The ExxonMobil Explosion That Nobody Is Talking About

ThinkProgress

TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA — Just before 9 a.m. on February 18, the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California exploded, shaking the surrounding community with the force of a 1.7 magnitude earthquake, and sending a quarter ton of sulfur oxide gas into the atmosphere. With the capacity to refine more than 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day, the facility supplies nearly 10 percent of the state’s gasoline supply, and its reduced capacity increased the cost of filling up a tank of gas in California by 6 to 10 cents per gallon.
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Outside the refinery, a chemical ash rained down on the community for the rest of the day, steadily falling on playgrounds, cars, and backyard gardens. The ash was ejected at such a violent rate that, less than 2 miles southwest of the facility, it blanketed the mobile home park owned by Brad Commiso.

{Fire dep't told him Exxon would say how to clean it up. Commiso demanded info from more senior officer}

"At about 11:30 that morning, an officer called and said ‘I talked to them; it’s okay, just wash it away.’ And no tests were done at 11:30 in the morning,” Commiso said. “A shelter in place was still active, but the fire department was telling me I could wash it down the storm drain.”
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Local and state agencies have so far concluded that the fallout was non-toxic. But with a federal investigation ongoing and many questions unanswered, residents in Torrance are still upset nearly two months after the accident, with what they see as a series of lapses in governmental response. Many Torrance citizens feel as though they don’t fully comprehend what, exactly, transpired on February 18, nor how it might still be impacting their health.

“It feels as though the people in charge, both the government and the refinery, are looking out more for their PR than anything else,” says Jennifer Richards, the director and co-founder of Children’s Montessori School, which also sits roughly 2 miles south of the refinery and suffered the same chemical fallout. “This doesn’t feel like a situation where they are genuinely concerned about the well being of the community.”

The explosion was the latest in a string of accidents in and around the ExxonMobil refinery. ...

In the accident’s aftermath, California state senators held public hearings on emergency coordination and the explosion’s effects on gas prices, and Rep. Lieu joined with Rep. Maxine Waters to successfully petition the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) to launch a federal investigation on safety conditions in the refinery.
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Unknown Toxicity
Two days after the explosion, ExxonMobil hosted a town hall meeting for concerned Torrance residents. According to May, the information offered that day woefully undersold the chemical composition of the fallout.
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“Are there any rare earth elements… that’s what we’re asking,” he demanded. “Do you have any lanthanum? Do you have any other chemicals to increase the capacity of your catalyst? Because if it’s just aluminum and silicon, I can live with that. But if you’re adding [other rare earth elements] to that, it massively increases the toxicity, and we wanna know about it.”

“This is spent catalyst,” responded the physician, in a slightly exasperated tone, “It contains aluminum oxide, it contains amorphous silica, and it contains kaolin. That’s what FCC spent catalyst contains.”

But in the samples taken by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), aluminum, lanthanum, and cerium were each discovered to exist at excessive levels. According to Lenntech, a company that provides water and air purification systems for industrial facilities worldwide, these three elements can cause a host of health problems when people are exposed to them over prolonged periods.

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