2nd Plastics Fire in Our Area in a Month Rages in Plainfield Township

How do plastic factory fires affect our air, water and farmland?

Posted by: Noël Jones

This is really awful. According to Tracy Jordan's article for The Morning Call today, our area is experiencing its second major plastics factory fire in a month, coughing billowing black clouds of toxic smoke into our air. Apparently this fire has been raging at Nicos Plastics in Plainfield Township since 5:00 a.m. this morning. I just looked out my front door, which faces north in the direction of the fire, and the smoke appears to have turned from black to gray, so hopefully that means that the fire department has managed to get it under control. Still, I closed my door and window to avoid any chance of the wind blowing all that toxicity around for everyone to breathe. Anyone living near the fire, should really be careful about breathing this smoke. Having lived through September 11th in New York, and EPA Director Christine Whitman's infamous proclamation, I no longer believe anyone in the government or the media that tells me that "the air is safe to breathe" after a disaster hits a large commercial building--never mind a plastics factory.

The other plastics factory fire this month was National Plastics in
Palmer Township. Thomas Shortell reported for the Express-Times that hundreds of firefighters were requirement to fight the blaze in the Palmer Industrial Park on July 15th.

Is this a code-enforcement issue? How can two such dangerous fires to the community happen so close together in our area? How does this affect our farmland, our drinking water, and the air we breathe?

And why did these fires happen? Did they meet code? We're the factories understaffed to save money?