During the evacuation following the 1996 Alberton chlorine spill, victims suffered a range of acute symptoms, including burns to the respiratory tract, skin and eyes, nausea, headaches, fatigue and mental confusion among many others. Symptoms varied widely due to individual doses, behavior, medical history and genetics, even within households. The overriding message from local health officials and a few doctors, including pulmonologists, was that residents should recover completely in a few weeks or less, though people with pre-existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma, might take longer. With the possible exception of fifteen people hospitalized, officials assumed that Alberton-area residents received a non-severe exposure.
However, little chlorine monitoring was conducted on the day of the spill, and none in the first few hours. Models suggested that Alberton received a strong dose.
Officials and doctors largely based their assumptions on limited chlorine studies, mostly from occupational exposures, such as in pulp mills. These studies were limited to healthy adults. Mass chlorine exposures to a general population were rare, and few health providers had much experience with treating significant chlorine exposures. Still, the medical literature at the time offered many caveats, warning that studies were scarce and limited, and several studies in the decade before Alberton had concluded that chronic respiratory illness could result, even in healthy adults with a moderate exposure.
Likewise, chlorine exposure research had documented RADS—reactive airways dysfunction syndrome—which is effectively one type of hypersensitivity, or chemical sensitivity. RADS, sensitivity, or MCS—multiple chemical sensitivity—were barely touched upon by health officials prior to reentry by residents, and the EPA assured that any sensitivity would last at most six to eight weeks. Sensitivity was not a concern for reentry.
Medical research has helped document the reality of chronic health effects for Alberton spill victims. The federal agency ATSDR—Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry—studied the prevalence of acute and long-term injury, finding that many residents suffered chronic skin, eye and respiratory illness 18 months after the spill. ATSDR also recorded significant rates of self-reported sensitivity and neurological symptoms, though ATSDR didn’t initiate a true medical study of those effects. Additionally, a local ophthalmologist documented 60 case studies showing chronic eye damage; researcher Dr. Kaye Kilburn documented chronic neurological damage; and an ATSDR-sponsored clinical evaluation found significant missed case of RADS.
Anecdotally, scores of victims reported various chronic symptoms for years after the spill. Many symptoms suggested hypersensitivity or MCS, meaning sensitized people now reacted to various chemical or physical triggers that may be commonplace and harmless to most people at low levels. Trigger examples include perfumes, pesticides and diesel fumes. Symptoms are wide ranging, including asthma-like attacks, debilitating fatigue, migraines and much more. After fresh exposures, Alberton victims were often bedridden for days. Sensitivity changed their lives.
By far the biggest failure in the health response to Alberton spill victims was the lack of concern by local, state and federal health officials about issues of hypersensitivity. Victims were not adequately informed to prepare them for life after Alberton, nor local treating doctors educated. Sensitivity was considered temporary, potential symptoms vaguely described if at all. ATSDR even failed to implement their own MCS study protocol. Health officials dismissed or downplayed numerous red flags as residents returned and complained of ongoing illness.
Unfortunately, no one will ever know, or benefit from, the prevalence of chronic sensitivity for Alberton spill victims because local, state, and federal health officials took no interest in tracking it.
Next: lessons from the Alberton spill
Published in the Missoulian 2021
RL Scholl is the author of GASSED: The True Story of a Toxic Train Derailment, and Alberton, Montana: Anatomy of a Toxic Train Wreck.
