Fire at plastic recycling company produces thick, potentially toxic smoke, closes freeway interchange | Inland News | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California
A fire at a Riverside plastic recycling company sent a giant plume of toxic, black smoke into the air Tuesday afternoon that could be seen for miles, prompting a health advisory and forcing the closure of a major Inland freeway interchange during rush hour.
Flames broke out in a storage yard about 4:40 p.m. at Unlimited Plastics Inc. in the 2600 block of Durahart Street and spread across an acre of wooden pallets, heaps of cardboard boxes and piles of plastic, authorities said. Thick, black smoke engulfed a section of Interstate 215 and spread east to Yucaipa and Banning.
In a written statement issued Tuesday night, Riverside County Health Officer Dr. Eric Frykman advised residents in smoky areas to stay indoors, use the "air recirculation" function on their air conditioner and to limit their outdoor activity...
Emissions from burning plastic contain toxic gases and substances, including carbon monoxide and carcinogenic soot, that create the black color of the smoke, said Jean Ospital, the health effects officer for the South Coast Air Quality District.
Depending on the type of plastics burning, the smoke may also contain toxic formaldehyde, benzene, dioxins and other dangerous compounds...
At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, Planning Commission Chairman Finn Comer finished up an annual report on the commission's work with unplanned remarks about the fire. He cited a previous fire at the location and said city code enforcement officials should have been monitoring the operation more closely.
"It needed to clean up a long time ago," Comer said.
Carl Cranor, a UCR philosophy professor who lectures on risk assessment in the Environmental Toxicology Department, said that fallout from the fire may show up as dust in homes.
"Once the fire is out, it's going to be a long time and a scientific problem to figure out if there were any severe diseases caused by it," Cranor said.
