美国国家公共电台 NPR Air Pollution From Industry Plagues Houston In Harvey's Wake

 

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

All right, let's circle back to the U.S. and the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. As if the record rainfall and flooding were not enough, many Houston-area residents are now coping with increased air pollution. Houston's petroleum¹ refineries² and chemical plants have reported more than 50 separate releases of pollutants³ in the aftermath of Harvey. People who live around Houston are concerned about the possible impact on their health. From Houston, NPR's David Schaper reports.

DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE⁴: To be completely honest, Galena Park often smells a bit funky⁵. The community sits on the north side of Houston's shipping⁶ channel, right in the shadows of massive oil refineries and chemical plants.

JUAN FLORES: Because of the wind direction primarily in Houston here, blowing from the south, we get a lot of the smells and chemicals that come over in our direction.

SCHAPER: Juan Flores has lived here for 36 years.

FLORES: You smell the real - I mean, I'm trying to describe it here - rotten-egg smell sometimes if you're close enough to - in certain areas. Sometimes you just smell a chemical smell.

SCHAPER: Flores, who works for the group Air Alliance Houston, says that odor is just a fact of life here.

FLORES: It takes a lot for me to smell it now. But, like, the other day after Harvey, we could smell it - big time.

SCHAPER: Flores is walking down his street. He gets a few houses away from his own, and then he turns down a neighbor's driveway.

FLORES: Hey, Jesse, you there?

JESSE PEREZ: Hey, I'm back here.

FLORES: We're coming your way.

SCHAPER: Forty-one-year-old Jesse Perez agrees the air quality has been worse lately.

PEREZ: Right after the storm, it smell like petroleum, like a heavy - a strong smell.

SCHAPER: Perez says his wife complained about irritation⁷ in her eyes and her throat, as the fumes⁸ and the odor weren't just outside.

PEREZ: We entered this door right here, and inside, you can smell it. It was horrible, and, like, it was strong.

SCHAPER: Others in the neighborhood complain about headaches and burning eyes. And residents suspect the nearby Magellan facility, which just acknowledged Tuesday that more than 460,000 gallons of gasoline leaked from two storage tanks in the days after the storm. It's the biggest of at least a dozen such spills reported so far in the aftermath of Harvey, and that's not to mention the additional air pollution coming from shutting down and restarting the region's refineries and petrochemical plants. Elena Craft is a senior staff scientist with the Environmental Defense⁹ Fund.

ELENA CRAFT: Just in the last two weeks or so, we've had 7 million pounds of air emissions¹⁰ reported by facilities to the state environmental agency.

SCHAPER: One of the most dangerous releases was right here in the Houston neighborhood of Manchester. Air samples taken by the city of Houston's Health Department after the storm showed unusually high levels of benzene, a known carcinogen. Again, Elena Craft of the Environmental Defense Fund...

CRAFT: Exposure can lead to headaches, nausea¹¹. At high enough exposures, it can lead to immunosuppression. And obviously, some of the long-term implications are an increased risk for cancer.

SCHAPER: State and federal regulators say that residents should not be concerned about air quality issues related to the effects of the storm, adding that all measured concentrations of emissions were well below levels of health concern. But they had to shut down most of the monitoring stations to protect the equipment before Harvey hit. An EPA spokesman says state and local authorities are working to get those systems up and running again as quickly as possible, but that's of little comfort to those who live downwind of Houston's refineries and chemical plants.

David Schaper, NPR News, Houston.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOONCAKE'S "GAZANIA BLOSSOM")

1 petroleum   

n.原油，石油

参考例句：

• The Government of Iran advanced the price of petroleum last week.上星期伊朗政府提高了石油价格。
• The purpose of oil refinery is to refine crude petroleum.炼油厂的主要工作是提炼原油。

2 refineries   

精炼厂( refinery的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The efforts on closedown and suspension of small sugar refineries, small saccharin refineries and small paper mills are also being carried out in steps. 关停小糖厂、小糖精厂、小造纸厂的工作也已逐步展开。
• Hence the sitting of refineries is at a distance from population centres. 所以，炼油厂的厂址总在远离人口集中的地方。

3 pollutants   

污染物质（尤指工业废物）( pollutant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Pollutants are constantly being released into the atmosphere. 污染物质正在不断地被排放到大气中去。
• The 1987 Amendments limit 301(g) discharges to a few well-studied nonconventional pollutants. 1987年的修正案把第301条（g）的普通排放限制施加在一些认真研究过的几种非常规污染物上。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 funky   

adj.畏缩的，怯懦的，霉臭的；adj.新式的，时髦的

参考例句：

• The kitchen smelled really funky.这个厨房有一股霉味。
• It is a funky restaurant with very interesting art on the walls.那是一家墙上挂着很有意思的绘画的新潮餐馆。

6 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

7 irritation   

n.激怒，恼怒，生气

参考例句：

• He could not hide his irritation that he had not been invited.他无法掩饰因未被邀请而生的气恼。
• Barbicane said nothing,but his silence covered serious irritation.巴比康什么也不说，但是他的沉默里潜伏着阴郁的怒火。

8 fumes   

n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体

参考例句：

• The health of our children is being endangered by exhaust fumes. 我们孩子们的健康正受到排放出的废气的损害。
• Exhaust fumes are bad for your health. 废气对健康有害。

9 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

10 emissions   

排放物( emission的名词复数 )； 散发物（尤指气体）

参考例句：

• Most scientists accept that climate change is linked to carbon emissions. 大多数科学家都相信气候变化与排放的含碳气体有关。
• Dangerous emissions radiate from plutonium. 危险的辐射物从钚放散出来。

11 nausea   

n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶)

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕期常有恶心的现象。
• He experienced nausea after eating octopus.吃了章鱼后他感到恶心。