"Cleveland Hopkins Airport fumes worry workers, remain mystery"

Sunday, August 12, 2001

Airport fumes worry workers, remain mystery
By Patrick O'Donnell
The Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer


Something is lurking under the concrete of Cleveland Hopkins International
Airport.

Down in the dirt or in the sewer pipes, it sits and festers, giving off a
stench that makes people sick.

For more than a decade, airline employees and sometimes customers on
Hopkins' Concourse B have complained about the strange smell and the burning
eyes and throat, headaches, nausea and fatigue it brings. Employees at
United Airlines often have to go home early and routinely complain that the
fumes make them so tired they nearly fall asleep at the wheel on the way
home.

"Your eyes start burning, and your throat is really dry," said Sue Fisher, a
ramp clerk who works under the concourse gates. "What really scares me is
I'm so tired."

Bonnie Chapple has been putting up with the fumes for 13 years.

"We've had pilots come in and say, What's going on here?' " said Chapple, an
administrative assistant for United's local general manager. "It's just not
safe working conditions for people who work on the concourse."

The fact that the smell exists is not in dispute; what's being disputed is
the source of the problem.

Airline managers, the city of Cleveland, the Ohio Bureau of Workers'
Compensation and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have all
verified the problem.

The Workers' Compensation Bureau first looked into the problem after
employees of Eastern Airlines complained years ago.

"We've never found much of anything in terms of dangerous things we look
for," bureau spokesman James Samuel said. "We're looking at this as one of
those mystery smell type things."

The smell, headaches and fatigue stopped for a while but returned last year,
Chapple said, and employees reported it to Workers' Compensation again.

Air samples were taken a few weeks ago, and the bureau is awaiting test
results. The agency does not view the smell as "an alarming concern," said
Samuel.

Cleveland and airport officials said for years that the smell was coming
from decomposing glycol, a de-icing solution that leaked out of sewer pipes
into the dirt beneath the concourse and ramps. Experts hired by the city
said the smells are consistent with glycol decomposition.

Some airport employees say the problem may not be coming from glycol but
from some hazardous material buried on the airport grounds in the late
1980s.

"I can't say definitively that it's glycol," said Reuben Shepherd, the
city's Port Control director. "It could be something that historically was
buried there."

Glycol is routinely used at airports around the world as a de-icing agent
for airplanes. Many airports and airlines try to capture and reuse glycol
that drips off planes. But in many cases, it runs off and into sewer systems
and sometimes waterways, prompting complaints from employees and residents.

People living near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport as well as
neighbors of the airport in Buffalo, N.Y., have complained of smells and
headaches. Glycol is used at both airports.

At Hopkins, Shepherd said, crews use trucks to vacuum up as much excess
glycol as possible. Still, some of the solution ends up in the sewer system.

As part of Hopkins' expansion, Shepherd said, the airport is considering
building a single de-icing facility for all airlines that will better
capture runoff.

In the meantime, employees wonder if their problems stem from other
chemicals, such as those dumped at the airport more than a decade ago. In
1989, former airport Commissioner William Bogas pleaded guilty to allowing
148 barrels of toluene, xylene and other hazardous chemicals to be buried at
the end of a runway at Hopkins. But those barrels were located far from the
terminal and were buried after the bad smells started, officials said. And
air testing at the concourse has shown levels of toluene well below
standards considered dangerous.

EPA spokesman Andy Thompson said the agency does not believe waste in the
buried barrels spread. They were removed quickly, Thompson said, and the EPA
tested soil and water for two years to make sure wastes had not spread. It
stopped the monitoring and considered the barrel dump closed in 1989.

In the early 1990s, in an attempt to solve the problem, Cleveland stepped up
its flushing of sewer pipes at the airport and put other chemicals in the
drains to mask the odor. But employees said that approach worked poorly. The
smells returned quickly after each flushing, and they were then stuck with
odors from the masking agent.

"Nobody ever really got serious about it," said Terrence Christiansen,
United Airlines' general manager at Hopkins until 1995. "My own opinion was
that whatever they found would cost a whole lot of money to fix."

Christiansen said he retired early in 1995, largely because of the fumes. He
would be so tired at the end of the day that "I'd almost be in a catatonic
state," he said.

"I'd just sit there with no energy to do anything or go anywhere," he said.
"Ever since I left, I have not had that problem, and I feel great."

Much of the problem went away - at least for a while - after the airport
built a new ramp for the concourse in 1996. With the old concrete and some
contaminated dirt removed and the old sewer lines replaced, the smell
largely disappeared, employees said.

For now, Shepherd said he will wait for test results from the Bureau of
Workers' Compensation. And if necessary, he said, he will investigate
further.

"If I have people who clearly think they are in an environment that's making
them feel ill, I don't think that's acceptable," he said. "It's something
we're going to track down and do everything we can to figure it out."

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