Toxic Fumes Vanish, but Fear Lingers

Gertrude Delaney has not been in class for two months.

Her daily routine as a special education teacher helping students to overcome learning disabilities has been replaced by a more painful and personal struggle.

Now, instead of seeing students, she sees doctors.

Delaney, her teaching assistant and eight students at Magruder Middle School in Torrance were hospitalized March 8 after being felled by fumes believed to have come from the nearby Mobil Oil refinery.

Although the precise source of the fumes has never been identified, the experience of teachers and students at Magruder has focused attention on the potential health effects of exposure to toxic chemicals from the refinery.

Rotten-Egg Odor

Teachers at Magruder have organized a group to press for the elimination of toxics and to demand that Mobil provide information about the health effects of exposure to what is widely believed to have been hydrogen sulfide. The chemical forms a toxic gas that has a characteristic rotten-egg odor.

Mobil has not accepted responsibility for the fumes but has paid the medical bills of those injured.

In case of another episode, teachers have asked to have oxygen on hand at the school on 185th Street, a quarter of a mile northwest of the sprawling refinery.

Children playing outside Magruder’s buff-colored buildings were the first to complain on that March morning.

Shooting Pains

“I heard children say: ‘What’s that smell? What’s that smell?’ ” Delaney recalled last week. “I was so used to having odors from that refinery . . . that I just ignored it.”

Moments later, Delaney said, she noticed an acid-like smell. “I started having pain in my throat. As it got worse, it went straight through my body, up my jaw and down my arms,” she said. “I was getting more and more panicky. I couldn’t breathe, the pain was so severe.”

Her teaching assistant, Lorie Ustick, also began having difficulty breathing.

Ustick said she too smelled an acidic odor. Tears started running down her face. She felt as if her sinuses were on fire, that there was fire down her throat and burning in her chest.

Special education teacher Kathryn Brooks, whose classroom next door to Delaney’s also faces south toward the refinery, described the odor as a very strong rotten-egg smell.

“The doors and windows were open. It just blew right in,” Brooks said. “It continued to get worse and worse until you could not draw a breath. It felt like you were suffocating.”

Principal Sidney Morrison said the odor was so powerful that he doubled over as soon as he opened his office door. “It was almost burning in its intensity. It was the worst kind of rotten egg you can imagine.”

Delaney, 54, of Torrance, developed a case of what her doctors called chemical bronchitis.

She went back to school March 28. But on April 12, Delaney said, she smelled the “very same smell that I smelled the first time.”

A spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District said the agency received three complaints of a bad smell on that day.

Again, Delaney said, she suffered chest pains, hoarseness and a second case of chemical bronchitis.

“The second exposure was extremely traumatic to me. I could not stay at school any longer. I cannot go back to that school,” Delaney said. “I cannot go through that again. I could be dead.”

Delaney has not taught at Magruder since then. She filed a worker’s compensation claim with the school district and, after 12 years at Magruder, is being transferred to another school farther from the refinery.

She and Ustick are considering a lawsuit against Mobil alleging that they suffered long-term health damage.

During an interview in their attorney’s Manhattan Beach office, Delaney said she is “not feeling very well emotionally or physically.”

And Ustick, 35, of Redondo Beach, broke down in tears while recalling the incident. Both women said they have suffered memory loss and disorientation.

Brooks said she also suffered from chemical bronchitis that her doctor has told her was caused by overexposure to hydrogen sulfide. The 40-year-old teacher consulted an industrial toxicologist who said her lungs could remain inflamed for up to a year.

The fumes they inhaled have heightened concern among faculty members at the school, which ironically bears the name of Philip Magruder, a former Mobil official.

“There are teachers who have been here for many years that have grave concerns about the safety of themselves and the students,” Morrison said. “The incident itself has reminded people of a clear and present danger. . . . When you see kids getting carried away, you know there is a danger over there.”

2nd Incident in 4 Months

The incident was the second involving Mobil and Magruder in four months.

In December, thousands of pieces of fiberglass insulation blew off a storage tank at the refinery and across the schoolyard. Students were kept inside while the material was cleaned up.

After the March incident, teachers organized a group--Faculty United at Magruder for the Elimination of toxic Substances--nicknamed FUMES.

“We believe that Mobil Oil refinery in Torrance is responsible,” the teachers wrote in a petition to the Torrance Teachers Assn. and to the school board. “Although Mobil has not admitted responsibility, they are ‘footing’ the bill for medical treatment.”

The organization is supporting the city of Torrance’s lawsuit seeking to have the refinery declared a public nuisance. The teachers also urged the Torrance Unified School District board to go on record in favor of the lawsuit.

The teachers said they are “deeply concerned about our health and safety not just for the present, but for the future as well.”

The city’s lawsuit alleges that teachers and students at Magruder suffered headaches, nausea and chest pains as a result of a noxious odor and fumes from the refinery.

Odds ‘Good’ It Was Mobil

Torrance Fire Chief Scott Adams said Mobil was the likely source of the problem. “The odds are good that it was Mobil and the odds are also good that it was hydrogen sulfide,” he said.

While paramedics worked on the injured students and teachers, an inspector from the South Coast Air Quality Management District tried unsuccessfully to locate the odor’s source.

After inspecting the refinery during the four days after the incident, AQMD officials cited Mobil for three violations of air quality laws. The violations were for two separate releases of excessive smoke from flares that burn off gas and for not having a gas flow monitor in operation on a flare.

AQMD spokesman Bill Kelly said the flares could have emitted hydrogen sulfide. Mobil is contesting those citations.

Mobil did agree last month to pay a $5,000 fine for another violation involving failure to have properly certified pollution monitoring equipment in operation on a new sulfur plant at the refinery.

Mobil’s environmental manager, Greg Munakata, said the refinery agreed to pay the fine to the AQMD although Mobil had asked for an extension of time from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to meet the monitoring requirement.

In its lawsuit, Torrance contends that individuals living and working near the refinery are suffering short- and long-term health problems, including respiratory disease, heart disease, cancer and genetic damage because of toxic air pollution from the refinery.

City Allegations

The city alleges that short-term exposure to hydrogen sulfide may be lethal and poses an immediate danger to health, causing severe eye and respiratory tract irritation and a loss of one’s sense of smell.

Mobil denies Torrance’s allegations and has begun preparing its legal defenses.

Jim Carbonetti, spokesman for Mobil, said refinery personnel have never been able to determine the source of the odor at Magruder, although they believe that it was hydrogen sulfide. “We couldn’t find any evidence of a leak,” he said.

Asked why Mobil assumed responsibility for the medical bills of teachers and students, Carbonetti replied: “The wind was blowing from the direction of the refinery. The odor was a hydrogen sulfide odor. . . . The circumstances just dictated that we assume the responsibility for taking care of the people who were involved.”

But he stressed that “we haven’t been able to pinpoint it to an exact cause.”

Morrison said Magruder’s faculty is not satisfied with Mobil’s inability to explain what happened that morning.

“We’re still in the dark. No one knows why it happened, but it did happen and there were consequences,” he said. “If you don’t know why it happened, then it could happen again at any time.”

Morrison said teachers are concerned about lingering health effects from exposure to hydrogen sulfide. They asked Mobil to pay for independent medical tests to assure that there was no long-term damage.

Assurances Asked

After the Magruder incident, PTAs at that school and others in north Torrance wrote Mobil to express concern and ask for specific assurances about the safety of teachers and students.

Mobil has invited Morrison and members of the Torrance Council of PTAs to attend a question-and-answer session and tour of the refinery this weekend.

The dialogue between Mobil and Magruder comes too late for Delaney.

Morrison said Delaney’s departure from the Magruder family is a real loss.

“For her to have to leave here has been a devastating experience for her. She feels a real sense of loss leaving Magruder,” he said. “I feel a real sense of loss too. It should not have had to happen this way.”