DIACETYL- ONE MORE DIRTY UNIROYAL CHEMICAL SECRET

In the October 6, 2000 Elmira Independent Helen and Brian Post had their Letter To The Editor published. There had been yet another Saturday night fumigation courtesy of Uniroyal Chemical. This fumigation took place on September 30, 2000 their son's wedding day. The Posts stated in their Letter that Uniroyal owed Elmira residents an apology. They further stated that they were subjected to embarassment and horror that such an awful fumigation could happen on their son's big day. Apparently they had 25 of the wedding guests who stayed overnite and further experienced the full disgusting effects of Uniroyal's air discharges.

In the October 13,2000 Independent Gail Martin wrote about Ken Chalmers giving Woolwich Councillors hell for not charging Uniroyal under municipal odour by-laws. Gail also wrote about Shannon Purves-Smith describing headaches, nausea and sore eyes from Diacetyl discharges from Uniroyal's Building #19. Shannon stated in the article that Diacetyl was a big problem. Keep in mind this was before we knew that it, on its own, was also a major health problem. It took lawsuits in the U.S. over "popcorn lung" before we knew here that fumes from Diacetyl (artificial butter flavour) damaged lungs.

The October 27, 2000 Independent covered a UPAC meeting. Reporter Julie Sawyer covered David Chadder of RWDI (Guelph) in his comments to UPAC. Mr. Chadder advised that doors and windows of Building #19 were still being left open thus sharing the odours (and health problems) with Elmira residents. Hence the buildings vacuum system to collect fumes could not work properly. David chadder also described a huge release of Toluene into the air . The concentration was 151,427 micrograms (ug) per cubic meter (m3) of air whereas the odour threshold is only 6,210 ug/m3. At the meeting I asked Mr. Chadder if he had perhaps captured a spill and his answer was "possibly".

In the Woolwich Observer on October 28, 2000 Richard Vivian wrote that Mr. Chadder of Rowan Williams Davies and Irwin had stated that Uniroyal needed to pick up the pace. He felt that a thermal oxidizer was needed in Building #19 in order to treat the fumes from Diacetyl. Quoting Mr. Chadder "In my opinion they are taking a much slowwer route than is necessary.". "What they need are new control measures to contain the diacetyl and destroy it.".