Diana Gonzalez noticed a garlic-like smell coming into her home in Galena Park. It was worse than the usual chemical odor for the city adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel, giving her headaches and making her nauseous. Her 79-year-old mother’s nostrils burned.
Gonzalez didn’t know what her family was breathing on July 14. She didn’t know whether they needed to leave. The whole thing fired her up: “Nobody was giving us information that we felt we deserved from our local authorities,” she said.
So Gonzalez tried to get help for her and her neighbors — but two days passed before they learned the origin of the smell. Harris County Pollution Control investigators couldn’t immediately figure it out, though they tried, working late at night and early in the morning, they said. Nor could a local environmental advocate.
No company had taken blame publicly.
Only on Friday, about when county investigators said they finally figured out where the odor had come from, did LyondellBasell Industries fess up. The Netherlands-based company posted a notice on a public forum, CAER Online. It explained that workers were trying to address the odor coming from its refinery east of Galena Park. The statement insisted the smell posed no harm.
That was hard for Gonzalez to believe.
As it happened, a floating roof on a chemical tank had collapsed, according to the county. LyondellBasell told pollution control staff broadly what it was. The county staff analyzed samples, posting updates on social media.
By Friday evening, county investigators identified several “chemicals of interest.” These included carbon disulfide, which has been linked to nausea, vomiting, dizziness and other symptoms, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The county in a statement advised “sensitive populations” to limit their time outside and wear face coverings, but that guidance came as the smell was expected to dissipate. The company said in a statement late Monday that they had contained the leak and finished the cleanup.
LyondellBasell didn’t issue a community alert when the incident happened because it wasn’t aware residents were impacted, spokesperson Kara Slaughter wrote.
“Maintaining an open line of communication with our community neighbors is important to us,” her statement said. “As soon as we were made aware, we provided an update.”
The way LyondellBasell handled the situation sat poorly with advocate Juan Flores, who works for Air Alliance Houston and lives in Galena Park. He’d felt the intense smell building up in the back of his throat as if he could taste it. That LyondellBasell appeared to wait days to tell residents what was happening, he thought, was “messed up.”
About 11,000 people live in Galena Park, a predominantly Hispanic community. And as the environmental justice movement illustrates, low-income communities of color such as theirs fight an unfair share of pollution. Flores, Gonzalez and others pushed for help as they breathed in the smell, and Gonzalez sprayed Febreze into her air-conditioner.
emily.foxhall@chron.com
twitter.com/emfoxhall
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