Experts Believe Spilled Toxin Has Dissipated

Environmental experts told Seacliff residents Tuesday that they believe nothing remains of the toxic hydrazine that was spilled in the July 28 derailment of a Southern Pacific freight train next to their neighborhood.

But skeptical residents closely questioned the experts and Ventura County emergency officials about why so little was known so late about the hazards posed to them, their houses and their pets by the hydrazine.

About 30 residents of the gated beachside community crowded into a neighbor’s television room Tuesday to hear a synopsis of the weeklong cleanup from officials of Southern Pacific, its contractor and the county fire and environmental health departments.

Authorities closed a 10-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway and evacuated the 49 houses at Seacliff after 12 cars of a Southern Pacific train derailed within a few hundred feet of the neighborhood. An overheated axle bearing seized on a freight car and caused the train to jump the tracks and smash into a freeway overpass, spilling eight 55-gallon drums of hydrazine and puncturing 15 others.

Hydrazine is suspected of causing cancer and is known to irritate the eyes, skin and respiratory tract. Several workers and bystanders were sickened by it during the cleanup.

Residents were allowed to go home and the freeway was reopened Aug. 2 after most of the spilled hydrazine was neutralized with a solution of swimming pool chlorine.

But on Tuesday, residents remained worried about possible health risks from living next to two patches of ground that were never cleaned up.

Air tests conducted twice daily since the cleanup ended have shown no trace of hydrazine--a chemical used to make products ranging from photographs to pharmaceuticals--rising from the hot spots, Southern Pacific spokesman Randy Smith said.

And experts believe that all the hydrazine has evaporated harmlessly, said Paul Kulhmeier, a spokesman for Morris & Knudson, a company based in Boise, Ida., that was hired to test the site.

Meanwhile, the spots remain capped with 18 inches of sand, surrounded by wire-mesh fencing and guarded around the clock. A four-week period of more intense air and ground sampling is scheduled to begin this weekend, Kulhmeier said.

Some residents asked whether brief exposure to hydrazine fumes could cause cancer in humans, as long-term exposure does in animals.

No, said Dr. Lawrence E. Dodds, director of county public health services. Any brief exposure to hydrazine would only irritate the eyes and respiratory tract, he said.

Others demanded to know whether they were exposed to unseen health risks by being home during the wreck, since two reporters who breathed hydrazine fumes at the scene had to be taken to the hospital.

The reporters were standing within a few feet of the spilled hydrazine, but winds were blowing the fumes away from Seacliff, Assistant County Fire Chief Richard Perry said.

The Seacliff Beach Colony Homeowners Assn. asked in a list of prepared questions why during the cleanup there had been no central source of information about health hazards and predictions of when residents could return home.

“Murphy’s Law, folks, takes precedence in an emergency situation,” Perry said. “If it can go wrong, it will. We had lots of little glitches on this scene.”

The cleanup was halted several times because the wrong equipment was being used and once after 11 workers were mildly sickened by hydrazine fumes.