Why Should Delaware Care?
For years, residents and environmental advocates have been raising alarms about the potentially hazardous impacts that manufacturing a known carcinogen may bring to communities along the Route 9 corridor. New efforts by Croda and the federal government could improve the air quality though.
At the western foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, an international chemical company is constructing a 60-foot-tall flare designed to burn off air pollutants – including those that come from the cancerous substance ethylene oxide.
Croda, which operates the sprawling facility at Atlas Point near New Castle, expects the flare to be operational by the end of next year – about eight years after thousands of pounds of ethylene oxide leaked from the manufacturing plant, closing the bridge and sparking panic and a shelter-in-place order in the surrounding Delaware community.
The Atlas Point site manager Jeff LaBrozzi said the flare will be in place for “an upset condition,” when it will convert toxic chemicals into gasses that don’t pose immediate health risks.
It also is the latest in what company officials and regulators have described as a series of anti-pollution upgrades at the plant.
“We’re really trying to do the right thing here,” said Labrozzi, who has overseen operations at the plant for the last 12 months.
Despite the assurances, Delaware environmental regulator Angela Marconi said a flare likely would not have captured much of the pollutants that seeped out of the New Castle facility during the 2018 Thanksgiving weekend event, nor those that occurred during additional significant leaks in 2020.
“The flare could have helped to take some of the emissions, but the root issue to that was the incompatible gasket material,” Marconi said. But, she noted, a flare can help offset problems in the future.
“It’s a choice between the flare and just a release [to the atmosphere],” she said.
Neighbors say Croda’s new pollution equipment is little comfort unless the company can also prove that its emissions are not leaking beyond the facility’s fenceline. They want Croda to install ethylene oxide sensors just outside the gates of the facility.
“As long as there’s no fenceline monitoring or anything like that, how do we know? Are we supposed to trust them now all of a sudden?” asked Dora Williams, a founding member of the Delaware Concerned Residents for Environmental Justice and one New Castle resident who unsuccessfully sued the company on claims its facility increased the community’s cancer risk.
Williams argued that Croda’s emissions should be like a sales receipt available to communities by request.
“I do believe they owe that to the community,” she said.
30 times more cancerous
Labrozzi noted that Croda is not required by law to monitor for ethylene oxide outside of the facility. But that could change in the future.
In January, the EPA proposed a new set of hazardous air pollution regulations that would require Croda to install community air monitors and to undertake other precautions to reduce potential health risks. The proposal, which is still pending, was written to address the above-average cancer rate risks that result from industries that use extremely hazardous chemicals, such as ethylene oxide.
Ethylene oxide is a highly flammable chemical that is classified as a known carcinogen linked to lymphocytic leukemia, breast cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma as well as other health problems depending on type and level of exposure.
In 2016, the EPA revealed publicly that ethylene oxide was 30 times more carcinogenic than previously thought – a determination based on data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
In 2018, a release of 2,688 pounds of ethylene oxide from Croda’s plant forced the closure of the Delaware Memorial Bridge for seven hours and resulted in sporadic warnings to nearby neighbors to shelter in place.
In 2020, a federal watchdog urged the EPA to “promptly” hold public meetings in New Castle and 16 other locations across the country to inform residents living near ethylene oxide facilities about the chemical’s cancerous qualities, according to a report from the News Journal.
Of hundreds of facilities that handle hazardous substances, federal regulators found that only 33 are responsible for the majority of the nation’s ethylene oxide emissions – about 6 tons per year. Croda’s plant had historically emitted about 2 tons of ethylene oxide per year, until recent reductions when the plant was forced to shut down and correct its operations in 2018 and again in 2020. Pollution control devices known as scrubbers that were installed during that time period as well as a settlement agreement have led to reduced emissions, Marconi said.
In recent years, Croda’s plant on the Delaware River hasn’t suffered a catastrophic leak similar to the one in 2018, and its ethylene oxide emissions are down 90% from when the company used to import the chemical instead of making it in house. But that data looks at onsite emissions only.
Furthermore, emissions in recent years, while lower, still far surpass limits that the EPA imposes on ethylene oxide plants in Illinois.
Today, Croda, which produces more than $1.5 billion in revenue, is permitted to produce up to 30,000 tons of ethylene oxide annually at its Delaware facility. It uses the chemical to produce surfactants, which are used in a variety of consumer products like cosmetics and lotions.
A shift in operations
It was almost 70 years ago that Brenda Timmon Gunter’s parents purchased their house about half a mile away from Croda’s Atlas Point facility on Cherry Lane.
“I’m concerned about the quality of life for people that live in this area,” said Gunter, an Army veteran who also serves as president for the Rose Hill Gardens Civic Association. “I’m no scientist, but I’m also no dummy.”
Emory University environmental health professor Kyle Steenland said it is impossible to know what risks residents might be facing if no one is actually monitoring emissions in nearby communities.
“That kind of research is difficult, expensive and time-consuming,” he said, adding that most studies have focused on workers exposed to ethylene oxide, particularly at medical sterilization facilities that use the chemical. “Exposures are much less to the public than the workers. Much, much less.”
The New Castle site has been using ethylene oxide since at least 1998, but in 2018 Croda began producing the chemical onsite. Prior to that, Croda shipped ethylene oxide to Atlas Point from the Gulf Coast.
State legislators approved Croda’s ethylene oxide manufacturing plant by pre-empting zoning authority over the property from New Castle County, which had opposed it.
In attempts to garner public support for the new processing plant at the time, company officials touted the “green” nature of the renewable fuel source and a promise that emissions from moving the chemical off railcars would be avoided.
Upgrades lead to pollution reductions
The reclassification of ethylene oxide as a carcinogen in 2016 and ongoing settlement agreements between Croda and state regulators required a slew of equipment upgrades and operational changes, sparking company investments in pollution-preventing equipment.
“We’ve done a lot of work trying to make sure we reduce our emissions,” Labrozzi said, adding that a new boiler fueled solely by landfill gas from the nearby Cherry Island Landfill will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions onsite as well.
The company’s new 60-foot flare is being built to burn off any excess emissions, converting toxic chemicals into other gasses that don’t pose immediate health risks. LaBrozzi, Croda’s Delaware site manager, said the new flare is a project initiated by the company, not the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).
Williams, the community environmental justice advocate, said she opposed the flare because it will emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
LaBrozzi said the flare will add about 400 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, but a significant upgrade to the facility’s boiler system using the landfill gas will offset those emissions by some 13,000 tons.