Chemical fire near Solvay caused no health problems to public, officials say

Aug 28, 2023

Solvay, N.Y. – A fire at a plant near Solvay that included old chemicals in large dumpsters caused no health problems for people nearby, according to state and company officials.

The fire released a large plume of orange-colored smoke visible for miles. Local officials urged residents to shelter in place as a precaution.

On Monday, a vice president for the company, Tim Montgomery, said there were no health impacts from the fire that included sodium nitrite.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Conservation said Monday there have been no reports of any negative health impacts from the fire.

A local professor said the weather would have helped reduce any health risks.

The winds were blowing at 16 mph so anything coming out of the fire wouldn’t have stayed in the same area very long, said Dr. Huiting Mao, a chemistry professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.

Sodium nitrite is water soluble, so the rain that day also would have helped wash it out, she said.

The fire at 1:40 p.m. was in two 40-yard dumpsters filled with food-grade sodium nitrite, a chemical used as a food preservative or rust inhibitor, among other uses. Emergency officials originally identified the chemical as sodium nitrate.

Solvay firefighters called in the Syracuse Fire Department’s Hazardous Materials Response Team to help fight the fire.

The plant, located at 24 Industrial Drive, is operated by the Canadian firm ChemTrade Logistics.

Sodium nitrite is not combustible, but can accelerate a fire caused by other substances, according to a fact sheet prepared by the New Jersey Department of Health.

Montgomery said the fire department did monitoring “and they did not see any issues from a health impact. Plus, we didn’t have any issues with on-site employees. No injuries occurred from this incident.”

A DEC spokesperson said its spill response team determined all water and solid material runoff was contained to the site.

Montgomery said his current understanding is that most of the water used in fighting the fire pooled inside the dumpsters, with only “minimal” runoff of contaminated water.

“We’ll obviously do a full evaluation of what’s left in those containers after the fire and we’ll make sure that they are disposed of properly,” he said. “If the water needs to be treated that’s inside the containers, we’ll pump out the water and get that disposed of correctly.”

Montgomery said the company had found a supply of sodium nitrite that had been around for a while during a recent warehouse cleaning. Finished chemicals are typically sent to customers soon after production, he added, and are not stored for an extended amount of time.

“It was very old, probably not quite suitable from a specification perspective,” he said. “It’s either a powder or more of a solid material.”

ChemTrade decided it wanted to dispose of the sodium nitrite. It was likely placed into large, two-thousand-pound bags called super sacks, Montgomery said, which were contained within dumpsters that had plastic lining on the top and bottom.

The dumpsters that caught fire were sitting outside longer than expected, Montgomery said, due to delays with the vendor hired to haul them away.

“It wasn’t a long period of time, but I don’t want to guess whether it was days or weeks,” he said.

Officials are continuing to investigate what caused the fire.

Staff writer Jon Moss covers breaking news, crime and public safety. He can be reached at [email protected] or @mossjon7.

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