petrochemical fire News

Exxon Faces Lawsuit Over Air Pollution from Petrochemical Fire

HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil Corp was hit with a lawsuit on Thursday over pollution from a fire at the company’s Baytown Olefins Plant, according to an attorney for Harris County, Texas, which filed the suit. The fire was being investigated …

Shipping Resumes in Houston Channel Fouled by Chemical Spill

The U.S. Gulf Coast’s most important industrial waterway partially reopened on Monday after it was polluted with cancer-causing benzene and toxic runoff from the region’s worst chemical disaster in more than a decade. A two-mile stretch of the Houston Ship …

Houston Ship Channel Remains Closed as Plume Leaches Benzene

Some vessels will be allowed to enter a tributary to the Houston Ship Channel this morning but more than 60 ships remain stranded by the closure of the main waterway as a result of a cloud of cancer-causing benzene from …

Toxic Clouds Shut Down Houston Suburbs

Now that the four-day fire is out at a Houston-area chemical storage complex, the real danger has emerged. Cancer-causing toxins are wafting across the eastern suburbs of the fourth-largest U.S. city, shutting roads, schools and industrial plants, and disrupting everyday …

Chemical Fire Timeline Abandoned as Plume Towers Over Houston

As a towering plume of black smoke billowed a mile above Houston for a third day, local officials said they don’t know how long the petrochemical blaze that sent orange fireballs into the sky will continue. Five tanks holding gasoline …