"
Gas station smells worse
".
“
I have twice reported the stench in recent weeks.
Woke up in the night
[with the window open, Editor's note]
, I had a headache all day
”.
In Rouen, near the Lubrizol site, residents are still complaining of unpleasant odors, one year after the fire that ravaged the Seveso-listed factory.
Although they are less recurrent today, these smells have still shared the daily life of the inhabitants of a part of the Rouen conurbation for almost a year now.
Read also: Lubrizol fire: means and firmness claimed
According to Véronique Delmas, director of ATMO Normandie, an organization in charge of monitoring air quality, nearly 5,000 reports of bad odors have been made since September 30, 2019, the date on which the organization set up the ODO application which makes it possible to identify odor nuisances in real time.
The reports mainly refer to the smell of oil.
“
These are fragrant notes reminiscent of hydrocarbons and the smell of gasoline, even if it is not strictly speaking,
” explains Véronique Delmas.
The odors come from the remains of the fire and have, according to residents, almost entirely disappeared once the cleaning work was completed and the last buildings burned down were dismantled in early September.
“
They are no longer constant but when they appear, they are sometimes just as strong,
” says Laura Thieblemont, a resident of the left bank of Rouen.
Inventory of odor nuisance reports between 09/26/2019 and 06/21/2020.
Screenshot / La Gazette des Nez - ATMO Normandie
Census of odor reports between 05/26/2020 and mid-July 2020 Screenshot / La Gazette des Nez - ATMO Normandie
For nearly a year, the city of Rouen and the municipalities bordering the Lubrizol site (Petit-Quevilly, Mont-Saint-Aignan, Bois-Guillaume, etc.) were the most affected by these odor nuisances.
“
It depends a lot on the winds, but it affects the closest municipalities
[to the Lubrizol site]
.
The further you go, the more there is a reduction in odors,
”explains Véronique Delmas.
Perceptions also influenced by weather conditions.
“
There are two types of situation.
The first scenario is when there is a high pressure area and little wind.
The air is not evacuated so all the odors are concentrated on the site.
The second situation is when there are thunderstorm rains which, like this summer, may have mixed odorous puddles on the site,
”explains the director of ATMO Normandie.
She adds that the cleaning work itself may have given off odors.
The perception of these odors is not without consequence: “In
more than 50% of cases, the inhabitants reported symptoms associated with odors.
They were mainly headaches, nausea and sometimes tingling,
”says Véronique Delmas.
These inconveniences have sometimes led residents to move.
The mayor of Petit-Quevilly indicates that at the time of school registrations for the current year, the services of the town hall noted that "
ten families
" had disappeared in the school closest to Lubrizol.
“
With the teachers, we tried to find out why there were fewer students and it emerged that these families had left because of Lubrizol,
” she explains.
On the northern plateau of Rouen, Sabrina * left her home after the fire of September 26, 2019 for the seaside where her family lives.
Today, she "is
thinking of moving, but it's still complicated,
" she says.
It remains to be seen whether these smells, but especially the symptoms associated with them, cause real health problems.
Public Health France launched a survey this summer among general practitioners in the agglomeration on this subject, the results of which should be known in the coming weeks.
"
The objective of the survey is to determine the level of recourse to liberal medicine in connection with the odors perceived around Lubrizol
", specifies Stéphane Erouart, public health doctor at the regional directorate of Public Health France.
However, he explains that “
there is no direct link between odors and the toxicity of the products that odors can generate.
We are dealing with two different issues.
On the one hand there is work carried out on the toxicity of products generated by the fire and on the other hand there is the problem of odors
”.
On the other hand, Mr. Erouart underlines that "
odors generate by themselves health effects, like those which have been reported by residents of Lubrizol
".
A phenomenon that manifests itself with any type of “
bothersome
”
odor
, he specifies.
* The first name has been changed at the request of the person.
