Just how toxic is industrial chromium plating?

[defspace]

Weird one for yall: How toxic is industrial chromium plating?
we're house shopping. One contender backs up to an industrial facility whose flagship service appears to be chromium plating. Any qualms? Obviously if we had our druthers we'd have drug dealers for neighbors but times are hard.

[jimcav]

chrome plating typically uses hexavalent chrome, which is toxic, and there are OSHA rules designed to protect the workers.
https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/f...t_chromium.pdf

Ideally, it wouldn't be escaping their facility, but I've seen historical environmental contamination in areas around military facilities using Chromium VI (these areas were not near base housing however). You might ask your county office if there are any environmental surveys of the immediate area around the facility.

[steve garro]

Nasty.
It's been blacklisted to the point it's really hard to find anyone who does good chrome.
Water intensive and full of heavy metals & cyanide = deal breaker for me, as if chrome plating is allowed in the area likely so are/has been a bunch of other toxic processes

- garro.

[j44ke]

Is the house on city/town service for water or does the house have a well? How long has the business - or a business like that - been there? Ground water contamination might be an issue due to historical presence even if the current plant is in compliance with current regulations. You can also ask a lot of questions of your realtor and the seller's realtor, and they have to answer them (usually.) You can also ask local/state/federal agencies involved in environmental issues to see what info they have. You can also intuit some things if the property is obviously under-market price-wise. When interest rates are high, discounts on troubled properties sometimes make them more appealing - which is sort of counter-intuitive right? You'd think that they'd be harder to sell, but you'd be surprised.

[echappist]

Weird one for yall: How toxic is industrial chromium plating?
we're house shopping. One contender backs up to an industrial facility whose flagship service appears to be chromium plating. Any qualms? Obviously if we had our druthers we'd have drug dealers for neighbors but times are hard.

Cr(VI) plating, as mentioned above, is quite toxic. When I try to explain this to the lay person, I just mention Erin Brokovich, and most seem to get how pernicious it is.

Small chance that it could be Cr(III) plating, which on a per unit basis should be less toxic. But not clear exactly how much less toxic overall.

As an aside, the neighbors thread is quite the read. I've no idea how bougie a life I lead (even when I was a poor student), with the closest to living in run-down conditions being residing in off-campus housing in CT, in a place owned by slumlords and didn't have working heat during cold CT January.

[defspace]

Nasty.
It's been blacklisted to the point it's really hard to find anyone who does good chrome.
Water intensive and full of heavy metals & cyanide = deal breaker for me, as if chrome plating is allowed in the area likely so are/has been a bunch of other toxic processes

- garro.

Thanks Garro. You're right, there's a bunch of other stuff nearby, mostly metal fabrication, but this was the only place that gave me pause. It's not a hotrod chrome shop, but industrial oil & gas, medical, aerospace coatings. Hopefully cleaner, definitely larger.

Is the house on city/town service for water or does the house have a well? How long has the business - or a business like that - been there?

On city water. Looks like the building was constructed in the mid 1950s, current occupants since 1980s.

Thanks yall. Not really the answers I was hoping for. If you have to ask...

[thollandpe]

Here's a tool where you can track any U.S. School's (or state's or town's) exposure to airborne toxic chemicals.

https://peri.umass.edu/air-toxics-at-school

We're pretty low on the list (only 14% of the national average) but coincidentally, our biggest exposure is to chromium, from a plating company (owned by people my patents grew up with).

Cr fact sheet: https://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb...ts/fs/0432.pdf

Added: The town I moved from, just 50 miles away, is over 3 times the national average overall, and its chromium score is 20 times higher. Looks like it's also from plating.

[echappist]

Here's a tool where you can track any U.S. School's (or state's or town's) exposure to airborne toxic chemicals.

https://peri.umass.edu/air-toxics-at-school

We're pretty low on the list (only 14% of the national average) but coincidentally, our biggest exposure is to chromium, from a plating company (owned by people my patents grew up with).

Cr fact sheet: https://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb...ts/fs/0432.pdf

Added: The town I moved from, just 50 miles away, is over 3 times the national average overall, and its chromium score is 20 times higher. Looks like it's also from plating.

Thanks for posting the link

I looked up a few places I've lived (Northeast, Mid-Atlantics, Midwest). Seems like industrialization even 30-40 miles away affect things.

[vertical_doug]

Here's a tool where you can track any U.S. School's (or state's or town's) exposure to airborne toxic chemicals.

https://peri.umass.edu/air-toxics-at-school

We're pretty low on the list (only 14% of the national average) but coincidentally, our biggest exposure is to chromium, from a plating company (owned by people my patents grew up with).
.

Very interesting.
I was trying to get the top 5. But stopped at number 5 nationally. Verona, Mo Elementary and High Schools.
Basically polluted by a syntax superfund site which produced Agent Orange in the 1960's and 1970's. New owners just add new pollutants....

Holy shit. How can this be okay....

https://www.grconnect.com/tox100/sch...nique_id=52736

https://www.epa.gov/mo/bcp-ingredien...erona-missouri

BCP is the current owner, they got caught with the imp in the bottle.

Syntex Facility Superfund Site
The BCP Ingredients Inc. facility sits on part of the approximately 180-acre Syntex Facility Superfund Site. BCP purchased the property and manufacturing facilities in May 2001. In the late 1960s to early 1970s, prior to BCP’s ownership, the facilities were used by multiple companies to produce an antibacterial agent and an herbicide. The herbicide was one component of the defoliant commonly referred to as Agent Orange. Dioxin was created as an unwanted by-product during production of both products. Chemical manufacturing waste residues were disposed of in several areas of the facility, contaminating the soil and groundwater with dioxin and other volatile organic compounds. Since 1980, federal and Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) actions have been taken to assess and address contamination at the Syntex Site.

EPA performs regular checkups of the site, called Five-Year Reviews, to ensure that past actions to address the contamination remain protective. In 2016, the PRP Syntex began performing additional investigations to resolve protectiveness questions that came up during one of EPA’s Five-Year Reviews. While the additional investigations have resolved the majority of the protectiveness concerns, the investigations led to the discovery of a plume of 1,4-dioxane-contaminated groundwater beneath the site. In 2019, EPA initiated a large-scale, domestic drinking water well sampling program to determine if 1,4-dioxane was present in their wells. To date, EPA has sampled over 90 wells in a 2-mile radius around the site. With the exception of two wells, 1,4-dioxane was not detected. In the two wells where 1,4-dioxane was found, it was at levels less that the relevant EPA health-based standards. EPA is currently negotiating with BCP and Syntex on an Order to conduct additional investigations to determine the source of the 1,4-dioxane and the extent of the 1,4-dioxane plume in the groundwater.

Additional information regarding the Syntex Facility Superfund Site is available on EPA's Site Profile Page.