In the coming weeks, when Lahainans will be allowed back to their homes under scheduled supervised visits, the impulse will be to wander through their devastated, beloved town, and to touch, sift, retrieve and linger. However, they must be gently but firmly reminded that the area is now a toxic wasteland, where debris and ash can hold any number of health and environmental hazards, including lead, arsenic and asbestos.
“The ash we are told is quite toxic, so we need to be careful,” Gov. Josh Green warned in a Friday speech updating Lahaina and West Maui’s situation one month after the wildfires.
Indeed, in areas where structures were burned, dangerous conditions persist — and the concerns involve exposure to not-so-evident toxic materials that include asbestos, lead, metals, oils, fire retardants, pesticides and silica dust. Stirring up debris will release dustlike “particulate matter” — a spike of which, based on previous wildfires, has been linked to increases in respiratory diseases, and chronic heart and lung disease, resulting in more medical visits and hospitalizations.
So it is wholly necessary to see that, as requested by the state Department of Health (DOH) and Maui County, the Environmental Protection Agency is conducting baseline air quality monitoring and has collected over 100 samples in the Lahaina and Upcountry Maui areas. The raw data, with analysis to follow soon, was released Monday (see 808ne.ws/Mauiair Opens in a new tab).
While sensors currently indicate the air quality is good, the DOH noted, readings are of sensors’ immediate surroundings — and “it is important to note that disturbances of burned debris may cause ash and dust to become airborne.”
In advisories last month, Maui County and the DOH urged all individuals returning into Lahaina to use personal protective equipment (PPE), and to follow health and safety guidelines to avoid hazardous exposures.
These include avoiding skin contact with ash by wearing long sleeves, gloves, closed shoes, and a tight-fitting NIOSH or N95 respirator mask. Bring a change of clothes to avoid tracking debris back into the car, current dwelling or workplace. Children and pregnant people, at higher risk from debris hazards, should not be in the clean-up areas.
All these precautions bear repeating often, now that the difficult task of fire debris removal is ramping up: Phase One now underway has the EPA removing hazardous materials such as paints, solvents, oils, batteries and pesticides from fire-impacted properties. In coming weeks, as area segments are checked, residents and tenants will be scheduled to return to their property to salvage what they can.
Residents should know that they will need to sign a right-of-entry form and submit it to Maui County officials before EPA removal can begin. This does not — repeat, does not — transfer ownership of the property, but only allows authorized contractors to go onto private property to remove the debris. Mindful of the level of governmental mistrust among some in West Maui, 25 cultural practitioners have been hired to help keep the process pono.
After the EPA’s hazardous-removal phase, expected at three to four months, removal of remaining debris will involve FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s expected to take up to a year, and cost more than $1 billion.
After the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., a range of toxic substances were detected, including elevated levels of lead and zinc. Similarly, two decades after the 9/11 attacks, researchers identified more than 60 types of cancer and about two dozen other conditions that are linked to Ground Zero exposures, according to a September 2021 Scientific American report.
All that strongly informs the importance on Maui for vigilant testing and monitoring of environmental markers and air particulates.
It will be a long and complicated process for Lahaina’s devastation to be cleared, en route to eventual rebuilding. This step will bring hazards — and that’s why precautions and protections must be taken now, PPE and the like, to prevent long-term health effects that would only compound today’s tragedy.
