Heavy rains accompanying Hurricane Helene in September caused flooding that reached heights in Asheville, North Carolina that prior flooding hadn’t reached since 1902. In the aftermath, buildings, railroad cars, and trees lining the French Broad River in the town’s center were completely turned upside down.
As communities began cleanup efforts in the area, many expressed concerns that the debris left behind was producing a foul odor and speculated that it was contaminated with chemicals and other hazardous materials. Several steel manufacturers lie in the flood-prone region of Asheville, and many were concerned that Silver-Line Plastics, which manufactures PVC pipes, could have released solvents or vinyl chloride into the surrounding environment with the flood.
However, Silver-Line Plastics published a statement saying it receives “already manufactured PVC resin, which is non-hazardous and inert.” And of about 185 chemical pollutants tested for in the region by MountainTrue, an environmental conservation organization, almost none tested positive, except for some metals that were present in quantities lower than what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe.
Nevertheless, the situation in Asheville and surrounding communities shed a spotlight on the regulations that are in place to ensure residents are aware of toxic exposures after a disaster — which some say were not created with the climate crisis in mind.
“There are laws on the books that do not meet the moment,” said Eve Gartner, an attorney focused on toxic exposures at the nonprofit Earthjustice. “The laws are not set up to deal with climate-related disasters.”
"There are laws on the books that do not meet the moment."
As the recent wildfires in California have exemplified, our overheating world is making it increasingly challenging to rebuild after a natural disaster, at least before the next one strikes. But regulations that require these industries to inform residents of their true risk of exposure after a natural disaster have been criticized for being difficult to access and only reporting on a limited number of chemicals. As a result, experts are concerned that communities across the country are vulnerable to being exposed to such toxic contamination after a natural disaster strikes without knowing.
“The people that are losing out, that are missing out on the information, are the residents, the community members who have a real need for this information,” Gartner told Salon in a phone interview.
Several disasters have led to toxic exposures in recent years, including Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022 and Hurricane Harvey in Houston in 2017. Although it wasn’t caused by a natural disaster, a fire at a chemical plant called Bio-Lab in Atlanta in September also reportedly exposed thousands of residents to chlorine gas, which can lead to respiratory distress, chest pain, and other symptoms. In response, the local government issued a shelter-in-place warning and closed the highway.
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The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) issued a report in November that showed this toxin was still detectable throughout the EPA's investigation, which ended in mid-October. Experts have said that it is unclear how long the chemicals are able to stay in the water and soil surrounding the region, meaning the full potential health consequences of the exposure remain unknown.
Yet this event followed another Bio-Lab facility fire in 2020 in Louisiana that did occur because of Hurricane Laura. Similarly, the fire and ensuing plume exposed thousands of residents to the toxic gas. But it wasn’t until 2023 that the CSB released a report that found the plant, built in 1979, had not been updated with security standards to prepare for such climate disasters.
“With powerful storms and other extreme weather occurring more frequently, companies and regulators must take action to prevent weather-related releases of hazardous chemicals that can cause substantial damage to facilities and threaten surrounding communities," CSB board chair Steve Owens said in a statement.
There are regulations in place to ensure the public is notified of their risk after an exposure. In 1976, the EPA passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, which gives the agency the authority to regulate chemicals produced in the country. In 1986, the agency also passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, which requires states and local commissions to create an emergency response plan that protects the public from any hazardous chemicals they could be exposed to and notifies them if there is an exposure.
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The EPA’s Risk Management Program under the Clean Air Act also requires facilities that use extremely hazardous substances to develop a plan should they be exposed to something like a natural disaster. However, this program has also been criticized for containing loopholes that allow industry to release contaminants regardless, said Caroline Cress, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
“It’s kind of a patchwork, which I think makes it difficult for folks to know what is applicable and where to go to find information, because it’s different under all of these laws,” Cress told Salon in a phone interview.
Moreover, citizens who do decide to file the public records requests necessary to access some of the information about any potential toxic exposures might have that information withheld if an investigation is ongoing or the materials in the manufacturing facility are deemed to be a national security risk, Gartner said.
During a disaster, standard reporting systems can also be suspended in certain states, making any potential exposures even more unclear, said Dr. Jim Elliott, the co-director at the Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience at Rice University.
“You have a regulatory system that is oftentimes very voluntary and suspect to begin with becoming more so during the event,” Elliott told Salon in a phone interview. “What we end up with is basically a lot of gray area and question marks that are left to the public to try to figure out themselves.”
Elliott has tried to access information about exposures after the hurricanes in the Northeast this fall and has also tried to access information about the risks in Houston, Texas to support protective planning efforts should a major storm hit the metropolitan area — which is one of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world and has a high risk of flooding.
“We thought it would be useful to not only map where that is likely to happen but what the plans in place are if it does, starting with the private industry folks who are responsible,” Elliott said. “We came away with only being able to access things through a very restricted request or petition through a federal office in D.C., waiting for clearance, getting clearance, and then being approved to only view 10 of these documents at a time in a secure, federally monitored facility in town.”
Once the records were obtained, Elliott said, they were "heavily redacted in terms of what's actually provided as a public citizen to be able to access."
Even if citizens do go through the effort required to access these materials, the standards set by the EPA are notorious for being inaccurate and unreliable, based on self-reported data from the industries producing the emissions compiled in a central database called the Toxics Release Inventory. Plus, this database only includes about 1,000 chemicals out of nearly 50,000 that are used in commerce, Gardner said.
Still, this information is becoming increasingly important as natural disasters continue to strike communities. One study published in Environmental Science & Technology found between two and three times more pollution was released in the Gulf of Mexico when there was a hurricane compared to when there wasn’t. Another report released in 2021 found more than 400 hazardous sites are at risk for flooding with sea level rise in California, lingering parts of which are still aflame from wildfires as of this writing.
“We believe this limited public information on rising chemical threats from our changing climate should be front-page news every hurricane season,” Elliott wrote in The Conversation. “Communities should be aware of the risks of hosting vulnerable industrial infrastructure, particularly as rising global temperatures increase the risk of extreme downpours and powerful hurricanes.”
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