MEDIA CONTACT: Brenda Franco, [email protected] // 832.755.6220
HOUSTON AREA – About one week ago, on March 12th, a fire broke out in the late evening at the LyondellBasell Bayport Choate facility near Pasadena and LaPorte. It was fully contained by the following morning.
Though local municipal and company officials stated there were no air quality issues of concern during or after the incident, an analysis of overnight wind patterns, community air monitoring, and the company’s own emissions report provides more holistic details:
- For the period of the fire (10 pm – 6 am), wind was tending to blow northeast of Pasadena. This means that airborne pollution from the fire was also being distributed away from the plant and into the eastern area of Baytown.
- In fact, Air Alliance Houston’s own community air monitors in Baytown picked up indications of Particulate Matter pollution spikes during the same time period as the fire:
- According to the preliminary STEERS report submitted by the facility, the fire released 23,172 pounds of air pollution over the course of 24 hours. These pollutants largely included butanes, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, propylene, and acetone, as seen in the chart below. All of these chemicals can contribute to respiratory irritation, headaches, and nausea, among other health effects.
Says Anthony D’Souza, Community Air Monitoring Program Manager, “This is why community monitoring is so important. It helps provide a more complete picture of the impact of an incident like what occurred at the Bayport plant. It is certainly possible that people living in the wind path of the fire could have experienced its effects as much as those living next door.”
Air Alliance Houston operates the region’s largest community air monitoring network, with over 60 low-cost stationary air sensors in over 10 neighborhoods that ping air quality data every 10 minutes to a public online dashboard.
About Air Alliance Houston
Air Alliance Houston is a non-profit advocacy organization working to reduce the public health impacts from air pollution and advance environmental justice through applied research, education, and advocacy. For more information and resources, please visit www.airalliancehouston.org.