Arch “Chip” Carson, MD, PhD, SWCOEH Toxicologist quoted on monitoring air quality – Houston Chronicle

An intense fire churned through massive chemical storage tanks Monday at a facility east of Houston, continuously pumping plumes of black smoke that drifted across the region as firefighters fought to contain the blaze for a second straight day.

Although the fire is expected to burn another day or two at the Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, local health and emergency officials said early air quality tests indicate the fire has not posed a serious health risk to residents. No injuries were reported.

By late Monday, the fire was believed contained within six storage tanks at the ITC site, where gasoline components and other chemicals are housed in 80,000-barrel tanks.

"Right now, what we're seeing is no elevated levels (of pollutants) because the plume is high enough that it's not affecting us here close to the ground," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said during a press conference early Monday afternoon.

The plume of smoke rose up to 4,000 feet Monday afternoon, aided by relatively dry and clear conditions, allowing particles to dissipate above the ground. County officials said the plume could fall to a height of about 400 feet overnight — a distance still unlikely to impact residents' health — as the air cools and grows heavier.

"I don't expect a large number of people to have their health affected unless circumstances change or the fire worsens," said Arch Carson, a medical toxicologist at the UTHealth School of Public Health's Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH).

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Government officials on Monday eased some directives issued in the hours after the tanks caught fire, lifting a shelter-in-order for the city of Deer Park and reopening a stretch of Texas 225 near the plant. Deer Park and La Porte ISDs, which combine to serve about 20,500 students, canceled classes Monday but will reopen Tuesday. Deer Park ISD also tweeted that it would be "restricting outside activities for the duration of the incident." Portions of Independence Parkway, the main road off which ITC is located, will remain closed until further notice.

"Everything from the local level, from the Deer Park school district and the city, we're being very cautions in how we deal with this, because we want to make public safety the number one priority," Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. said. "It is a very dangerous and active event that is occurring, and it's still going on."

The fire ignited on the grounds of the 47-year-old ITC site located about two miles north of Texas 225 near the Battleship Texas State Historic Site and Buffalo Bayou. The company's storage facility contains 242 tanks capable of holding petrochemical liquids and gases, as well as oil products. It is located along the Houston Ship Channel in an area dominated by energy-producing corporations synonymous with Houston.

Intercontinental Terminals Company is owned by the Japanese behemoth Mitsui & Co., which once owned Toyota and Toshiba. Mitsui is one of the largest trading companies in Japan and owns several other Texas-based companies, including the oil and gas investments company MEP Texas Holdings, Houston-based methanol production facility MMTX Inc and feed additive manufacturing plant Novus International. About 300 people work at the Deer Park facility.

ITC officials said the fire started in tanks containing Naphtha and Xylene, both components of gasoline, and spread to a small patch of containers that included Toluene, a chemical used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinners. Exposure to harmful levels of the chemicals can cause headaches, dizziness, vomiting and irritation of the nose and throat, among other effects.

The risk of additional tanks catching fire remained minimal, company officials said late Monday. ITC leaders initially said seven tanks caught fire, but they later said one of those containers emerged unscathed.

"We have made some headway that (only) three of our tanks are still on fire," ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson said. "Three others are intermittent fires. They flare up and they go down."

Carson, the UTHealth toxicologist, said the primary hazard from petrochemical fires typically involves smoke descending over residential areas and leaving particulates in its path, primarily causing breathing-related issues. He said even if the smoke drops to 400 feet, as predicted, that would be too high to cause health effects.

Local and state government officials said they are watching fixed testing sites that monitor air quality on an hourly basis, while also deploying mobile testing devices to various areas in the county. A fixed monitor site about five miles southwest of the plant reported elevated levels of carbon monoxide and nitric oxide — two by-products of fuel burning — but neither came close to exceeding government-established limits for safety. Measures for particulate matter were lower than those taken several other days in March before the fire.

In addition, ITC's third-party independent air monitoring contractor, Kemah-based Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, found no dangerous particulate measurements. The center used handheld devices to measure air quality at several dozen locations throughout Deer Park, Pasadena, southern Houston and eastern Harris County.

The results, however, were not enough to quell concerns of environmental activists and residents living near the plant.

Neil Carmen, the Sierra Club's Texas Clean Air Program director, said air quality measurements also should be taken above-ground, in the area of the smoke billow. Air-bound tests can measure larger swaths of the region and more particles.

Elena Craft, senior director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said environmental consequences will extend well beyond the initial fire.

"The chemicals and flame retardants used to put the fires out get into the environment — and some of those are serious contaminants," Craft said. "There are long-term consequences of these events, and the fact that we have them so frequently is just amazing."

As she sat in her car alongside the road leading to ITC's facility, Deer Park resident Jodie Thompson worried the fire would differ from the flares she has seen during her 34 years living in the area.

"I trust that they actually know what they're doing, but inside, I have this doubt," Thompson said, watching the flames from her driver's seat.

Late Monday, ITC established a website (ITCclaims.com) for "businesses and individuals" to submit damage claims. The statement said "ITC is aware that claims have arisen as a result of the 3/17/19 incident." Company representatives did not immediately elaborate on the number of claims and the nature of the possible damage.

The ordeal, in some ways, is part of life in Deer Park, an east Harris County city of more than 33,000 people. Residents said they were familiar with the risks that come with living by the refineries and chemical plants.

Heather Trevino, 42, grew up in Deer Park and lives there now with her 9-year-old daughter. She had taken shelter before, but didn't recall an incident as long and intense. Trevino saw the smoke rising above her neighbor's roof Sunday, her eyes and throat itching. When she got the alert to shelter-in-place, she knew to bring in her two dogs and shut off the air conditioning.

"We kind of get it ingrained in us," Trevino said. "Living here, it's just kind of part of what you accept, that there's something that could possibly happen."