Air Test Kit

Lawmakers push for answers about recent industrial fires

Lingering concerns about industrial fires that broke out earlier this month in two Buffalo neighborhoods are spurring the Common Council to seek answers from regulators.

The Council unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday that calls on a half-dozen city, state and federal agencies to respond to safety concerns involving a titanium-recycling plant in the Clinton-Bailey area. When a three-alarm fire broke out at Goldman Titanium on July 18, it was at least the fifth fire at the Dorothy Street facility in a 15-year span.

Lawmakers also want explanations from regulators involving a July 13 fire that burned for 23 hours at Niagara Lubricant on Chandler Street in Black Rock.

Air samples taken by the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York in the Chandler Street area found high levels of benzene, a carcinogenic compound. While the 100 parts per million reading would not likely cause long-term health problems, Erin Heaney, executive director of the coalition, said the benzene levels could have caused short-term problems, including nausea, dizziness and respiratory irritation.

Heaney also pointed out that the coalition’s independent air tests were “very conservative,” because they were taken 10 hours after the fire erupted—and six blocks from the Niagara Lubricant factory.

North Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr. said the high benzene levels raise serious concerns about the way experts handled the emergency.

“Somebody should have tested the air that day. It shouldn’t have been up to a group of volunteers to go and have a little $30 or $40 test kit,” he said.

The lawmaker added that emergency responders’ decision not to evacuate residents should have been made based on tests of air quality.

Delaware Council Member Michael

J. LoCurto said it’s clear that the city does not have a cohesive plan for dealing with such fires. He said if manpower issues made it impossible to conduct air tests, the city should have taken a different approach. “It might have been a better idea to evacuate the area since the air wasn’t able to be tested,” LoCurto said.

Meanwhile, the fire at Goldman Titanium could have been much more severe if it had rained that day, said Council President David A. Franczyk. Titanium reacts violently with water. The Clean Air Coalition also conducted tests in that neighborhood, but those results haven’t come back yet.

The Council wants to meet with city, state and federal regulators to discuss environmental and safety concerns in neighborhoods that border industrial sites.

Do It Yourself Home Mold Testing Kits « Utah Disaster Specialists

What are they good for?

If you feel that you have a mold problem, you can save money on a mold inspection by buying a mold testing kit from your local South Florida building supply store. The kit consists of a standard, plastic Petri dish containing a mold growth media, most likely MEA (Malt Extract Agar.) Simply open the kit and let mold spores fall in it from the ambient air above it. Within a few days, mold colonies will start to grow. Typically, you will see black, white, gray, brown, and green colonies. Colonies with both green and white are also very common. Most colonies will be fuzzy, and the mold types in the mold testing kit will usually be mostly penicillium/aspergillus-type molds, cladosporium, mucor, and a few others. It’s very cheap, easy, fast, and quite interesting to see what is floating around in your air.

However the conclusion drawn from the results of this mold testing procedure is very limited. Because the kits do not draw in a given amount of air for a given amount of time, there is no way of knowing for sure if the number of spores that settle in the plate and grow into mold are just the normal expected levels of spores found in every house. Most clean houses without a serious mold problem should be expected to contain very roughly 200 to 500 mold spores per cubic meter of air. Anything over 1,000 is typically considered suspect by many mold inspectors. These numbers are just estimates and do not reflect the real world perfectly, however, similar numbers have been supported by several scientific mold studies over the years.

Since there is no control sample using outdoor mold spore testing, you will not know if the mold spores floated in from outside as is expected, or if the mold indoors is different in number and type from outdoor levels and types, which would indicate that the mold most likely grown indoors.

Also, because the mold testing was not conducted by a person trained and experienced in mold testing, you will most likely have no idea of from where the mold came, if it is likely growing inside the walls, why the mold is a problem if in fact it is a problem, or how to properly remove the mold and correct the problem that resulted in mold growth.

If you feel that you have a serious mold problem in your home or place of employment, you may want to purchase a test kit from your local building supply store.

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