Cancer causing Benzene cloud hovers over Houston

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(Bloomberg) -- Now that the four-day fire is out at a Houston-area chemical storage complex, the real danger has emerged.

Cancer-causing benzene wafted across suburbs of the fourth-largest U.S. city Thursday, shutting roads, schools and industrial plants, and disrupting normal life for half a day. A major oil refinery in the heart of North America’s most important fuel-producing region told workers to stay home and the Texas National Guard deployed troops to assist with air monitoring. The benzene probably arose from charred chemical tanks as overnight winds stirred remnants of their contents, owner Intercontinental Terminals Co. said.

Even after the working-class suburb of Deer Park rescinded an order telling everyone to shut their windows and stay inside around lunchtime, the reprieve may be temporary, scientists warned. Warm temperatures that are swirling the air and dispersing toxic fumes will disappear after sunset, potentially allowing benzene to settle at ground level, said Jeff Evans, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s Houston office.

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But with the fire at Intercontinental’s storage complex extinguished, the situation is actually more treacherous because the pools of naphtha and other crude-oil byproducts at the site are no longer burning off -- and are free to evaporate at ground level.

“It’s making the dangers worse for the communities near the site,” said Daniel Cohan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “The fires that had been burning had been burning off many of these air toxins and wafting them into a plume higher into the sky, where it was able to spread and disperse into broader regions.”

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