Mayflower, Ark., resident April Lane hasn’t rested since the Exxon Pegasus Pipeline rupture that leaked more than 500,000 gallons of Canadian crude oil devastated her community in March, causing the evacuation of entire neighborhoods and threatening the city’s water supply.
Inspired by an alleged lack of action from Arkansas state environmental agencies, the University of Central Arkansas student has been documenting health complaints from residents living in the area near the spill, citing every mysterious symptom and collecting air quality data.
“The spill and response has been a disservice to the community,” Global Community Monitor Trainer Ruth Breech said in a press release. “People are obviously suffering and experiencing health symptoms from chemical exposure related to the oil spill. State and federal [authorities] need to step up immediately to document and prevent any further health issues associated with the Exxon oil spill.”
The symptoms reported have run along common themes: headaches, respiratory problems, extreme fatigue and digestive issues. Air samples taken in the community on March 30, the day of the spill, revealed a list of more than 25 toxic chemicals including hazardous air pollutants: benzene and ethylbenzene, according to a report by the Global Community Monitor. These hazardous air pollutants are regulated under the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act amendments as the most toxic of all known airborne chemicals.
Chemical breakdown
According to the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, the impacts of benzene exposure are extreme — high levels of exposure are tied to drowsiness, dizziness, headaches and rapid heart rate, with possible long-term impacts of cancer and reproductive complications.
Xylenes, another chemical recorded in air samples, carries with it symptoms of breathing difficulty, stomach discomfort and skin and eye irritation.
The benzene detected in Mayflower, Ark., air samples was measured at 220 parts per billion — in neighboring Texas, the short-term “safe” levels of benzene hover around 50 parts per billion.
This is causing concern among those living in the area. As a press release issued by Global Community Monitor states, “Many residents were exposed for several days and are still being exposed to crude remaining in the environment.”
Neil Carman of the Sierra Club indicated that more than 30 hydrocarbons were detected following the oil spill.
“Thirty toxic hydrocarbons were measured above the detection limits,” Carmon said in a press release issued by the Global Community Monitor. “Each of the thirty hydrocarbons measured in the Mayflower release is a toxic chemical on its own and may pose a threat to human health depending on various exposure and individual factors.”
Carmon said that total hydrocarbons were reported at more than 88,000 parts per billion — what he called a “soup of toxic chemicals” that residents living near the oil spill may have been exposed to.
More than 100 community members came together on April 22 to discuss the report’s findings, resulting in the creation of a “recommended action” list, sent on behalf of the community to the Mayflower City Planning Committee.
Yet if the recent past is any indication, community members aren’t likely to see a swift response to an immediate threat.
Hope for transparency in Pegasus spill?
As noted in a recent DeSmogBlog article, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who originally vowed to hold ExxonMobil accountable for the ongoing impacts of the Mayflower spill, contracted with Witt O’Brien, a company notorious for doing business with big oil, for an “independent” report on the analysis of the cleanup.
Also as reported by DeSmogBlog, Witt O’Brien has worked in the clean-up efforts associated with the Exxon Valdez Spill and the BP Deepwater Horizon spill. It was also signed to a $300,000 contract relating to the creation of a Keystone XL emergency response plan.
McDaniel had issued a subpoena against ExxonMobil, demanding it hand over a laundry list of documents relating to the oil spill and the company’s response. After receiving those documents, McDaniel acted as though the move was a victory, allowing him to hand them over to Witt O’Brien.
McDaniel served as the lead investigator in the ExxonMobil Pegasus spill — and concerned residents looked to him to fight their fight against the oil giant.
“The people of Arkansas deserve a full explanation from Exxon about how this incident occurred and the extent of damages to private property and to our state’s natural resources,” he said in a press release. “I want to know what the chemicals are in the mixture of this crude that is also been released into our environment. I want to know what they’ve done to cap it, the history, the inspections, who’s going to secure the pipeline.”
Without the work of Lane, residents would still be waiting to learn the chemicals released into the air from the spill.
McDaniel also went so far as to point out to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he was working to prevent another cover-up, pointing to the 2011 BP gulf oil spill case when Halliburton, a subcontractor working on the oil rig that exploded, was accused of destroying evidence relating to what happened leading up to the explosion.
“I’ve been in close contact with my friends,” he told Maddow, “the attorneys general in Mississippi as they have been preparing for the [Halliburton documents] you’ve been talking about, and they’ve given me serious points of caution leading up to that litigation.”
No date has been set for the release of the results of O’Brien’s study.