high as 169,000 pounds a year in the past. Known to cause genetic mutations as far back as 1948 and trigger cancers in animal testings in the ‘70s, ethylene oxide went basically unregulated until after 2016 when the EPA finally took limited action to regulate this chemical.
Sterigenics has multiple locations across the U.S. At their Willowbrook, Illinois, plant outside Chicago, the EPA confirmed toxic pollution from the plant was responsible for long-term cancer risks up to 10 times higher than considered acceptable by the EPA. After many years of exposing area residents to millions of pounds of toxic ethylene oxide the plant announced it would be closing instead of adding pollution control equipment as required. The company claimed the emissions of ethylene oxide were caused by people barbecuing and not their operation even though air monitors near the plant registered a 90% drop in the chemical once the plant closed.
In Smyrna, Georgia, another Sterigenics plant is operating. Concentrations of ethylene oxide are measured at 27 times the state level for safety. In most cases, the numbers used were reported by the company itself, and the state has not been active in collecting any air emission data on their own. The one air monitor the state did set up is not located near any facility emitting ethylene oxide. The state claims they want to measure the chemical in traffic emissions. The company temporarily shut down in 2019 to supposedly make modifications and add pollution control equipment. At the time of this writing, May 2020, the FDA is trying to have the plant reopened to assist with sterilization of medical equipment during the Coronavirus pandemic.
A powerful trade organization representing the chemical industry stepped in to do air testing near the plants. The Chemistry Council maintains that vegetation and cars are responsible for the ethylene oxide emissions.
Beyond the places in our own towns that may cause potential hazards, we also need to look at the adjoining communities as well. Usually where there are manufacturing facilities, there tends to be a group of them. An industrial park with multiple factories can have several dozen businesses of concern. Places like Petroleum Alley in Louisiana and Chemical Wasteland along the turnpike in New Jersey are extreme examples of the devastating effects of industrial development gone wild. Air pollution, water pollution, and toxic waste do not understand boundaries. Sprawling industrial zones spanning many miles have turned many urban areas into toxic wastelands. Along with those toxic industrial wastelands also go the residential housing areas and the people who live there everyday.
Pollutants emitted by local industrial operations can have a tremendous impact on health and quality of life. Even if there are only one or two factories in the area, depending on what they are, people living nearby could be in for a miserable experience. It is important to find out what the air emissions are for any factories located nearby where we live or work. Spending a large part of the day breathing whatever contaminants and pollutants the factories emit has a large effect on people’s health.
Poisonous air emissions are legally allowed to be sent into our air by industry; they count in the millions of pounds each year. It is incredible how much mercury, lead, dioxin, and hundreds more known cancer-causing compounds are spewed into our air by companies looking to maximize profits and minimize expenses. Taking a look at an air emissions permit application submitted to the state or EPA from a plastic manufacturer or a cement plant would read like a list of chemicals found at a Superfund site. Many state environmental agencies have a searchable database of air permits from individual companies you are able to access and review.
The Toxic Release Inventory the EPA operates is also useful to search individual company data but, much is self reported so always consider the numbers may be lower than actually emitted.
In the City of Industry, California a lead battery recycler was fined for emitting lead, arsenic, and other toxic chemicals into the air and surrounding neighborhoods. The lead and other chemicals were emitted over three years from 2017 to 2019 at minimum but may have been ongoing for much longer. The company was also cited for failure to minimize dust emissions, violating reporting requirements, and not properly maintaining pollution control equipment. In 2016 testing of 132 homes near the facility showed 100 had lead levels high enough to be of concern and may need remediation to prevent people from being further exposed. Exposure to lead may cause kidney disease, and it also limits brain development in children. 1,3-butadiene, one of the other chemicals emitted from the plant, can cause cancer.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania a steel plant was fined for storing lead and zinc dust in a manner that the toxic particles were blowing around, contaminating areas outside of the storage site. The plant was fined for mismanagement of hazardous waste and illegally storing lead dust. The materials were found to have been dispersed through the area by precipitation and winds. The plant also was violating proper waste management practices.
In the southeast part of Los Angeles, California, lead from a factory that recycled car batteries for years contaminated the surrounding area. The Exide battery recycling plant processed 11 million batteries every year until it was forced to close in 2015 as part of a settlement for hazardous waste violations.
A study was done by the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. The researchers determined where the most impacted areas were from the lead emissions of the Exide plant and used soil contamination data from the California Department of Toxic Substance Control. They then gathered baby teeth from children who lived in areas where the concentrations of lead in the soil were above safe levels. The average level was twice that and ranged as high as five times. There was no doubt that the emissions in the air and the soil over the years showed up in the teeth of children. Lead causes damage to brain development in infants and is known to cause cancer in adults. Los Angeles County officials believe up to 2,500 properties near the plant are in need of remediation from dangerous levels of lead.
We can’t emphasize enough trying to find out what the operations near where you live are putting into the air you are breathing. There are databases to locate this information listed in our resources section.
The smaller cities and towns may not have giant clusters of industry stretching for miles, but the companies they do have may cause enough risk on their own. There are places like Hoosick Falls, New York, a small town about an hours drive north from the state capital of Albany. This small town was happy to have several large manufacturing companies call it home. The happiness ended when two companies caused almost the entire town’s public water supply to be unsafe to use. The small village may have six Superfund sites as a result. One major contaminant was PFOA, one of a group of toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases, such ailments of the liver and kidney. The level of the contaminant PFOA could well be the highest ever found in the nation according to a former EPA regional director.
In North Carolina a study from North Carolina State University found a DuPont plant discharged wastewater into the Cape Fear River with concentrations of PFAS as high as 990,000 parts per trillion. Near a water intake for drinking water supplied to four counties downstream from the plant, levels were 130,000 parts per trillion. The EPA has established a health advisory safety level of 70 parts per trillion.
Some remediation takes years and decades. In the meantime, residents are forced to find alternative water supplies. Sometimes the EPA declares the water safe enough to drink, but really the water is still contaminated with chemicals at some level. Once a town’s water source is contaminated, sometimes cleaning and restoring it back to clean and safe may not always be possible. Certain chemicals, such as PFOS, TCE, some VOCs from petroleum, and Perc are next to impossible to fully remove from a water supply once they spread out in the groundwater aquifer.
There are very few places where the water has not been impacted and degraded by industrial activities. While fewer of our rivers, streams, and lakes are being used as cesspools, millions of gallons of hazardous wastes are still discharged into them every year. Groundwater contamination beneath some of these plants is an ongoing concern, and not a week goes by without another report of an aquifer being polluted by some chemical substance disposed of carelessly.
Many times, once a certain industry has started up an operation, they attract other similar companies to move in and open up in the same area. Clusters of similar businesses such as car dealers all together in Auto Row are a low-impact example of this phenomenon. Oil refineries, scrap yards, and auto body shops are high-impact examples. Knowing the present and potential future zoning plans of an area makes predicting these clusters easier, but as many of these clusters already exist, it is important to know their unique risks.
Unfortunately, towns and cities look at each individual business as existing in a bubble. The government almost never talks about the cumulative effect of all the combined negative health impacts in an area. That is how an area that may have been a clean place to live starts to become a not-so-healthy place. To get the true number of potential health hazards, add up all the toxic emissions of all the businesses, not each individual business by itself like the government numbers.
Entire sections of cities are dedicated to heavy use industrial zones. For 34 years I lived in New Jersey. Many of those years were spent living and working in the area known to locals as The Armpit. If you have ever driven the New Jersey Turnpike headed into or out from New York, it’s the section where the air some days starts to turn a strange shade of orange. We always knew when we got close because the smell was a cross between a rotting cantaloupe, a stink bomb, and burning plastic, a smell that permeated our nostrils. Some days it actually stung. All outside air to the car was turned off, the windows were closed, and we would hope to get through it as quickly as possible. The area was home to chemical plants, plastic manufacturers, an enormous Exxon refinery, power generation plants, and hundreds of other heavy industrial operations.
The tens of thousands of people who lived there, though, are not so lucky, The level of chemical compounds in the air they breathe is among some of the unhealthiest in the entire country. This type of heavily industrialized area is one to be avoided whenever possible.
There are many other places that have these huge clusters of some of the most giant, polluting, toxic, gas-spewing factories. From Texas to Maryland, they are everywhere. At least these places are visible and therefore easily avoided. Unfortunately, there are many thousands of people who live in these places. They seem to have no choice but to accept the conditions where they live and deal with it as best as possible. Unsurprisingly, some of the most heavily polluted places in the country are located in some of the poorest neighborhoods and towns.
Louisiana has its own Cancer Alley. An 80 mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is home to over 100 refineries and petrochemical plants. One or two of these huge plants is enough to have an oversized impact on the air quality, but over 100 creates what the EPA said is “some of the most toxic air in America.”
In a CBS news story, local residents from the town of Reserve shared some personal stories with the investigative reporter. Reserve sits smack in the middle of those plants and has a cancer risk calculated by the EPA at almost 50 times the national average. They are also the home of the Denka Performance Elastomer plant owned by Dupont, the same people who brought us non-stick pans that cause cancer. According to the CBS story, people in this town of 10,000 people for decades have had health problems ranging from dizziness and severe headaches to liver and lung cancer. Many believe a plant, hundreds of yards from some of their homes, is the source. The plant manufactures a chemical called chloroprene. The EPA calls it a likely human carcinogen. The Network for Human Rights also did a story on this town and the plant. It was called “Waiting To Die.” When they did a survey of people living near the plant, they discovered an astounding cancer rate of 7%. To put that in perspective, data from the CDC shows most parts of the United States have a cancer rate of under 1%. Of course, the company denied they could be the cause, claiming the EPA’s concern about the toxicity of their product chloroprene was based on faulty science. I will bet anything not a single one of their employees in middle management or higher lives within 10 miles of the plant. And other people should not have to either.
To help people see what is being released in specific areas or to avoid highly polluted areas, the EPA maintains a database called the Toxic Release Inventory. With the database, users are able to see what individual factories claim they are releasing into the air and water. It lists the specific chemical or pollutant and the quantity they are reporting to the EPA. This database sadly neglects the cumulative effect of all the industrial operations located in an area. Having 10 factories all belching levels of mercury and lead into the air just below acceptable air emission regulations means that the people living in the area are being subjected to levels 10x the acceptable limits for toxic chemicals.
On top of all of the known dangers, there are the unknown ones lurking inside many of these industrial buildings, dangers people and authorities only find out about when there is a problem.
For example, there is the chemical company in Madison Heights, Wisconsin. Apparently, the owner of Electro-Plating Services decided he would store all the hazardous waste and old chemicals the business generated instead of having to pay to dispose of it. Over the years the company was cited for various violations; however, the actual situation apparently went unknown. The building contained 5,000 drums and containers of hazardous materials by the time environmental authorities acted. Some of the materials included chloride, cyanide, chromium, and acids. The Department of Justice said there was a pit dug in the lower level of the building to store the waste. The company was only 500 feet away from residential housing. How many of these illegal toxic dumps are inside of industrial buildings in any town are unknown–until something happens, that is.
The city of Ogden, Utah, purchased an old industrial building that they wanted to tear down and use for another purpose. The city, however, never knew what was stored inside of the building. It turned out that the past owner, who used the building from the 1960s until he passed away in 2014, had accumulated an estimated 60,000 containers of hazardous waste inside the five story structure. The government is unsure where all of the waste came from, but many of the containers had markings from the U.S. Military. One theory is that back in the 1980s, when the government was allowed to sell surplus materials including old chemicals to the public, they were possibly purchased by the past owner and stored. The military would sell the chemicals at a cheap price to avoid the much higher disposal fees it would have had to pay if done properly. The old owner made his money from buying and selling military and government surplus items. The hazardous waste site is considered so dangerous that the EPA is using Superfund money to get the clean-up started. The clean-up of the building will take months, and if the structure catches on fire in the meantime, there would be a disaster in the entire area. Nobody had a clue what was sitting inside the building all those decades.
We are quite realistic that it is very difficult to find any place that is pristine any longer. However, with a little research and knowledge, you can avoid knowingly living in an area where the air, water, and land are so contaminated and unhealthy. Take the time to know what is in your neighborhood.
To decide how far to be from existing industrial operations, you need to determine what the plants are emitting into your air. Even before knowing exactly how much and what they are, you can draw basic assumptions to stay far away from a chemical factory or a refinery. However, a lumber mill may not present such a large threat if they also do not use wood preservatives. We always tell people to stay a mile away from any operation with smokestacks appearing to continuously emit smoke. Smokestack industries do require the largest buffer zone. Also check into the amount and volumes of noise and truck traffic these places generate. Remember, too, that multiple industrial operations multiply the quantity and number of potentially hazardous emissions you could be exposed to. It does take time to research these, but in the end you will have some comfort in knowing you are not at risk. In general, do leave at least a mile between you and industry.