CONYERS, Ga. — Shena Chambers has called Conyers home since she was a kid. Now, she's raising kids of her own and raising a fuss over a plume from the BioLab chemical plant that left debris all over her yard.
"We love living here. You can't get better neighbors and family," Chambers said. "We looked out the window, and my whole entire yard was nothing but smoke. I had to clean the floors, the walls, wipe everything down in my entire house."
The scene has worried Chambers all week long. She said her stepmother initially informed her to shelter in place. Rockdale County recently extended a shelter-in-place advisory through the weekend. Chambers was especially concerned about her son, who has asthma.
Chambers's home sits about half a mile from the BioLab chemical plant. She wants more answers. She says she's not getting enough communication in her eyes, and now she's calling on an independent environmental advocate to test some more and get more answers.
Enter Scott Smith. He's the president and CEO of US BioSolutions. He's looked into dozens of environmental disasters, including the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. Now, he's testing the soil in Conyers for contaminants and working with scientists to investigate what's in the air and debris.
"You can't just test the air," Smith said. "You can't find what you don't look for. Some of these chemicals bioaccumulate in your system and don't go away. That's why the most important thing to help the community is to test for all the chemicals. Clearly, with this soot and these particles that are all over this yard, that plume deposited a lot of material here.”
Smith said he would collect samples and send them off to a certified lab. Results should come back within the next two to four weeks. The work is personal for Smith. He said in 2006, he lost his own business in oil-contaminated floodwaters in Upstate New York.
While Rockdale County and the Environmental Protection Agency have stated testing has been done on water three times a day and confirmed the water was safe to drink, chlorine levels in the air have been concerning to some residents. Smith said he hopes local governments and agencies are transparent with residents deserving of answers.
"The only thing to fear is the unknown in these communities, and you create fear when you tell them things are okay, and they're going to the hospital reporting symptoms," Smith said. "If we all work together with the certified labs and figure out what’s here, people will be relieved because they’ll understand what may be causing their health symptoms, and they won’t have to guess.”
Chambers said she was hospitalized temporarily due to what she called symptoms from the plume. She hopes to stay in her home and get the answers she and so many others are looking for in response to the chemical fire.
"We just have to keep moving on and pray something's going to happen," Chambers said. "You’re telling us the debris laying everywhere, to not touch it because it’s very toxic. But it’s all over the place. The truth will come out, and they’ll have to deal with the consequences.”