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A search and rescue mission continued Monday afternoon at the site of the New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel collapse, the building catastrophically failing Saturday morning. The 18-story building was being constructed at the edge of the French Quarter on the corner of Canal and North Rampart. Many Workers Injured, Two Confirmed Dead, One Missing in Building Failure About 100 workers were in and around the building at the time of its collapse. All but on have been accounted for by…

Shortly after 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, July 31, 2019, an explosion ripped through a processing unit at the Baytown Olefins Plant, an ExxonMobil oil refinery. The Olefins Plant explosion resulted in a large fire in the unit, the blaze contained by firefighters but still burning on Thursday. A large and growing smoke plume arose from the explosion site, drifted across the city of Baytown. The smoke plume potentially contains harmful toxins because the Baytown refinery processes light hydrocarbons, including propylene…

Baytown ExxonMobil Chemical Plant Hit by Explosion, Fire A fire at the ExxonMobil Olefins Plant in Baytown, Texas, has led to an evacuation of workers from the facility and a “precautionary shelter-in-place” order affecting areas adjacent to the facility.  The fire, which appears to involve a single “tower” at the plant, is producing a cloud of thick black smoke that is being dispersed by light winds after rising several hundred feet into the air. According to local emergency responders, the…

“Cancer Clusters” are cancers that develop within limited geographic areas and involve more victims than can be explained by purely random disease development. In many cases, such clusters are due to exposure to some environmental toxin. This post explains how both the medical and legal communities investigate such unusual disease occurrence patterns.

What has become a massive chemical fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Company facility located on Independence Parkway in Deer Park started on March 17, 2019. Overnight between March 18 and 19 the Deer Park ITC fire significantly worsened. Attempts by firefighters to extinguish the blaze have been to no avail as the flames engulfed not just the initial chemical tank that caught fire at the facility but multiple other containment tanks on the premises. The inferno now encompasses sink chemical…