[music] Welcome to GAS, the true story of a toxic-trained derailment. I'm Ron Scholl. Last time on GAS, while many residents complained of chemical exposures that made them ill upon returning home, health officials showed no concern, claiming the area was safe. Meanwhile, air modeling and vegetation studies with health from the public suggested that Albertan area residents received significant chlorine exposure during the spill. We now continue with Part 2, Chapter 5, Cleanup, Epigraph, DEQ Environmental Health, Public Health, Individual Problems, Tom Ehlerhoff, Montana Department of Environmental Quality. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality oversaw soil analysis but had no budget to test, so MRL contracted Olympus. The excavated pit was about 25 by 325 feet with an average depth of 7 feet. On May 3, Dale Kirkley at the Plum Creek Timber Company called DEQ. Tom Ehlerhoff rode back, referring to Kirkley's complaint that, quote, "the smell emanating from the derailment site was affecting the loggers in the area." Plum Creek had been logging in the Adams Creek drainage about a third of a mile northeast of the spill site. After talking to MRL and Missoula County Health, Plum Creek relocated the loggers until the contaminated soil was removed. Ehlerhoff rode DEQ supports Plum Creek's decision and believes the temporary relocation would be in the best interest for all concern. Ehlerhoff later wrote, "We received some calls regarding persons working in the area, experiencing headaches and smelling something similar to pesticides. This odor was from the chlorinated, phenolic compounds," he wrote. Ellen Lee had believed the Plum Creek workers' complaints. They were definitely smelling something, she said. But many residents complained of odors and symptoms upon returning. That same day, the Mineral County Commissioners wrote MRL's Dan Watts and Ehlerhoff urging removing the contaminated soils and wrecked cars as soon as possible, they emphasized. We believe that as long as the contaminated soils are present on the site, there is potential for local residents to experience some health effects, primarily due to the fact that those initially exposed could have heightened sensitivities to chemicals in general, and particularly to those chemicals involved in the original accident. Plum Creek's complaint and DEQ's recommendation were never publicized. The EPA's Chris Weiss hadn't been aware of this complaint. "I think the DEQ recommendation is a good recommendation," he said. "But that's not inconsistent with the advice that we provided to people throughout the response. If you're getting exposed to something that you don't like, then try and get out of the way, and if you get sick from it, you should contact your doctor and let them know. But where would residents go and who would pay for it? How would a doctor make it safe to be home? Besides, residents have received the reassuring message. All was safe." MRL President William Brodsky later admitted in deposition that the site smelled during his visits soon after general re-entry. "I did smell the recaptons," he said. "I certainly smelled chlorine in the early going, while equipment was moving around at the site. Brodsky was unaware of any MRL workers having health problems from the site. Yet, MRL's chief engineer, Richard Keller, wrote a memo that Rocky Rail Services, contracted by MRL to unload cars at the site after re-entry, reported that six laborers experienced, quote, "Nausea knows bleeds headaches while working over two days, despite wearing HEPA filter masks." The site, at least prior to removal of the contaminated soil, was still toxic and affecting people nearby and some distance away, including people not originally exposed. The commissioner's reference to the rec cars suggested another avenue of exposure. Contaminated rail tankers arrived at Lothrop sighting about May 2nd. Commissioner Charlie Rock recalled, "Geez, that was a terrible smell. There was still stuff dripping out of them. I saw it. I called MRL and they had a work crew come out at 2 o'clock in the morning and take them out of Lothrop." Alberton's Wilma Wheeler recalled lots of people went to check out, especially the black car and take pictures. Don Howard confirmed the cars, which is stink, stink and stink. Steve Adams of Ponderosa Acres was curious to see the damage. "I couldn't even get out of the car," he said. The chlorine smell was so bad. Thomas Wakeman on Bible Lane recalled damaged tankers at Lothrop for three or four days. And that wasn't wise at all, he said, because there are plenty of people down in that area. Living a quarter mile away on Southside Road, Lori Mickelson said, "We were getting a lot of fumes from those cars sitting down there. You could smell the chlorine, but you could smell another smell too." His and his wife Avis breathing problems worsened. Jay Styles on Southside, a mile to the east, said the smell forced him indoors. Lucinda Hodges and others wrote, "Hasmat crews and full gear decontaminated the potassium crestlay car while it was at the Lothrop sighting." White said, "Those cars should have been decontaminated to remove any or all residue. At the site before they were moved." After people near Lothrop complained, Emerald moved the crestlay and chlorine cars to the next sighting east, generating more complaints until the cars were finally sidetracked in Missoula near Phillip Street on the north side. Some nearby residents went to an ACE meeting and described a pesticide odor emanating from the tankers. ACE members wrote, "And they were suffering from nausea, headaches, fatigue, and disorientation. Their skin was red and visibly burned." Will Snograss talk was a north side resident and noted that she called the Missoula Health Department and was told one tank had held potassium crestlay and that other residents had complained about it and chlorine tanks. Snograss wrote, "Caulers said eyes were burning and skin was itching." The Health Department asked MRL to move those cars. Jack and Lucy Martin lived in North Missoula, a cause from the MRL rail yard. Lucy Martin later wrote, "We thought someone had sprayed their trees or something, and we both started having headaches, and her eyes and noses and throats were burning and we were coughing." Martin got permission from the MRL claims representative to see ophthalmologist Dr. Rick Newmeister. He told us we had definite chemical exposure. In the meantime, I'm getting sicker all the time. I finally went to my doctor, which was also okay by MRL. My doctor said that I was having the same symptoms as Albertans' people. The Martins later noted the same awful smell in Alberton. The complaints did not make the news. Contamination left the site by other means. Sandy Helbert suffered fresh exposure at her waitress job at the sidetrack cafe from cleanup workers that May. The cafe had been washed spotless, and then that crew started coming in and having lunch and dinner and breakfast. They just wreaked, she said. When I would take their order, your tongue would start to go numb and your nose would get cold, like if you were inhaling a menthol-like thing. Some of this got sore as on the inside of her mouth and her lips after they started coming in. "After a couple weeks of them coming in," she said, "they would be hacking and coughing and the noses would be running. They look like shit." And I remember commenting to them, "You guys, why aren't you wearing the gear that they're giving you to the environmental suits?" "Oh, we don't need those suits. There's nothing wrong," they said. The workers said they didn't need respirators, either. This bill smell, Halbert said, was almost like a weeding feed. It was overpowering. Per OSHA regulations, workers and equipment were supposed to be decontaminated. But per Montana DEQ, there was no apparent oversight. The contaminated soil remained almost a month after residents returned home. Ellen Leahy told media, "Eria residents might notice the smell during removal, and some might be, quote, "bothered by it." There was no public warning of any health hazard or call for precautions. Over a few days beginning May 18, MRL moved the worst of the soil by rail, 450 cubic yards of hazardous waste in seven gondola cars destined for Texas. BFI waste management accepted 1,485 cubic yards of soil by rail and truck for the landfill just north of Missoula. This non-dangerous soil was listed as having a strong recaptions odor and consisting of 1% potassium crest light. Chlorophanols were present beneath the regulatory limit. Leahy didn't recall any complaints about the soil transport, but some residents were indeed bothered by it. Joan Crowder of South Frontage Road recalled that when the soil was railed across the river, the smell was powerful. It was pretty miserable, she said. We shouldn't have been here at all. Matthew Finiman of Alberton was at the high school when the soil was transported and noticed the smell. My eyes burned from it, she said. Jay Stiles and family encountered one of the non-dangerous truckloads on I-90 bound for the landfill. "Oh my God, what is that odor?" he said. It smells just like the spill. When they passed the truck driver's style, he had a tarp over the top of it and it was just flapping in the wind. We were just sick to our stomach and we raced to get around it. We couldn't believe they were just hauling it like that along the interstate. Before a soil was railed past South Side Road, Emerald staged it at the low-thrip sighting as they had the contaminated cars. Jay Stiles had been suffering from severe migraines since the spill. On May 18, he went with his son to check the water level at the boat ramp near Petty Creek Bridge, not realizing that soil was sidetracked nearby. As he knelt by the water, a strong odor assailed him, like somebody had just put my head in a vise, he said, and all of my motor skills were just instantly gone. Stiles struggled to his knees, shouting at his son, "Don't come down here, it stinks. The chemicals are down here." "I knew right away that all those chemicals had just settled right down to the water level," he said. Overwhelmed with nausea, headache, and a strong ringing in his ears, Stiles drove them home and sought the kitchen sink, ready to throw up. "I fell on the floor, lost my balance again. That's when they found me on the floor. I had a massive migraine headache all night. Sick to my stomach, it hit me all over again, tenfold. It was horrible. The headaches wouldn't quit at all." Three days later he went to see Emerald referred neurologist Dr. Steve Johnson, and the next day, Stiles had an EEG that showed everything was okay, he said. Your insides feel like jello, but it feels like there is something wrong with your electrical system, like it is short circuited, he said. But Stiles wasn't finished with the contaminated soil. He worked near the MRL rail line in Missoula. They came through where I work on the spur with those waste products, the soil, and I could smell it coming even before I heard the engine or the train coming. The truck driver that I was loading at that time, "My God, what is that stink?" he said. I said, "This smells just like the derailment at home." Steve, the guy loading his truck, said, "God, how can you stand that? It's making me sick to my stomach." Stiles could not stand it. On her second attempt to return home, Dixie Robertson of Southside Road cleaned her house from top to bottom. Her timing was horrible. Robertson's house was on a bench above the track, and MRL railed out contaminated soil soon after she cleaned. As she went out to look, the exposure literally dropped Robertson to the ground. "Car tarps were flapping in the wind, soil exposed and blowing off. I felt like somebody had physically hit me," she said. Her son Justin was in the living room, holding on to his ears, screaming, "My ears, my eyes! I could hear them outside," she said. Justin had another asthma attack. The family fled back to a Missoula motel. Ace later claimed that during soil removal, one Albertan family had 50 people attending a graduation party, and the hostess reported everyone having headaches, nausea, and fatigue. As the soil was railed out, they wrote, "Residents who live along the tracks claimed the box cars were uncovered and opened to the air, and that the contaminated soil dusted their property as well as pets and children who were outside. Some area residents relapsed into illness from the soil removal. Other residents got sick for the first time with this exposure." Those who complained not only to MRL were sent to hotels in Missoula while the removal took place. The Garths, the Shugs, and the Robbersons, they wrote. Lucinda Hodges, who is still in Missoula, reports that Ellen Anderson, one of the claims adjusters, called her and told her not to come to Albertan during the soil removal, and that she should stay at the hotel through the 1st of June. As of May 24, all not hazardous waste had been removed to BFI. However, the hazardous waste would not ship until early the next week because MRL had to schedule the shipment for when the Texas facility was ready to receive it. This meant that the most hazardous soil was staged, apparently at Lowthrop and then Missoula. As for what remained at the site, the regulatory clean-up level was for 246 trichlora phenol, not the totality of any residual chlorine, phenols, mercaptons, creosol, and other chlorinated compounds. The regulatory community is not set up to look at combinations of contaminants, Garren Smith explained. Chris Weiss said, "Mixtures can behave differently than a bunch of individual chemicals. There is an infinite number of mixtures. Such regulation never happens," he said. There were also no standards for any of the contaminants or combinations present in the soil and vapor form, Garren Smith said. From the perspective of an exposed victim who was sensitized and visited the site, no one could say whether the level they smelled inhaled was safe or not because there were no standards. Altogether, some 23 contaminants were detected in a sample of residual soil left at the site after removal. Individually, they all met the regulatory limits for soil ingestion. Collectively, they still smelled, especially for sensitized residents. Montana DEQ was in charge of the remediated site and fielded complaints. Following the removal of the contaminated soil, State Senator Barry Spook Stang called Tom Ellerhof on May 31. Stang told Ellerhof, "He could smell the potassium crest late and wanted to verify the test results. Something still stunk." The same day, Dixie Robertson of Southside Road told DEQ she was still getting sick while visiting the area and was again in a motel. Ellerhof passed a bureaucratic buck, noting his reply to Robertson. I said, "DEQ Environmental Health, Public Health, Individual Problems." Robertson was on her own. The site was officially clean. In early June, Ellerhof heard two more complaints about odors and illness. His advice was for people to have their doctor contact the local health department. This became Ellerhof's main advice hoop for complaining residents to jump through. Unlike corporations, resident complaints carried no direct credibility with DEQ. Meanwhile, the Missoula County Health Department cited DEQ as being in charge. Health Department, or DEQ, test results spoke more convincingly than the people complaining. But Ellerhof knew the site still smelled and that it had residual contamination. When June 6, Ellerhof noted, "Why does the place still smell? The place, allegedly, still smells," he wrote. Ellerhof also noted some still unhappy people were giving the EPA and DEQ lots of inquiries. There was talk of MRL doing some air sampling for phenolic compounds, he wrote. Air sampling seemed logical, but DEQ made no such request and none was done. Ellerhof faxed EPA's WISE, a final draft of DEQ's public news release about remediation, on June 12. The draft stated that "test of the site revealed risks to humans are negligible, and only trace amounts of compounds remained." The draft referred to "periodic complaints to DEQ and the county health departments about the mercaptons," it said. The odor is often characterized as smelling like a pesticide. All amounts of the sulfur-based mercaptons are extremely pungent, the draft said. Ellerhof confused mercaptons with the pesticide smell. The draft continued, "People who are as sensitive to the smell appear more apt to detect the odor than those who are not." WISE's added note explained to Ellerhof, "The odors which people may be reporting are more likely phenolics. They smell a bit like pesticides, and the human nose is extremely sensitive to them." Mercaptons, which smell skunk-like, are very distinctive. Both are a possibility given the situation. People could smell both mercaptons and phenols generally in the range of parts per billion. WISE said chlorinated phenols also have a pesticide-like smell. The final DEQ public statement said the site was "very safe," despite residual traces of chlorinated phenolic compounds and mercaptons. People sensitive to the odors appearing more apt to detect them than those who are not, it said. It may know mention of ongoing health complaints. Exized was any reference to people sensitized, and missing was any reference to what sensitive meant in terms of symptoms or health. DEQ's statement implied, at worst, that there simply might be a temporary odor noticed. The biggest failing of the DEQ was the lack of connection between this document and health complaints, noted by several resident callers and the Plum Creek loggers, none of which was disclosed to the media. The paraphrase Ehlerhoff, DEQ was not involved with public health issues. On June 15, the mazullian updated the public on the site cleanup. On the back page, Ehlerhoff acknowledged, "periodic complaints about odors coming from the site. The skunk-like smell is caused by mercaptons," he said. The report continued, "The chlorinated phenolic compounds created by the cresselate chlorine mixture are also odorous. They smell like pesticides." Nine weeks after the spill, this was the first media report of an official publicly ascribing a pesticide odor to any spilled chemicals. Yet, this news report made no connection to earlier evacuee claims of a pesticide, fertilizer, or wheaten feed-like smell in areas even far from the site. The report concluded, "People who are sensitive to the odors appear more apt to detect them than do others," Ehlerhoff said. The odor is not an indication of health risk, according to Ehlerhoff, and the compounds continue to degrade, the report said. Not mentioning sensitivity symptoms, the report suggested merely an odor issue. If an odor, an inhalation chemical exposure, is determined safe at a regulatory level, but the exposure makes you physically miserable and unable to function as normal, do you feel safe? Next time on gas, the true story of a toxic trained ailment, despite removal of the contaminated soil, the cinderhodges and other spill victims are unable to tolerate returning to their Albertan area homes. Meanwhile, Dr. K. Kilburn plans a neurological study on the Albertan spill victims. Until then, this is Ron Scholl. Thanks for listening. This podcast is adapted from the book Gas, the true story of a toxic trained ailment. Visit amazon.com to see the two-book series. To access support material in the book, such as maps, photos, illustrations, and video links, visit my Facebook page Gas, the true story. Or watch my gas playlist on my YouTube channel at R.L. Scholl. [MUSIC]
