December 24, 1999
People who live near tire fire worry about health
By Carol Bogart
Staff Writer
Leah Cutchall is a nurse. She says her youngest grandchild, Jerad Raypole, 3 1/2, had an illness as an infant that hampered his breathing.
When Jerad was 8 months old, the problem had cleared up.
Now, Cutchall says, the illness has reappeared. She suspects airborne contaminants from the Kirby Tire Fire.
According to Ohio EPA documents, chemicals found in air, soil and groundwater in the vicinity of the Kirby tire fire included benzene and dioxin. On Aug. 21, at least 6 million tires burned burned at Kirby. The site is several miles southeast of Sycamore.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration rates tire fires as "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health" due to the poisons released by burning rubber.
Kathy Miller, a nurse assistant whose children have been to the doctor repeatedly for illnesses she believes are related to the Kirby Tire fire, called investigator Allen Yarborough at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta last week. She said he told her a health survey for worried residents is planned "within the year."
Miller said Yarborough asked her to be patient, and told her his agency would be working with the Ohio Department of Health and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to determine the long term health threats to people living in the vicinity of the Kirby Tire Fire.
Kathy Miller said she and other Deunquat families have experienced headaches, nosebleeds and other symptoms they believe are related to the fire. They have petitioned the Ohio Department of Health, the Wyandot County Health Department and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, asking that a physician skilled in screening them for environmental poisoning be brought to Sycamore so that they might get appropriate blood tests for themselves and their children. Thirty-seven adults and children are represented by the petition.
The Agency for Toxic Substances' Mike Groutt said the petition is being studied.
"We will see what people (in Deunquat) are asking for," he said.
Groutt said the agency, through its partner, the Ohio Department of Health, will review available data, such as sampling results that document benzene in groundwater people could use for drinking, cooking, doing laundry and bathing.
The review, Groutt said, will begin "after the holidays."
The residents believe they have been and are being harmed. Cutchall, 48, lives on SR 231, less than a mile from the tire site.
"I always had such thick hair," she said. "Now it's all breaking off. You can see the whole top of the front. I have headaches, too."
This week, Miller took her 6-year-old daughter to the doctor for the second time since the fire. Her older daughter, 10, has been sick, too.
"We need to get something started out here," Miller said. "I have real fear for what illnesses the future might bring."
Nancy Ekleberry and her fiance, Ryan Zorn, signed the petition for themselves and their children. Since the fire, Zorn has had headaches and bloody noses. Ekleberry said she is unusually irritable. She said that as the fire raged, the family could sometimes "get a whiff" of chemicals in the air.
Ekleberry said the family doesn't drink the water but "we have to take showers. This is a time bomb. You're crazy to think it's gone now. For them (state and local agencies) to tell you that is wrong."
"What about our little grandchildren?" Cutchall asked. "And what about our property values? We were trapped then and we're trapped now."
Miller said Bob Frey of the Ohio Department of Health told her last Thursday that the department is discussing putting together a team of environmental doctors in response to the the Deunquat petition. Miller said Frey "didn't seem to think there was much of a problem" regarding long-range health problems from the fire.
Contacted by the A-T, Frey said there is no such plan "at the present time." He also said there is so much clay at the site that groundwater would not be likely to move very quickly. Miller questions that assumption, saying people in the area know it to be laced with quicksand.
The state health department's Ying Feng said she is not aware of any health survey. She said only the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has environmental physicians and that, to her knowledge, "ATSDR has not committed those resources at this point."