A Texas Group is Being Bombarded by Most cancers-Inflicting Benzene. State Officers Have Identified for Practically Two A long time.

CHANNELVIEW, Texas — For almost 20 years, Texas environmental regulators have stored a disturbing secret. Individuals residing in a small, unincorporated neighborhood east of Houston are routinely respiration harmful ranges of benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia and different blood cancers. Rising analysis additionally connects it to diabetes and reproductive issues. 

The Texas Fee on Environmental High quality, or TCEQ, has not instructed residents concerning the well being dangers they face. And it has executed little to rein within the facility that the company knew was releasing massive quantities of benzene. As an alternative, the TCEQ has allowed Okay-Solv, a chemical distribution firm nestled in Channelview’s Jacintoport neighborhood, to broaden its operations 4 instances because the drawback was found in 2005. Immediately Okay-Solv is legally allowed to launch nearly 20 instances extra risky natural compounds — a category of chemical compounds that features benzene — into the air annually than it did again then. 

TCEQ paperwork obtained by Public Well being Watch present that a few of these early readings had been double the extent Texas thought of secure on the time. Public Well being Watch additionally analyzed newer TCEQ air pollution knowledge and located that Channelview’s benzene drawback has solely worsened through the years. 

Benzene is a colorless, sweet-smelling chemical present in crude oil and merchandise together with gasoline, solvents, plastics, paints, adhesives and detergents. Though it has been linked to leukemia because the late Twenties, it’s erratically regulated due to relentless opposition from trade teams. When the federal authorities tried in 1978 to boost safeguards for staff uncovered to benzene, the American Petroleum Institute fought the hassle all the best way to the Supreme Court docket, delaying new laws for nearly 10 years.

The federal benzene normal for staff as we speak is similar because it was in 1987, though a rising physique of proof reveals it doesn’t give them almost sufficient safety in opposition to most cancers. And there are nonetheless no federal requirements for ambient benzene publicity — the quantity that individuals who stay close to industrial amenities can safely breathe as they go about their day by day lives. 

Not less than eight states, together with Texas and California, have tried to fill that hole by creating their very own laws to restrict ambient benzene emissions. However whereas California has strengthened its guidelines through the years, Texas has gone in the other way. Its pointers are far weaker than these in any of the opposite states.

Immediately, the TCEQ says the general public is protected if the air exterior industrial amenities accommodates a median of not more than 180 components of benzene per billion components of air (180 ppb) over a one-hour interval. That’s seven instances increased than Texas stated was secure again in 2005, when Channelview’s benzene drawback was  found. It’s 22 instances increased than the 8 ppb guideline California makes use of as we speak.

Texas additionally has weakened its long-term guideline for benzene — a quantity meant to guard residents from the chance of growing most cancers. In 2007, the TCEQ raised its annual guideline from a median of 1 ppb to 1.4 ppb, a 40% enhance. That’s 14 instances greater than what California says is secure and at the least 3.5 instances increased than every other state permits.

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Because the TCEQ loosened its pointers and extra industries moved into Channelview’s Jacintoport neighborhood, the neighborhood’s benzene drawback intensified. A Public Well being Watch evaluation of TCEQ air pollution knowledge reveals that between 2019 and 2021, annual readings soared as excessive as 2.1 ppb, exceeding even as we speak’s weakened TCEQ pointers by 50%.

Three impartial scientists who reviewed the Public Well being Watch findings say these annual readings are particularly troubling. Whereas short-term emissions may cause fast well being issues like vomiting and drowsiness, excessive long-term emissions point out constant, day by day exposures that may lead to cancer and different life-threatening situations.

“Any publicity to a carcinogen will increase your danger of growing most cancers. Now we have to restrict that, and I don’t know why you wouldn’t,” stated Loren Hopkins, a professor at Rice College and a nationally acknowledged knowledgeable in environmental science. “We have already got numerous carcinogens in our air. It doesn’t make sense to me to extend the edge for benzene.”

The U.S. Environmental Safety Company has created a instrument that measures a neighborhood’s elevated most cancers danger from poisonous chemical compounds within the air. It reveals that within the state of Texas the lifetime whole most cancers danger from publicity to chemical compounds, together with benzene, is 30 circumstances in 1 million individuals. In Channelview’s Jacintoport neighborhood, the place Okay-Solv and lots of different industries pollute the air, the chance is double that: 60 in one million.

“That’s probably an undercount,” Hopkins stated. “The EPA’s Nationwide Air Toxics Evaluation instrument is predicated on weaker monitoring knowledge from a number of years again. We’re seeing a lot increased benzene numbers in Jacintoport now.”

Primarily based on newer benzene numbers she has seen, Hopkins thinks a extra correct cancer-risk determine for Jacintoport may very well be as excessive as 78 in one million.

In an announcement to Public Well being Watch, the TCEQ stated that “benzene concentrations measured within the Jacintoport space since 2005 have triggered actions at TCEQ that embrace placement of stationary air screens, analysis of air monitoring knowledge, and follow-up investigations of potential pollutant sources.”

Jacintoport residents are well-protected, the assertion stated, as a result of state pointers are “set at ranges nicely under concentrations that might trigger well being results.” In keeping with a document on the TCEQ website, the rules are primarily based on scientific research from the Eighties and ’90s. 

“TCEQ continues to vigilantly consider benzene ranges at [the Jacintoport] monitor, whereas encouraging efforts to cut back benzene on this space,” an company spokesperson stated in an e mail.

Harris County Legal professional Christian Menefee, the county’s chief civil lawyer, stated he was “appalled however not shocked” by the TCEQ’s inaction in Channelview. 

“This reveals that the state of Texas has no significant oversight over these firms. They’re allowed to run rampant in our communities,” stated Menefee, who has used the county’s limited authority to penalize polluters. “In the event that they need to pollute the air in a method that’s so aggressive that it might trigger individuals to get sick or get ailments, they’re allowed to take action. The company that has been arrange by the state to return in and rein these people in simply repeatedly fails to do its job.”

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Tim Doty is the scientist who led the TCEQ cell monitoring workforce that recorded Channelview’s excessive benzene ranges again in 2005 and 2006. Now retired from the TCEQ, he spent his profession searching down  emissions from oil refineries and chemical crops throughout Texas. On every journey, Doty’s scientists spent a couple of week in Harris County, residence to the most important petrochemical complicated in america, gathering readings exterior multibillion-dollar crops and embedding themselves in seas of tanks loaded with chemical compounds. But it surely was Okay-Solv, an unassuming facility on 4 acres of land, that apprehensive them most.

The workforce put the worst offenders close to the highest of its post-trip reviews, Doty stated, and Okay-Solv was at or close to the highest of each one. On the workforce’s first journey, Okay-Solv was listed above far larger amenities, together with LyondellBasell’s almost 4,000-acre complicated in North Channelview, one of many largest petrochemical amenities on the Gulf Coast. 

The reviews present that one-hour benzene ranges exterior Okay-Solv constantly exceeded the TCEQ pointers in place on the time. On one journey the scientists recorded a one-hour pattern of 180 ppb. Doty stated it was one of many highest benzene readings he had ever seen in a residential space. 

Doty remembers speaking with a person who lived throughout the road from Okay-Solv. The person instructed him that clouds of chemical compounds floated into his residence every night time.

“The primary time we spoke, he appeared shocked to see me. He’d figured no one cared about what was occurring in Channelview,” Doty stated. “I don’t know what occurred to him, however I nonetheless take into consideration him to today.”

Public Well being Watch sorted by almost two dozen containers stuffed with hundreds of TCEQ paperwork,  obtained by public-information requests, to overview toxicology memos and reviews Doty’s workforce filed. We contacted 13 of the 15 TCEQ officers whose names seem on these paperwork. Solely Doty and former TCEQ Government Director Glenn Shankle, who now owns an environmental-consulting firm, agreed to be interviewed. The TCEQ denied Public Well being Watch’s requests to talk with interim director Kelly Keel or different company officers. 

In July, Public Well being Watch started attempting to contact K-Solv by telephone, e mail and in individual at its workplace in Jacintoport. We obtained no response till November, when the corporate’s chief authorized officer, Todd Riddle, responded with an e mail calling Public Well being Watch’s investigation “an try to focus on Okay-Solv Group particularly.” Riddle pointed to different companies and close by chemical barges as “sources of benzene emissions within the Channelview space.”

Okay-Solv Group is a privately owned, chemical-distribution and maritime-services firm. Its foremost facility, opened in 2004, now occupies about 8 acres alongside the San Jacinto River in Channelview. 

In a 34-minute interview and in subsequent emails, Riddle refused to touch upon the excessive benzene emissions the TCEQ had recorded exterior Okay-Solv as a result of he stated he had not seen the TCEQ monitoring-trip and toxicology reviews. Public Well being Watch obtained these paperwork by a public-records request. 

“We spend a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} yearly to not solely restrict and forestall any dangerous emissions of any substance, however to supply our workforce, our neighbors and neighborhood the healthiest facility we presumably can,” Riddle stated in a written assertion.

Public Well being Watch interviewed dozens of present and former Channelview residents. They described  their neighborhood’s transformation from a rural enclave into an industrial heart and from a majority-white to a majority-Hispanic neighborhood. Many instructed of shedding neighbors and members of the family to most cancers and watching others wrestle with bronchial asthma and comparable respiration points. Some had been coping with their very own well being issues.

Few spoke extra passionately than the surviving members of the Lopez household, who lived throughout the road from Okay-Solv for almost 20 years earlier than evacuating their property. 

Joe Lopez died in 2004 of kidney failure triggered by diabetes on the age of 65. His spouse, Dora, overcame thyroid most cancers however wanted a respiration machine for the final years of her life. Joel Lopez, the eldest of their three sons, cared for her till she died in 2017. He has been recognized with myelodysplasia, a blood most cancers that may turn into leukemia. He struggles with issues from diabetes.  

“I might attempt to persuade my mom to promote every thing and simply go someplace else,” stated Randy Lopez, the center son. He left Channelview when he was a teen and is in good well being as we speak. “It’s like a most cancers was embedded within the coronary heart of Channelview. It’s simply extraordinarily miserable.”

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Benzene has been an integral a part of the Texas economic system since 1901, when wildcatters struck “black gold” at Spindletop. The oil growth remodeled Texas from an agrarian state to at least one with bustling cities and nationwide affect. It additionally birthed a category of oil barons whose wealth and conservative political pursuits formed nationwide politics and popularized Texas tradition in films and TV reveals.  

Harris County, the place Channelview is situated, was the primary beneficiary of this evolution. By the top of World Struggle II, the county — which incorporates the town of Houston — had emerged as a global delivery hub and floor zero for America’s oil and gasoline trade. Final yr, 11 Houston billionaires made Forbes’ “400 Richest People” record, and all however three had ties to the oil and gasoline trade. 

As the worldwide demand for plastics has grown, Texas additionally has turn out to be a hub for the petrochemical trade, which makes use of benzene in its manufacturing processes. Since 2016, eight petrochemical amenities have opened within the state, in keeping with Oil and Gas Watch, a nonprofit that tracks the oil, gasoline and petrochemical industries. Thirty others have expanded, together with 11 in Harris County. 

Channelview, 15 miles east of downtown Houston, has been a major goal for industrial enlargement. Till the Eighties it was a rural hideaway the place individuals rode horses and hunted in tree-lined fields. Its closest claims to fame had been a distant view of the battleground the place Texas received its independence from Mexico and the homestead of Lorenzo de Zavala, the Republic of Texas’ first vp. 

By the point Doty’s workforce parked its monitoring vans exterior Okay-Solv for the primary time on June 4, 2005, de Zavala’s log home had been leveled, and industrial amenities had changed wooded prairies. The Jacintoport neighborhood, as soon as residence to docs’ riverside residences and fields of azaleas, was besieged by petrochemical firms combating for waterfront property close to the Houston Ship Channel, a vital artery within the Port of Houston. Barges loaded with chemical compounds lined the shores of the San Jacinto River, the place generations of households as soon as swam. 

Channelview’s inhabitants was altering, too.

As industries moved in, its once-overwhelmingly white inhabitants started shrinking. Immediately greater than 70% of residents determine as Hispanic. The poverty price has risen from 15% in 2005 to just about 21%. Nearly 1 / 4 of the inhabitants doesn’t have medical health insurance.

Alison Cohen, an assistant professor of epidemiology on the College of California, San Francisco, studies industrial pollution in communities world wide. She stated this sort of inhabitants shift is widespread when massive numbers of industries transfer into residential areas. Individuals who can afford to maneuver do. These left behind are usually poorer and have much less political energy.

“Communities that bear a disproportionately excessive burden of environmental air pollution are likely to even have much less entry to inexpensive, high-quality well being care,” Cohen stated. “Since being uncovered to increased ranges of environmental air pollution can have well being penalties, it’s notably essential that residents in communities like Channelview have, at a minimal, equal entry to that type of care.” 

***

When Tim Doty’s workforce started monitoring in Channelview in 2005, the TCEQ was underneath hearth from clean-air advocates and then-Houston Mayor Invoice White, who questioned the company’s dedication to policing industrial air pollution in and across the metropolis. The state wanted to avoid wasting face, and Glenn Shankle, the TCEQ’s government director on the time, needed Doty’s cell monitoring workforce to get to Houston as shortly as doable. Shankle’s directions had been clear: Observe down any excessive benzene ranges within the space. 

“We used cell monitoring in what we’d name ‘sizzling spots,’” Shankle instructed Public Well being Watch. “I type of took the lead on Houston due to all their issues.”

The workforce visited 26 amenities in Harris County however shortly zeroed in on Okay-Solv.

The power, lower than 200 ft from the Lopez residence and different residences, was a frenzy of exercise. Barges sat docked on its bottom, ready for often-volatile merchandise to be faraway from the vessels’  bottoms, or “heels.” Hoses carrying chemical compounds snaked to metallic storage tanks or idling 18-wheelers, able to rumble by Jacintoport’s once-quiet streets. A metallic shed containing barrels of chemical compounds sat on the complicated’s northern boundary.

Throughout that first investigation, Doty’s scientists carried out about 80 hours of air monitoring close to properties downwind of the ability, in keeping with the journey report. They used metallic canisters to entice air samples and 16-foot field vans outfitted with small ovens that analyzed real-time readings by burning off chemical compounds. 

They detected greater than a dozen chemical compounds. However benzene was their precedence. 

“It’s not simply that there isn’t a secure stage of publicity to benzene,” stated Cohen, the College of California, San Francisco, epidemiologist. “It’s that publicity to it over time might add as much as enhance the chance of well being points in each youngsters and adults.”

Doty was accustomed to measuring excessive benzene ranges exterior refineries. However even he was shocked by what he discovered downwind of Okay-Solv.

At one level, the monitoring workforce recorded an 18-hour common of 23 ppb of benzene, which Doty described as “much more telling than a one-hour studying” and “benzene ranges I’d by no means need my household uncovered to.” 

The scientists additionally discovered excessive ranges of propylene and butane – compounds used to make plastics that may trigger situations starting from shortness of breath to liver harm. In extraordinarily excessive concentrations they will trigger individuals to move out and even die from asphyxiation.

The workforce’s exams confirmed that Channelview residents had been respiration a cocktail of chemical compounds. 

Some compounds, like benzene, whose candy scent usually goes unnoticed, didn’t trigger a lot alarm in the neighborhood. Different compounds with distinct odors had been more durable to disregard.

“The well being penalties of exposures to mixtures of chemical compounds could be complicated,” Cohen stated. “Proof means that, at minimal, the well being dangers associated to every chemical publicity mixed add as much as a larger well being danger.”

The monitoring team’s report was despatched to Michael Honeycutt, who led the TCEQ’s toxicology division for 20 years. On the time, his workers evaluated monitor readings by evaluating them with the rules used on state-issued permits to set emission limits for industrial amenities. Referred to as results screening ranges, the rules had been created to “shield human well being and welfare,” in keeping with the TCEQ’s website. 

Eight of the one-hour samples Doty’s workforce measured throughout that journey exceeded the 25 ppb allow guideline on the time. The best studying was double that stage.

Senior toxicologist Valerie Meyers wrote a memo in response to Doty’s report. Directed to the company’s prime allowing and enforcement officers, it famous that “persistently elevated ranges of benzene might contribute to long-term well being considerations.” In a piece of the memo labeled “downwind of Okay-Solv,” Meyers really useful putting in a long-term, stationary monitor in Jacintoport to assist the TCEQ “totally characterize persistent publicity and danger.” 

The workforce’s report additionally prompted the TCEQ to launch an on-site investigation of Okay-Solv’s operation in February 2006. The investigation discovered that the corporate was relieving stress in its chemical tanks by routinely “burping” emissions instantly into the air as an alternative of venting them by correct air pollution controls. Okay-Solv was fined $4,320 and ordered to put in new reduction valves on its tanks.

The cell monitoring workforce visited Harris County three extra instances between December 2005 and December 2006. Okay-Solv was a precedence throughout these journeys, Doty stated. 

No journey was as revelatory because the one in April 2006. 

At one level the scientists measured a one-hour common benzene focus of 180 ppb, seven instances the 25 ppb restrict on the time.  Different one-hour readings had been nearly as excessive: 170 ppb, 130 ppb, 110 ppb. 

The workforce additionally measured excessive ranges of different chemical compounds, together with methyl t-butyl ether and 1-pentene —  gasoline components with robust odors that may burn the eyes and throat and trigger wheezing and dizziness.

Doty had seen similarly elevated benzene levels exterior oil refineries and enormous chemical crops. However these amenities had been normally removed from populated areas.

“It’s an entire different stage to seek out elevated, fixed concentrations like that in a residential space,” he stated. “I imply, we had been actually throughout the road from residential homes. That’s an entire totally different ball sport.” 

In December 2006, Meyers despatched another internal memo. Once more she highlighted elevated benzene ranges in a piece of the memo labeled “downwind of Okay-Solv.” 

“There may be some concern” concerning the measurements, she wrote, “because of the proximity of the neighborhood and the truth that benzene is a identified carcinogen.”

Meyers reiterated the advice she had made eight months earlier: a long-term, stationary monitor close to Okay-Solv was the easiest way to judge the “potential human well being danger” the corporate’s emissions posed to residents. 

No violations had been issued to Okay-Solv. The TCEQ leaders who obtained the memo — Richard Hyde, director of the air permits division, and John Sadlier, then director of the enforcement division — caught with the company’s wait-and-see method. 

Meyers, who now works at NASA and makes use of the final identify Ryder, declined to talk with Public Well being Watch about her actions in response to Okay-Solv’s benzene emissions.

Hyde, who went on to function the TCEQ’s government director from 2014 to 2018, now works as a lobbyist for the petrochemical trade.  He didn’t reply to calls and emails from Public Well being Watch. Sadlier, who labored as a consultant for Exxon Mobil after he left the TCEQ, didn’t reply, both.  

By the top of 2006, the monitor that Meyers had really useful had been put in in a clearing 5 blocks from Okay-Solv, the place it will be more likely to seize emissions downwind from the ability. The metallic canister would collect 24-hour air samples that may very well be collected manually and brought to the TCEQ laboratory for evaluation. 

It wasn’t the automated gasoline chromatograph air monitor Doty had hoped for — a state-of-the-art instrument that might repeatedly feed air samples instantly into the company’s database. But it surely nonetheless felt like progress. Doty believed his group of scientists, named the TCEQ’s “2005 workforce of the yr,” had taken the individuals of Channelview one step nearer to security and Okay-Solv one step nearer to accountability. 

***

Few individuals, if any, in Channelview knew concerning the TCEQ’s rising concern about excessive benzene ranges exterior Okay-Solv. That data, buried in stacks of TCEQ monitoring reviews and memos, hadn’t been shared with the general public.  

On the afternoon of April 19, 2007, nonetheless, Okay-Solv grabbed nearly everyone’s consideration. A tanker truck on the facility went up in flames because it was being loaded with xylene, a extremely risky liquid present in paint thinners and coatings. A plume of smoke shot into the sky, and ashes coated homes and automobiles with soot. Fireplace engines raced by the neighborhood’s slim streets. A Okay-Solv employee was rushed to the hospital with third-degree burns.

Joel Lopez, the oldest son within the household that lived throughout the road from Okay-Solv, was at work when he obtained a determined telephone name from his mom.

“My mother was scared. It was actually, actually dangerous,” he stated. “She needed to evacuate the world due to the poisonous fumes.” 

The fireplace lasted roughly an hour, however chemical compounds leaked into the neighborhood for 26 extra hours, in keeping with TCEQ reviews. The reviews stated the accident launched about 3,000 kilos of xylene, which might trigger complications and irritate the eyes, nostril and throat, and 240 kilos of carbon monoxide, which might trigger fatigue and confusion. 

“Proper now, our foremost concern is the protection of our workers,” Okay-Solv proprietor Russell Allen told reporters on the time. “All the pieces has been contained and no contaminants went into the river.”

The TCEQ cited Okay-Solv for 2 violations associated to the hearth and instructed them to repair the issues. However the company didn’t high quality or in any other case penalize Okay-Solv. 

In reality, the company hardly ever fines firms that violate Texas air air pollution legal guidelines. In keeping with a report by nonprofit advocacy teams Setting Texas and the Environmental Integrity Undertaking, polluters in Texas had been fined for lower than 3% of the almost 25,000 unlawful releases between 2011 and 2016. A TCEQ spokesperson disputed these findings, telling Public Well being Watch final yr that “the present enforcement price for reported emission occasions is greater than 10%.” The TCEQ didn’t reply when requested if that quantity nonetheless stands.

As an alternative of punishing violators with fines, the TCEQ normally encourages them to make voluntary fixes or permits them to make use of the state’s “affirmative-defense” rule. It permits polluters to keep away from being penalized in the event that they file a written report describing how an incident was “unavoidable” and “past the management” of the corporate.

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5 months after the hearth, the outcomes from Doty’s fourth journey to Channelview had been circulated amongst TCEQ leaders. Once more, his workforce had documented benzene ranges close to Okay-Solv that exceeded state pointers, together with a one-hour studying of 52 ppb, greater than double the 25 ppb Texas thought of acceptable on the time.

The scientists additionally reported that readings of two different chemical compounds exterior Okay-Solv exceeded state pointers. Styrene, a compound utilized in latex, may cause individuals to really feel drunk and expertise colour adjustments of their imaginative and prescient. Methyl ethyl ketone, a solvent present in lacquers and varnishes, may cause dizziness and vomiting.

In September 2007, the TCEQ toxicology division responded with an interoffice memo to Matt Baker, the brand new director of enforcement, and different company officers. 

The emissions the workforce discovered weren’t “anticipated to trigger short-term well being results,” the memo stated in a piece titled “Jacintoport Neighborhood Space.” In a piece titled “Downwind of Okay-Solv,” it added that long-term monitoring from the metallic canister the TCEQ had put in a yr earlier would assist the company “extra totally consider long-term benzene ranges and potential human well being danger.” 

Two weeks after the memo was despatched, the TCEQ did what the company describes as routine air reconnaissance in Jacintoport — the kind of monitoring it usually does to examine for apparent chemical emissions in industrialized areas. The method is fast and low-cost. Investigators usually tempo the streets close to industrial amenities and use infrared cameras to seek for seen emissions and their noses to examine for odors.

A report filed by the 2 investigators despatched to Jacintoport stated they smelled an odor exterior Okay-Solv. In keeping with their report, Okay-Solv’s staff noticed them, and immediately the odor went away. The investigators stated they ducked out of sight — and the odor instantly returned. 

The inspectors returned to Okay-Solv a number of days later and filed one other report saying the identical factor had occurred. In each reviews the inspectors stated the chemical odor was so robust that they left with complications. 

Neither incident was thought of a violation of TCEQ guidelines, and no enforcement motion was taken. 

Okay-Solv’s lawyer, Todd Riddle, declined to reply questions on these incidents as a result of, he stated, he hadn’t seen these reviews, which can be found to the general public. As an alternative, he requested if Public Well being Watch had “any extra data or documentation about such conduct currently.”

It was at about this time that Texas took the weird step of weakening its allow pointers for benzene and 6 different poisonous chemical compounds. The transfer was a part of a years-long marketing campaign led by the TCEQ’s lead toxicologist, Michael Honeycutt, who was identified for his robust opposition to regulation.

The one-hour allow guideline was elevated to 53 ppb, greater than double what the company stated was permissible in 2005 and nearly seven instances as a lot as what California says is secure. Texas additionally elevated its annual guideline from 1 ppb to 1.4 ppb. That’s greater than thrice weaker than Maine’s, the second-most lenient annual guideline within the nation.

Loren Hopkins, Alison Cohen and Cloelle Danforth — the three scientists who analyzed the TCEQ’s Channelview monitoring knowledge for Public Well being Watch — stated it’s extraordinarily uncommon for U.S. regulatory businesses to chill out their publicity limits for poisonous chemical compounds. 

Whereas Danforth was a senior scientist with the Environmental Protection Fund, she and Hopkins co-authored a paper that supplied a street map for responding to excessive ambient benzene ranges throughout chemical disasters. Printed this yr within the peer-reviewed journal Built-in Environmental Evaluation and Administration, it prompt extra stringent and exact benzene pointers than what are at the moment in place in Texas.

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Honeycutt’s toxicology division quickly took an much more dramatic step to weaken Texas’ benzene pointers. 

As an alternative of utilizing allow pointers to evaluate well being dangers for residents, in October 2007 his division created a brand new one-hour guideline for the toxicologists to make use of. Referred to as the “Ambient Monitoring Comparability Worth,” it was set at 180 ppb — thrice increased than the already-weakened allow guideline of 53 ppb.  

The 180-ppb restrict is “simply nuts, mainly,” stated Eric Schaeffer, a former director of the EPA’s Workplace of Civil Enforcement who’s now government director of the Environmental Integrity Undertaking. “It’s method on the market. I don’t know the place they obtained that from and why it will be notably credible.”

Schaeffer worries that elevating the restrict offers a false sense of safety for residents of Channelview and different industrialized communities in Texas. 

“The query is not whether or not there was an hour the place [benzene levels] hit 180. The query is whether or not individuals had been uncovered to a lot decrease ranges for longer durations of time,” he stated. His concern is that the TCEQ may “exit and say, ‘It is under 180 ppb, so we’re good.’ However they don’t seem to be.”

Environmental advocates already considered Honeycutt as being too pleasant towards trade. His transfer to weaken the allow pointers bolstered their opinion.

Jim Tarr, a chemical engineer who labored for the TCEQ’s predecessor company within the Seventies, told a reporter that Honeycutt’s determination to weaken the company’s allow guideline for benzene was “essentially the most irresponsible motion I’ve heard of in my life.” 

For Doty, weakening the allow pointers for polluters was akin to elevating the velocity restrict for motorists. He noticed his workforce’s work within the discipline as extra essential than ever.

However in 2008, an vitality growth took maintain in Texas and upended Doty’s workforce. A course of referred to as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, made extracting deeply buried deposits of oil and pure gasoline financially possible.  The method additionally launched benzene and different naturally occurring compounds into the air and water.

Fracking turned the Barnett Shale, a 5,000-square-mile geological formation that stretched west and south from Dallas, into one of many nation’s largest onshore pure gasoline fields. It additionally represented a lifeline for state leaders determined to stave off rising financial pressures from the Nice Recession. The monetary disaster was in full tilt, and the TCEQ was within the early phases of widespread cuts that would cut back its price range by 30% over the subsequent six years. Clamping down on benzene emissions may jeopardize the state’s rising money cow. 

Tensions had been excessive on the TCEQ. Its mission is to guard public well being as long as it’s “consistent with sustainable economic development.” 

Glenn Shankle — who held the manager director’s job from 2004 to 2008 — stated the workers of Rick Perry, a Republican who served as Texas governor from 2000 to 2015, generally referred to as his workplace to query the company’s enforcement choices.

Perry “would type of keep in our enterprise so much, I’ll put it that method,” stated Shankle, who left the agency for a job at a radioactive-waste firm. “He wouldn’t name personally. He’d have a workers individual name and go, ‘I perceive y’all are on the point of take enforcement motion. … Properly, y’all may need to take one other have a look at that.’”

Doty’s monitoring workforce felt the shift within the company’s priorities. 

“We had been searching down polluters and kicking ass earlier than the fracking started. It actually was a golden period for monitoring,” Doty stated. “However every thing steadily started to alter from there. The TCEQ management’s change in technique was apparent: The much less we had been allowed to search for emissions, the much less we’d discover issues.”

Perry and firms he’s affiliated with didn’t reply to calls, emails and Instagram messages from Public Well being Watch. The TCEQ declined to touch upon Shankle’s or Doty’s claims.  

***

In December 2009, Tim Doty’s workforce was despatched to analyze complaints about benzene emissions from fracking operations in and round Fort Price, the state’s fifth-largest metropolis. A number of the operations had been in residential neighborhoods. 

Doty stated his scientists adopted the procedures they used for all their journeys. They took fast, preliminary readings, then used extra refined tools to gather air samples that might be examined within the company’s laboratory. Each units of knowledge would seem of their closing reviews.

As a result of it was chilly exterior, Doty stated any benzene within the air can be much less energetic and fewer detectable, so he wasn’t shocked when the preliminary readings confirmed solely hint quantities. He was desperate to see the extra exact canister outcomes. 

However Doty stated TCEQ discipline operations managers instructed him that extra evaluation — together with sending the extra exact air samples to the lab — wasn’t vital.

“That had by no means occurred within the historical past of the cell monitoring workforce,” Doty stated. “You’ll be able to’t simply choose and select the samples you need to report. You must report all of them.”

On Jan. 12, 2010, the TCEQ’s deputy director of compliance and enforcement, John Sadlier, addressed a Fort Price Metropolis Council assembly filled with residents and clean-air advocates.  

“All the pieces you hear as we speak shall be excellent news,” Sadlier instructed them.

He assured them that the TCEQ’s cell monitoring workforce had discovered no proof of unsafe ranges of benzene or different cancer-causing chemical compounds throughout its December journey. 

“Primarily based on this research, the air is secure,” he stated.

A few weeks later, information leaked out that Sadlier’s assertion had been primarily based on incomplete data. The company’s chief auditor opened a fraud investigation into the incident and interviewed eight individuals, together with two managers within the company’s Discipline Operation Help division: David Bower and Matt Baker.

The auditor’s report stated that whereas the data introduced on the council assembly was “technically correct,” it “may very well be thought of to be deceptive.” But it surely discovered no proof that administration was conscious the data “may very well be deceptive on the time it was introduced” to Sadlier.

The report additionally revealed that after the company’s misstep grew to become public, the TCEQ did extra monitoring within the Fort Price space. It discovered that benzene ranges there did, in actual fact, exceed the TCEQ’s annual guideline of 1.4 ppb. 

Baker, now a metropolis council member within the Austin suburb of Spherical Rock, didn’t reply to calls and emails from Public Well being Watch. The TCEQ didn’t enable Bower, now a particular assistant within the company’s workplace of compliance and enforcement, to reply questions. As an alternative, the company despatched the next assertion:

“To claim that Mr. Bower blocked efforts to ship cell monitoring findings to the company’s laboratory is fake. TCEQ strives to supply the very best service to the state of Texas and any assertion suggesting in any other case is unfounded.”

U.S. Consultant Michael Burgess, a Dallas-area Republican, referred to as for then-Texas Legal professional Basic Greg Abbott to conduct a “robust investigation” into the TCEQ’s dealing with of the matter. However Abbott, now the Republican governor of Texas, didn’t open an investigation. He did, nonetheless, sue the EPA 9 instances in 2010 for “unlawfully commandeering Texas’ environmental enforcement program.”

In the meantime, the TCEQ was finalizing Okay-Solv’s request to considerably broaden its operation in Channelview.  

The investigators who reviewed the allow software famous Okay-Solv’s proximity to residences and the historical past of odors they’d documented exterior the ability. They warned that the enlargement may turn out to be “one other contributing issue” to chemical publicity in the neighborhood. 

However managers dismissed their considerations, and the allow was issued in February 2010.

Okay-Solv was allowed to legally enhance its annual emissions of risky natural compounds, which embrace benzene,  by 299%: from 1,980 kilos a yr to 7,900 kilos a yr.

***

Over the subsequent two years, Doty’s workforce was regularly shriveled and stripped of its energy to proactively monitor down polluters. The TCEQ stopped conducting in-depth, days-long monitoring exterior industrial amenities, together with Okay-Solv, in favor of sooner and cheaper “routine air reconnaissance.” The visits had been normally transient, in keeping with 4 TCEQ reviews filed between March 2011 and October 2012. 

On March 16, 2011, an investigator spent seven minutes exterior Okay-Solv. 

On Aug. 12, 2011, an investigator spent 10 minutes exterior Okay-Solv.

On June 13, 2012, two investigators spent quarter-hour exterior Okay-Solv.

On Oct. 1, 2012, an investigator spent three minutes exterior Okay-Solv. 

The reviews stated the investigators did not see or scent something that apprehensive them through the visits. 

However Jacintoport’s benzene drawback hadn’t gone away.

From 2013 to 2014, the neighborhood’s annual benzene ranges hovered round 1 ppb, in keeping with readings from the stationary metallic canister that had been put in downwind of Okay-Solv. Annual readings that top would have set off alarm bells had they been taken in California, the place the rule is 0.1 ppb, or in Minnesota, which has established a suggestion of 0.24 ppb. 

“The truth that the state of Texas developed their very own toxicological parameters from the remainder of america — that’s what actually frustrates me,” stated Loren Hopkins, the Rice College professor, when evaluating Texas to the opposite seven states which have established benzene pointers. “Beneath this technique, benzene has one toxicity issue right here and a totally totally different one if you cross the border into one other state. It doesn’t make sense to me, and it by no means will.” 

Michael Honeycutt, the Texas toxicologist who led the hassle to weaken the TCEQ’s chemical pointers, already had a status for bucking extensively accepted scientific analysis.

In 2011, Honeycutt wrote a letter to Congress arguing that the EPA was too stringent in its efforts to guard individuals from mercury, a toxin that may trigger lung harm, mind harm and is particularly harmful for fetuses. “EPA ignores the truth that Japanese eat 10 instances extra fish than People do and have increased ranges of their blood however have decrease charges of coronary coronary heart illness and excessive scores on their IQ exams,” Honeycutt wrote. 

In 2014, he criticized the EPA’s efforts to control ozone, an odorless, colorless ingredient in smog that exacerbates bronchial asthma. “I haven’t seen the info that claims reducing ozone will produce a well being profit,” he told The Texas Tribune. “In reality, I’ve seen knowledge that reveals it might need a adverse well being profit.” 

Honeycutt doubled down on that declare a yr later, warning that “people are going to die” if the EPA’s proposed ozone requirements went into impact. 

Honeycutt didn’t reply to calls and emails from Public Well being Watch.

***

By 2016, Joel and Randy Lopez had persuaded their 76-year-old mom, Dora, to go away Channelview for good. She wanted a respiration machine to sleep at night time, and the fixed circulation of chemical compounds had turn out to be insufferable for her. Joel, her major caregiver, had executed every thing he may to guard her, together with taping her home windows and doorways shut. However the fumes stored coming. 

The plush property the Lopez brothers remembered from their childhood was gone. The vegetation had withered away because the air pollution worsened, Randy stated, forsaking “an empty wasteland” the place nothing may develop. 

Joel Lopez stated they offered the household residence to Okay-Solv so they might pay for his or her mom’s rising well being care prices. Okay-Solv used the land to construct an worker parking zone and storage shed subsequent to its workplace constructing, a part of one other enlargement.

Round that point, the TCEQ amended Okay-Solv’s allow and allowed it to deal with extra chemical compounds and launch extra risky natural compounds per hour than ever earlier than. 

A TCEQ official who reviewed Okay-Solv’s modification software stated in an interoffice memo that Okay-Solv was predicted to exceed the one-hour allow guideline for benzene  — which they’d modified from 53 ppb to 54 ppb — for 54 hours a yr. However as a result of that prediction was primarily based on “worst case” assumptions, the official stated the company didn’t “anticipate opposed well being results to happen among the many basic public.”

The U.S. Environmental Safety Company fined Okay-Solv twice in 9 months — $51,000 in September 2015 for violations together with its failure to correctly vent its saved acetic acid and $50,000 in June 2016   for failing to submit years of federal paperwork detailing the quantities of hazardous chemical compounds it saved on its property.

At this level the TCEQ had fined Okay-Solv solely as soon as because the facility opened in 2004: $4,320 for the “burping” incident in 2006. 

In the meantime, extra industries had been transferring into Jacintoport and benzene emissions had been rising. 

Information from the TCEQ’s stationary canister present that from 2019 to the start of 2021, annual benzene readings climbed nicely past the company’s 1.4 ppb guideline. On Feb. 11, 2021, the canister registered an annual common benzene stage of two.1 ppb over the earlier 12 months. That’s almost 50% above Texas’ annual benzene publicity guideline and greater than 20 instances increased than California’s guideline.

A number of days after that studying was taken, the TCEQ changed the canister with an automatic gasoline chromatograph, the extra refined instrument that Doty had hoped to see put in greater than 15 years earlier. 

However the improve got here with a catch. 

Whereas the outdated monitor was in the course of the Jacintoport neighborhood and downwind of Okay-Solv, the brand new monitor was put in on the northwestern outskirts of the neighborhood and farther from most residents’ properties — a location much less more likely to choose up emissions from Okay-Solv and different firms’ chemical-laden barges alongside the close by riverbank. 

A TCEQ spokesperson stated the positioning of the monitor was modified as a result of the outdated web site was too small to accommodate the brand new tools.

The implications of this determination had been felt in April 2021, when flames spread by Okay-Solv’s chemical storage space. The fireplace burned for almost three hours and, in keeping with a TCEQ report, launched greater than 160,000 kilos of risky natural compounds, together with 1,200 kilos of toluene, which might trigger euphoria, dilated pupils and nerve harm, and a couple of,000 kilos of xylene, which might trigger complications and irritate the eyes, nostril and throat. 

The smoke was so thick that it confirmed up on Doppler radar. Firefighters had been instructed to go away the fast space, and residents had been ordered to shelter in place. 

Carolyn Stone and her husband had been visiting household when individuals began calling them concerning the hearth.

“We may see the smoke column from miles away as we rushed residence,” stated Stone, who lives lower than a mile down the street from Okay-Solv. “We had been questioning, ‘Can we get to our home? Will we also have a home left? Have been our pets nonetheless alive?’”

Their home was undamaged and their pets had been secure. However a layer of soot coated their yard, and an oily residue coated their rain assortment barrel. 

The fireplace barely made a blip on the TCEQ’s new air monitor. 

Within the 24 hours after the hearth, the monitor confirmed solely low ranges of xylene and toluene. Its highest one-hour benzene studying was simply 4.62 ppb. That’s a tiny fraction of the various one-hour benzene readings Tim Doty’s workforce documented exterior of Okay-Solv throughout its monitoring journeys.

The day after the hearth, the U.S. Occupational Security and Well being Administration started an inspection of Okay-Solv. It discovered five violations — three categorized as “critical” — and fined the corporate $28,671.

The TCEQ fined Okay-Solv $11,413 for the hearth. A couple of months later the company opened what would turn out to be an eight-month investigation into the corporate’s processes and practices. The probe concerned at the least 15 company staffers and included on-site testing and inspections on at the least 10 events. 

The 458-page investigation report stated risky natural compounds had been leaking from two massive tanks. Not less than 20 extra leaks had been present in different components of the compound. The report additionally stated that Okay-Solv had saved its benzene reserves at a focus that was double its permitted restrict and that the ability’s vapor combustor, which was designed to burn poisonous emissions to restrict air air pollution, hadn’t been sizzling sufficient to work correctly. 

The inspectors cited Okay-Solv for 14 violations, 5 of them categorized as “vital.”  Okay-Solv rebutted the TCEQ’s findings in a 273-page document the corporate shared with Public Well being Watch. It denied 4 of the violations and described plans to repair 4 of the others. It didn’t acknowledge the remaining six.

The TCEQ continues to be deciding whether or not to high quality the corporate for the violations. The company didn’t reply when Public Well being Watch requested when the case can be resolved.

The monitor put in in 2021 continues to function on the outskirts of the Jacintoport neighborhood.

In 2022, the primary full yr it was working, it measured an annual benzene common of simply 0.79 ppb, in keeping with the TCEQ. That’s about two-thirds lower than the two.1 ppb the outdated metallic canister measured from the center of Jacintoport in 2020, its final full yr of operation.  

*** 

Channelview residents try to arrange themselves to defend their neighborhood in opposition to additional trade intrusion. It’s an arduous course of. The unincorporated space has no central authorities to rally behind, and with greater than 60% of residents talking a language apart from English at residence, there are extensive language obstacles. 

In 2019, Carolyn Stone fashioned the Channelview Health & Improvement Coalition. It meets on the native hearth station each month to assist residents perceive the environmental risks they’re residing with and lobbies native lawmakers to step as much as shield them. The group has been notably involved concerning the San Jacinto River’s fast deterioration from petrochemical barge exercise, together with some serviced by Okay-Solv. 

Stone stated her neighborhood has lengthy felt deserted by the TCEQ. However she was shocked when Public Well being Watch instructed her that the company had identified for years about excessive benzene ranges in Jacintoport — and had not shared that data with residents. 

“We’re good individuals. We’re not trash,” she stated. “The individuals listed below are worthy of some type of intervention.”

Cynthia Benson is a part of Stone’s group. A 3-time most cancers survivor, she has lived for many years in her household’s trailer park 1 / 4 of a mile from Okay-Solv. 

“I’ve an ideal, nice nephew that was simply born. I fear about him rising up right here,” Benson stated. “It scares me and it angers me. It’s all concerning the firms and the almighty greenback. They may give a rat’s ass concerning the individuals residing right here. How do I make peace with that?”

Tim Doty retired from the TCEQ greater than 5 years in the past, however he nonetheless thinks about Channelview. In March 2023, he testified earlier than the Texas Legislature in opposition to a invoice that finally failed. It could have fined residents for submitting greater than three complaints with the TCEQ in a yr if the complaints didn’t end in enforcement motion.

Earlier than talking, Doty handed legislators a memo that included the next paragraph:

“Maybe this laws is meant to … reduce complaints from the Jacintoport neighborhood in Houston that’s residence to elevated benzene, a identified carcinogen, concentrations that the TCEQ has been ignoring for years.”

Okay-Solv continues to broaden. Its guardian firm, Okay-Solv Group, now consists of at the least 20 subsidiaries, starting from oil-and-gas tools companies to environmental cleanup corporations. The unique facility now has 67 chemical storage tanks, almost quadruple what it had in 2005. Its TCEQ air allow permits it to launch greater than 39,000 kilos of risky natural compounds, which embrace benzene, annually. 

In April, Okay-Solv Group opened a brand new facility subsequent to a row of double-wide manufactured properties and about 900 ft from River Terrace Park, the place Channelview households picnic and youngsters take pleasure in a playground lined with swings.

Okay-Solv Wash Companies cleans tanker vehicles that haul chemical compounds and different supplies. It’s a grimy course of that produces airborne emissions and poisonous wastewater. In keeping with its TCEQ allow, Okay-Solv Wash Companies can legally launch 3,500 kilos of risky natural compounds into the air annually. That’s greater than the unique Okay-Solv facility was allowed to launch when it opened again in 2004.

Todd Riddle, Okay-Solv’s lawyer, instructed Public Well being Watch that Okay-Solv Wash Companies has “a state-of-the-art vapor restoration system” with scrubbers that “utterly include any airborne emissions of any variety.”

“All dangerous substances are correctly contained on web site quickly then are disposed of offsite, in compliance with all environmental laws,” he stated in an e mail.

Riddle stated the corporate selected the positioning close to the park as a result of “it was out there and handy and served our goal.”

Public Well being Watch requested the TCEQ if it thought of the proximity of the park and the homes when it accredited the Okay-Solv Wash Companies allow. The company declined to reply any additional questions.

Jana Cholakovska is a former intern on the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Reporting, knowledge acquisition and extra work had been contributed by Jordan Gass-Pooré, a Public Well being Watch audio journalist.