SPS Technologies fire smoke could lower air quality and cause health issues

It could take days or weeks to know the potential health risks resulting from the four-alarm blaze at SPS Technologies, the Abington factory that caught fire late Monday and prompted evacuations and shelter-in-place orders in the surrounding community.

Health experts say it’s difficult to predict in part because it’s not yet clear what chemicals were on site or whether the blaze had reached them at the factory, which produces precision metal fasteners and special machined parts and regularly handles potentially toxic chemicals.

Local officials on Tuesday said that they had not detected hazardous materials in the air, though they did not specify which materials they had tested for.

They added that a portion of the building where officials were concerned about the potential release of arsenic did not catch fire, and that first responders had focused efforts on areas of the building known to hold potentially hazardous chemicals to protect them from the blaze.

Even if the building had been empty, however, smoke and fumes from a fire in a large, older building can pose a serious risk for people nearby, said Jamie Garfield, a professor of thoracic medicine and surgery at Temple University’s Lung Center.

”Buildings are made with heavy metals, and the combustion process will release small particles,” she said.

Residents in the area should do what they can to protect themselves from exposure to fumes and smoke from the fire, experts said. Evacuation orders for some streets in Abington Township had been issued Tuesday, and other residents within a one-mile radius of the site were under a stay-at-home order.

Anyone who goes outside in the area should wear an N95 mask, said Jane Clougherty, a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.

“Minimize your time out of doors, run from your house to the car, and then leave the area if you can, if that is a possibility.”

People sheltering inside should keep their doors and windows fully sealed, and block any other cracks to the outdoors, she said.

An N95 or KN95 mask can filter out particles larger than 3 microns, but some small particles can slip through, and masks and air filters can block particulate matter will not block gases, said Nancy Johnston, an associate chemistry professor at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho who frequently works with Philadelphia scientists on air quality issues.

Bad smells or a metallic or acidic taste on the air is a sign to leave an area for fresher air, said Johnston, who spoke in a personal capacity, not on behalf of her college.

People with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic lung disease, and older adults are at particular risk from adverse air quality events, said Robert Laumbach, an assistant professor at the Rutgers University School of Public Health.

And residents could experience symptoms after the immediate danger from the fire is over, Garfield said. Residents should monitor themselves for coughing, wheezing, chest pains, dizziness, and headaches, as well as less specific symptoms like blurred vision, nausea, or having difficulty concentrating.

”It could take days or weeks before you feel the effects,” she said. “We should be extremely careful in this environment — and that doesn’t even get into what other types of chemicals might have been aerosolized in this fire.”

If chemicals were burned in the fire, they could become gases and travel in the plume of smoke emitting from the factory, Johnston said. Metal particulates, which are heavier, would eventually fall out of the plume and land on water, soil, and other surfaces, she said.

But without more information on the exact chemicals present at the factory on Tuesday, or whether something toxic is circulating in the air, experts say it’s hard to predict whether residents were exposed to unhealthy solvents.

”It depends on the concentration in the air, and more importantly the concentration that gets into people’s lungs,” Laumbach said. ”It’s the kind of circumstances where you’d want to take precautions initially.”

Benzene and vinyl chloride were among the chemicals reportedly present at SPS Technologies in recent years, according to federal records.

Benzene is “one of the few toxins declared as a known carcinogen by the [Environmental Protection Agency],” Clougherty said.

» READ MORE: Abington company that caught fire had toxic ‘ignitable waste’ on site and had past EPA violations

Vinyl chloride can cause cancer with long-term exposure. Burning it can produce hydrogen chloride, which can irritate lungs “and in the short term, is much worse than vinyl chloride,” said Laumbach, who treated Paulsboro, N.J. police officers exposed to vinyl chloride after a train crash in 2013.

It’s unclear whether vinyl chloride was present at SPS during the fire or whether it was exposed to the blaze.

Clougherty was also concerned by reports of safety violations around the storing of hazardous materials at the site.

”If there is a history of somewhat lax reporting and inventorying of chemicals on site by this company, that is quite profoundly disconcerting,” she said.

Emergency management officials have to quickly assess rapidly changing conditions to protect the public in these situations, Laumbach said. For example, the heat from a fire could cause harmful particles to rise high enough that they might not pose a risk to the immediate area.

”But then it might be coming down somewhere else,” he said. “And it depends very much on whether you’re upwind or downwind.”

Garfield added that weather conditions also play into risks from particulate matter. “If the wind takes this offshore, then that’s great, but it could easily spin it around and bring it inland, and we could have much longer, lasting exposure and injuries,” she said.

”It’s going to be a long time until we can say for sure whether exposure is over, and we have to be mindful from today on about minimizing our risk.”