![]() ![]() A state mobile air monitoring lab was expected to deploy Thursday to Norco, about 20 miles (32 km) north-west of New Orleans, according to an EPA report. It was days before Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality did the same.įour days after Hurricane Ida, there was still no data posted to the state agency’s website from its mobile air monitors. After Hurricane Laura came ashore near the border of Texas and Louisiana in August last year, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sent out a mobile air monitoring van to detect air pollution in the state within 15 hours. The degree of the public health concern is harder to gauge in Louisiana, where air monitoring efforts are often slow to capture peak emission levels directly after a storm, when facilities are likely to belch pollution. Map of where chemical or oil discharges in Louisiana were reported to the US Coast Guard So far, the US Coast Guard has received 17 calls about air releases to the National Response Center, including multiple reports of ammonia released into the air because flares were blown out by the storm. The degree of the pollution is still unknown in part because phone lines have been down in portions of the state, including the hotline for the Louisiana state police, which has deployed its hazardous materials unit to handle toxic emissions from industrial facilities in the past, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report. It’s unclear how long it will take to assess the full scope of the damage and its toll on residents. ![]() And with hundreds of chemical facilities located within the path of the hurricane, numerous air quality tracking systems were left out of commission. As of Thursday afternoon, nearly a million homes and businesses were without power, leaving hundreds of thousands more without access to clean water. Health concerns linked to potential toxic exposure underscore the array of long-term impacts brought by the category 4 storm that struck south-east Louisiana earlier this week.
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