FREDERICKTOWN, Mo. (News First) – The E.P.A. released on Sunday evening information on their website about the situation still unfolding in Fredericktown after last Wednesday’s massive fire at Critical Mineral Recovery just off ‘OO’ Highway. The Environmental Protection Agency from Region 7 is making certain details available to the public right now.
The EPA says they are performing 24-hour mobile and fixed-location air monitoring. In addition to air monitoring, the EPA and EPA contractors are collecting air samples for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals.
The EPA says air monitoring and air sampling data is being relayed to the Fredericktown Fire Department Chief, the incident commander, for decision-making purposes related to suppressing the remaining hotspots. The latest from the Fredericktown Fire Department in their news release regarding the air says the Fredericktown Fire Department continues to be ready to receive air monitoring detection alerts that would require firefighters working on fire suppression to modify their actions, or pass the alert on to the public.
Back to the EPA’s news release, it goes on to give out this webpage. It’s response.epa.gov/cmrfire. They say they are aware the “Fredericktown” community is interested in air monitoring locations, and they have provided a map of these locations on their website. The map shows 15 air monitors in all. Three are positioned north of the site and 12 are positioned south of the site, where the majority of the population is located. The monitors look to be positioned at relatively short distances from the fire sight. No monitors look to be any further than a mile, at the most, from Critical Mineral Recovery .
The EPA also says they will use this webpage to communicate time-weighted averages of air monitoring results. They do say they continue to have occasional detections of hydrogen fluoride and elevated particulate matter (PM2.5). They say these detections are below action levels and are typically associated with flare-ups during the continued hotspot suppression activities at the Critical Mineral Recovery facility. The news release goes on to say the EPA is coordinating with and sharing air monitoring data with contractors hired by Critical Mineral Recovery. Plus, they say all air monitoring detections are communicated to the Fredericktown Fire Department as well.
