We conducted an air dispersion modeling study of atmospheric emissions
of benzene, styrene, total hydrocarbons, and hydrogen sulfide from
sources located within the Odessa Petrochemical Complex. The
facilities
within the Complex included a Shell Oil Company refinery, a
petrochemical complex operated by Rexene Corporation, and a
styrene-butadiene rubber manufacturing plant operated by Dynagen, Inc.
The Odessa Complex may also have emitted air pollutants of a biological
nature
through the use of treated wastewater in cooling towers. The
City of
Odessa operated a sewage treatment plant just south of the
petrochemical complex, known as the South Dixie Water Reclamation
Treatment Plant. The City sold effluent from the
sewage treatment plant to the Rexene Corporation. Rexene used
part of
the sewage treatment plant effluent in its cooling towers, and sold
part of the effluent to the Shell refinery for a similar use.
Cooling towers, by the nature of their operation, emit a large amount
of water into the atmosphere. A part of the water emitted
from cooling
towers takes the form of fine droplets known as drift. Given
that
sewage treatment plant effluent was used as the makeup water in the
cooling tower systems at Rexene and Shell, it follows that a wide
variety of human disease organisms were probably emitted into the
atmosphere from those cooling towers.
Legionnaires' disease has been
shown to result from exposure to cooling tower emissions in at least
three states. Measles, influenza, tuberculosis,
aspergillosis, and
asthma are some of the other human diseases associated with exposure to
bioaerosols.
Having researched the biological makeup of secondary effluent, we
compiled a list of potentially infectious organisms present in the
treated wastewater, and human diseases associated with each organism.
Click here
to see a list of disease organisms that may be emitted from
some of the cooling towers in the Odessa Petrochemical Complex.
