well we have the fire 98 99% out . we still have a few hot spots here and there and we re going to remain on the scene throughout the night and throughout tomorrow night e p a and idm or both. here they re meeting with our city officials and our health department officials determining the results of some of the air sampling that has returned. um not all the air sampling has returned. there is another meeting scheduled for the later on this evening to review that, um in hopes to get everybody back to their homes and get life back to normal here in richmond. and chief the city said. as far as we understand that debris is being removed today, and some of it could contain the deadly substance asbestos achieve. is that something that you ve come across that your investigators have come across that that is something that residents might have to be dealing with. that is
state, the federal health officials, they say that the water is safe, once tested, they say the air is safe to breathe. do you believe them? i feel like the water for the city at the time being is safe. i feel like the air is somewhat safe, there was an article done with a johns hopkins professor, they said directly in the article, instead of air monitoring they have to do air sampling so they can tell the way these chemicals are dissipating. there s also several thousands gallons of oil that was spilled. lube oil are unaccounted for, that oil could be reaching into the soils and that s where the professor was saying, without those being removed soon enough
watching this. you re on the record as saying that despite best efforts, the right test may not have been carried out so far. for this community to really feel safe. in your estimation, what kinds of tests are lacking? so i m basing that off the publicly available information that s on the epa response website. the epa differentiates between monitoring and air sampling. they ve been doing both. monitoring seems to be what is heavily relied upon, especially when screening people s homes. it s the data that s mostly reported on that response website. and the problem with monitoring data is it doesn t give us chemical specificity, it doesn t tell us what chens are present and what concentrations. it gives us an idea generally ow much of a class of chemicals is there, but it doesn t specify the specific chemicals. that s what s important to understand, exposure and
to set up temporary clinics to provide medical personnel and also toxicologists an opportunity to evaluate some of the people with the symptoms that could be linked to the event earlier this month. polo sandoval, cnn, new york. a professor from johns hopkins spoke to cnn earlier about the accuracy of the tests in the area. epa differentiates between monitoring and air sampling. and they have been doing both. monitoring seems to be what is heavily relied upon especially in screening people s homes and it is the data mostly reported on that response website. and the problem with monitoring data is it doesn t give us chemical specificity, what chemicals are present at what concentrations. it gives us an idea of how much of a class of chemicals is
i don t know that it s understaffed. but i do know that the data available seems to be lacking. the air sampling data, we haven t seen updates on that for quite some time. we certainly haven t seen data from samples taken at the accident site and downwind of the accident site in terms of air sampling, in terms of the chemicals that are being released that people are potentially exposed to. without that data, it s really hard to know what people should be worried about, what next steps may be. but from reports on the ground from people who live there and who have come back, there are certainly still odors and chemicals present in the area. and that worries me. if that worries you as a scientist, they re looking at common sense. if i can smell it. some people say they feel it in their throat in their nose. is that cause for concern? quite possibly. i mean, there are chemicals that we can smell, there are chemicals that we can t smell.