The list of toxins that are in the air are very similar to what Ciba - Geigy left in the ground when they shut down a plant around me. Over 30 years ago, everything was hauled off, the ground was covered in a tarp(s) and still is the last I heard and will be for about another 50 years. Up on a hill next to the Hudson.
Cancer outbreak a bit downstream was blamed on a GE plant, they had more money to go after.
Want to scare the hell out of yourself search "EPA Super Fund Sites"
Here's one outside of Houston closed an entire subdivision over it.
The
Brio Superfund site is a former industrial location in
Harris County, Texas at the intersection of Beamer Road and Dixie Farm Road, about 16 miles (26 km) southeast of downtown
Houston, and adjacent to the Dixie Oil Processors Superfund site. It is a federal
Superfund site, although it was deleted from the
National Priorities List in December 2006. A neighboring residential subdivision called South Bend, now abandoned, was located along and north of the northern boundary of Brio North. The former South Bend neighborhood consisted of about 670 homes, an elementary school, and a Little League baseball field. Documents pertaining to the Brio Superfund site are located at the
San Jacinto College South Campus Library, which houses Brio Site Repository Documents,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrative Records, and documents concerning the adjoining Dixie Oil Processors site.
Site history and contamination[edit]
The 58-acre Brio Refinery site was home to several chemical companies between 1957 and 1982, when the owner, Brio Refinery Inc. declared bankruptcy and ceased operations. During that period, the site had been used for
copper recovery and
petroleum re-refining, typically the processing of
tar,
sludge, and other residue from oil tanks and other sources,
[1] as also occurred at the adjacent Dixie Oil Processors site.
[2] Throughout the years, at both sites, unprocessed petroleum and waste materials were stored in 12 large earthen pits, ranging from 14 to 32 feet deep and extending into porous soil and, thus,
groundwater. Leaks from these pits also spilled into a local drainage ditch, Mud Gulley, and subsequently, via the adjoining
Clear Creek, into
Galveston Bay.
By the late 1980s, the EPA had detected copper, vinyl chloride, 1,1,2-trichloroethane, fluorene, styrene, ethylbenzene, toluene, benzene and other toxic chemicals, including numerous chlorinated volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in the air and groundwater.[3][4]
The EPA placed the Brio site on the National Priorities List in 1984. Beginning in 1989, the EPA began remediation by demolishing buildings, digging out contaminated soils for
processing or disposal, containing groundwater by use of a physical barrier, and capping the site.
[1] The site was removed from the National Priorities List in 2006.
[5]