The Log | Special Feature
Almost Apocalyptic Scale of Devastation and Contamination in Katrina-Afflicted Areas Stuns Researchers There to Verify Environmental Damage p.2
Out of all that, Miranda says she has identified four issues of special concern: respiratory health, mental health, how to deal with the solid and hazardous waste debris, and the fate of contaminants in the flood waters.
The respiratory health problem her group focused on in the Gulf was mold. The Children’s Environmental Health Initiative previously has received significant funding for mold investigations from both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “So walking into houses that have mold problems is not new to us,” she says. But the mold that accumulated on walls and ceilings in flooded houses in New Orleans was something else.
“It was a several orders of magnitude different kind of problem,” she adds. “In a substantial portion of the city, the water stood for three weeks. And when the water receded, they had 90-degree temperatures and no electricity to run water vacuums, dehumidifiers or air conditioners. That created absolutely perfect conditions for mold growth.”
Miranda and research associate Matthew Stiegel applied tape to collect samples from about 10 dwellings, then used a portable microscope to begin identifying different mold species.
Potential Contaminant Sources
The coded trackable Web site now includes pinpoint information
on the locations of about 30 potential categories of sources of
contamination that could be spread by flood waters.Those
range from Superfund sites to gasoline stations, and petroleum
and gas-well sites to chemical plants.They also include poultry
and hog farms, cattle feed lots and farm fields.
National Priority List Sites
TRI Reporting Facilities 2003 (All)
TRI Hazardous
Air Pollutants
TRI Metals and Metal Compounds
TRI OSHA Carcinogens
TRI Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and
Toxic Chemicals
Gas Stations
Gulf Platforms
Lube Oil and Grease Plants
Refineries
Crude Petroleum
and Gas Operations
Oil and Gas Well Locations
Petroleum Product Storage Stations and Terminals
Petroleum Refineries
Chemicals Industry Facilities
Meat Packing and Processing Plants
Agricultural Minerals Operations
Construction Minerals Operations
Crushed
Stone Operations
Ferrous Metal Processing Plants
Misc. Industrial Minerals
Operations
Nonferrous Metal Mines
Nonferrous Metal Processing Plants
Refractory,
Abrasive, and Other Industrial Mineral Operations
Sand and Gravel Operations
Crop Businesses
Dairy Farms
Farm Ranch
Businesses
Cattle Feed Lots
Poultry and Hog Farms
“We found an incredible variety,” she marveled, “including some that are known to be very significant respiratory pathogens.” The tape sample list included 13 different kinds, among those “abundant penicillium, aspergillus and stachybotrys. The federal government says that if you walk into a house with more than 10 square feet of mold you should retreat and hire a professional,” she says. “I’m trying to remember if we went into any house that had less than 100 square feet.
“You can tell people they shouldn’t go into those houses but they’re going to. That point was brought home very poignantly to us by a man who was going in and out of a house that had incredible amounts of mold. He was on kidney dialysis and was immunocompromised. He really should not have been in there.”
The man was wearing the kind of face mask that can be bought in a building supply store, but that provided far less protection than the respirators that she and Stiegel wore. And while the alternative approach of hiring a professional sounds logical “it’s not clear what ‘professional’ means when it comes to mold remediation, because there are no federal or state certification programs,” she says.
“There were signs up everywhere in New Orleans for ‘professional mold remediators.’ But when we talked to these guys we realized they didn’t have any specialized training, had very low educational attainments, and didn’t have a good sense of the risks.”
Mental health can be harder to document. But living day to day in such an unsettled environment “is really going to take a toll on people,” says Andy Hull, one of the GIS analysts in Miranda’s group. “One person we talked to in New Orleans said people down there are living three different lives. You’re still working, so you go to work every day. You’re probably living with three or four other people and not in your own house. And then, before you go to work and on the weekends, you go to your own house that was flooded, just spending an hour or two there every day throwing things out on the street.
“Other people told us that they just got another flat tire while driving to work. They had had three flat tires in two weeks because of all the stuff on the road. Little things like that can really affect people.”
Photos Miranda’s group snapped provide additional stark records of the aftermath of disaster. A man dumps yet another wheelbarrow of debris onto his neighborhood street. “His house was full of stachybotrys mold, which is very pathogenic,” Miranda says. In another image, taken in the Lower Ninth Ward, a small bouquet of flowers rests incongruously on concrete steps to nowhere surrounded by yet more debris. She says colleagues teased her that she had ‘planted’ the flowers for graphic effect.
Especially memorable to Miranda was the picture of a woman with her arms full of freshly picked fruit. “That was in New Orleans East, the final house we went to,” she recalls. “I was shaking hands and thanking her for allowing us to sample in her home. Then she went to the back of her house—just completely destroyed—and picked a bunch of grapefruit, oranges and lemons off her trees. ‘You guys might need a snack later,’ she told us. I was really struck by the incredible generosity of spirit by people who had lost everything.”
Photos: Marie Lynn Miranda and research associate Matthew Stiegel examine data from field trip to the Gulf Coast; Indications of the bulk of non-salvageable debris from inside homes; Mold contaminates home in New Orleans; Trees bend under hurricane-force winds