Breathing After BioLab - The Margin

Editor’s note: This story contains firsthand reporting, a form of participatory journalism, from someone who lived through and is still wrestling with the impacts of the September 2024 toxic fire at the BioLab plant in Conyers, Georgia.

I woke up on Sunday, September 29, 2024, with a headache that was unusual for me, but I took Tylenol and pushed through. It was a church Sunday, and I had plans for my daughter, Nicole Green, and my grandson to join me at my church, an hour away.

After the service, during the long drive back home, my daughter received an alert on her phone around 11:30 a.m. about a fire nearby. We mistakenly thought the risk was in our town of Covington, so we took Exit 82 in Conyers. Little did we know that this was where toxic flames ignited that morning. 

We drove right through a danger zone.  

A few months before my headache started, BioLab, a plant in Conyers known for manufacturing pool and spa water chemicals, established an around-the-clock fire watch protocol in response to strong odors detected in on-site storage. According to a May 2025 investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), the so-called permanent fire watch was responsible for “identifying and managing hazards, detecting early signs of product decomposition or fire hazards, notifying site leadership of any observed leaks or other water intrusions, and contacting the third-party sprinkler company if a sprinkler head was leaking.”  

However, the state and BioLab then began preparing for a different kind of emergency. Hurricane Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, 2024, around 300 miles away in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, the deadliest storm in the contiguous U.S. since Katrina. BioLab closed down following our governor’s state of emergency declaration in preparation for the hurricane. The fire watch continued to work, using buckets to capture rainwater from the leaking roof, as approximately 10 inches of rain descended on Conyers between Sept. 26 and 27. As Helene continued north into Appalachia, she left a breeze that lingered after the rain stopped. But a new disturbance would soon descend upon us. 

At about 5 a.m. on Sept. 29, 2024, a member of the fire watch team at BioLab heard a loud popping sound and initially believed it to be the nearby ice machine. Upon investigation, the employee found that some chemicals had gotten wet, which likely caused the popping noise. 

The BioLab plant stored trichloroisocyanuric acid and sodium dichloroisocyanurate, two chlorine-based disinfectants. When these chemicals come into contact with water, they produce nitrogen trichloride, or in simpler terms, “an explosion hazard,” according to the CSB investigation. In the month of the fire, BioLab’s inventory had grown to more than double what the company told local officials it would store, with about 13.9 million pounds of chemicals. The company stored these chemicals in “super sacks,” thousands of pounds stacked on top of one another, some of which were stored outside the plant’s firewall. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) previously fined BioLab $61,473 in April 2024 for improperly storing the chemicals that triggered the fire.

Pollution from the BioLab Fire

The following map visualizes the dispersion of chemical pollution following the BioLab fire over several days following the incident, coupled with annual household income data for the surrounding affected areas.

By approximately 5:10 a.m., a member of the fire watch called 911 as smoke began to fill the warehouse. News reports later confirmed that on this initial 911 call, the employee mentioned a sprinkler head had burst inside the facility. Around 6 a.m., local emergency services issued shelter-in-place and evacuation orders, going door-to-door to neighbors adjacent to the warehouse. Hours later, a second, more intense fire broke out, sending plumes of black and multicolored smoke into the air, as “small explosions” shot chemicals out of the building. Rockdale County Fire Rescue personnel said it sounded like the gun range. The fire destroyed the warehouse, trapping chemicals that personnel were unable to remove ahead of the second fire.  

At the time, I lived nine miles from the BioLab plant; my daughter and grandson were 11 miles away. I kept a close eye on 11Alive News and reassured my roommate and her visiting granddaughter that it was safe to be outside in the post-hurricane breeze. However, local officials had evacuated about 17,000 people and implemented a shelter-in-place advisory for the metro Atlanta area as the toxic smoke moved through. 

The day after the fire, I drove my roommate’s granddaughter to the Atlanta bus terminal to return home to celebrate her mother's birthday. To ensure everything went smoothly, I decided to leave 30 minutes earlier than planned. On the drive, we encountered a roadblock at Exit 84 to I-20, forcing us to take a detour instead of taking the main highway through Conyers. We navigated to Highway 155 North and drove through what I assumed to be thick fog, drastically limiting visibility to about five feet.

Returning from the bus terminal, I started coughing, my eyes burned, and the headache I had hoped would go away returned with a vengeance. Later that evening, I experienced stomach cramps, too. I informed my roommate of my intent to visit urgent care if my symptoms didn't improve by morning. While heading to bed, I noticed a slight chlorine smell in the house, which was puzzling since I hadn’t done any cleaning.

By Oct. 1, my headache had worsened, and a powerful bleach odor permeated the entire house. My eyes burned intensely, my cough worsened, and my chest felt constricted. At this point, I was not just concerned; I was furious. 

That same day, around 10:30 a.m., I visited the urgent care center. Without health insurance, I initially managed all my doctor’s visits out of pocket. There, the doctor administered a nebulizer respiratory treatment and a steroid injection. She prescribed a regimen: 10 mg steroids for a week, 800 mg ibuprofen three times a day for five days, eye irritation relief drops, an albuterol inhaler, medication for a sinus infection, and antibiotics.

As I glanced at the material my doctor handed to me, the phrase “Today’s Diagnosis Includes” caught my eye. Along with the other diagnoses, it stated, “Exposure to biological agent.” I had suspected as much, but seeing it in writing crystallized the reality of the situation. Reading my diagnosis stirred a whirlwind of emotions—fear, anxiety, and yes, anger. Standing outside the building, my heart racing. I took a moment to collect myself, got into my car, and, while driving, allowed myself to feel what needed to be felt. I cried. 

Although I considered leaving the area temporarily, I didn’t have the funds for a hotel stay. However, I had a Kairos prison ministry weekend scheduled for Oct. 3 in Hartwell, Georgia, about 80 miles away. The hotel was taken care of, and I was determined to attend. I hoped that this would provide me with some much-needed relief, even if I couldn’t be much help; at least I could breathe some fresh air. 

I checked into a hotel, borrowing my daughter’s nebulizing machine for her asthma to assist with my breathing. 

On Oct. 6, around 7 p.m., I returned home and noticed a resurgence of symptoms—chest pain, coughing, burning eyes, a persistent headache, and now itching. I made myself a bowl of soup and settled on the sofa with my late mom’s blanket for comfort, but I started itching. I chose to go to bed early, but the itching continued throughout the night. 

Within the next 48 hours, I realized that a residue had settled on the sofa, bed, walls, and floors. I immediately got to work, thoroughly cleaning and dusting all surfaces and washing all exposed linens, comforters, towels, and clothes—an effort that took up most of my day. I saw dead bugs in the windowsill, which made me think to collect as much evidence as possible. I collected the dead bugs and air conditioning filters. I took pictures of my garden and filmed a short video.

After cleaning the house, I felt extremely weak and struggled to catch my breath during basic tasks like showering and eating. For the next five days, using the remaining medications I had been prescribed, I tried to endure without going back to the doctor. I had little to no appetite and only ate enough to take my extra medications.

On the morning of Oct. 11, 2024, I returned to urgent care, where the doctor provided me with two more nebulizer treatments and administered another steroid shot. She prescribed a higher dose of steroids to take home, an additional inhaler, and more nebulizer medications. The doctor also recommended that I purchase a nebulizer machine and mentioned that we would take an X-ray of my lungs at my next appointment. I invested in an air purifier, though in hindsight, I should have gone straight to the ER, but I was worried about my finances and couldn’t fathom the cost of that hospital bill.  

Like many people, I faced my share of challenges in life. Last year, I relocated to Covington in January, had a car accident in February, and lost my mom in April, all while navigating a divorce. Coupled with my emerging health issues, it was all a lot to handle. 

Meanwhile, I found a shared community among those who were also trying to catch their breath, quite literally, in the wake of the BioLab catastrophe. I’ve interviewed at least nine people and attended multiple related community meetings to capture what we learned and lost in the shadow of that plume that erupted in our backyards just over a year ago.

“We want BioLab shut down…” 

In the days and weeks following the BioLab fire, many of us in the surrounding area sought answers. I joined a Rockdale County Resident Facebook page and came across a recording of the state House and Senate Rockdale County legislative delegation meeting held on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024.

The Rockdale County Soil and Water Conservation District supervisor, Kenny Johnson, insisted that all Rockdale County residents undergo blood testing and that Georgia’s congressional representatives pursue a federal criminal investigation into BioLab. Soon after his remarks, Johnson stepped out into the hallway and collapsed. The Associated Press reported that Rep. Viola Davis (D-Stone Mountain) administered CPR until medical officials rushed Johnson to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died later that day. 

Walter Bannister, a resident of Conyers and founder of The Citizens of Rockdale, spoke at the same meeting just before Johnson delivered his remarks. Citing his disaster recovery experience with the defense coordinating element for FEMA groups 2 and 3, he said he believed the governor should have issued a state of emergency. 

“We want BioLab shut down and moved out of Rockdale County,” he added, drawing applause from attendees.

Last year wasn't the first time the BioLab warehouse caught fire; it’s happened at least three times in the last two decades. BioLab’s lawyers continue to battle lawsuits, including one on behalf of Rockdale County and a class-action lawsuit, both of which are still in litigation. In a Sept. 2025 ruling, a federal judge dismissed parts of Rockdale County’s lawsuit seeking reimbursement for public services such as firefighters and for monitoring air and water quality, and dismissed claims of violating the Clean Air Act without prejudice, meaning the state can refile those in another case. In the class-action suit, a federal judge agreed with BioLab’s motion to dismiss allegations of “strict liability” for any and all damages arising from storing potentially hazardous chemicals. The Georgia Supreme Court will weigh in on the legal grounds of the medical monitoring fund. The class-action suit seeks to compensate members for treatment and screenings “necessitated by their exposure to toxic chemicals.” In May 2025, BioLab announced it had completed remediation of the Conyers facility and wouldn’t restart its operations there.

The way forward wasn’t as simple for the rest of us. 

Bannister lives a few miles from BioLab, or “ground zero,” as he calls it. For nearly three weeks following the fire, nightly shelter-in-place warnings continued for the communities in a two-mile radius of the plant. He likened the smoke that engulfed the community to the 1980 horror film “The Fog.” The silence and stillness were particularly eerie. The birds and the insects that normally chirped or stung were gone. He told me the grille of his 2022 Toyota Tundra had corroded, making the car appear to be decades old. The oak trees in his yard and vegetables in the garden looked like they’d been through a fiercely cold winter. The trees were green one day and dead the next, he said.

His initial symptoms were similar to those of others I’ve interviewed, watery eyes and frustration with the persistent smell of chlorine. He and his wife bought bottled water to wash their faces after being outside. “Every time you’d go outside, your skin would literally burn,” he told me over the phone in October. “It almost [felt] like somebody putting a butane torch to your face—you can actually feel the heat coming from it.”  

Bannister shut the HVAC off, taped the windows, and sent his family to Ocala, Florida, to get away from the “chemical, acid smoke smell” that still seeped into the house. His wife returned when yet another storm, Hurricane Milton, was spinning toward Florida. But the Bannisters’ kids stayed behind. “The kids are like, ‘We know the hurricane is only going to be like a day, and it’s going to knock down some trees, and it’s going [to] rain…but y’all [are] fighting invisible wounds up there—we’re not going back up there.’” Walter was proud that they didn’t want to put themselves in harm’s way. 

I could relate to Bannister’s desire to keep his children safe. With my breathing trouble, I’ve been empathizing with my daughter, Nicole, who’s dealt with asthma symptoms for years. Feeling a tightness and pain in your chest because your airways are inflamed is something you can’t fully understand unless you experience it.

Nicole worked retail in Conyers, about four miles from BioLab. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, she wanted to figure out what she needed to do to feel better—she needed me, her mama, as she later told me. But, she had to return to work in the days following the fire, so she brought her nebulizer with her to try to manage the increasing asthma attacks. “The smell was in the clothes, and that did nothing but make my asthma worse,” she said. 

She stopped going into work for about four days to find relief. When she returned with a doctor’s note, management let her go. My daughter has two children, then ages 11 and 21, and she needed to support them. She didn’t have her own car, so she rented vehicles to pick up groceries for Instacart. More than a year after the fire, she says her asthma still feels worse than it did before the BioLab fire.   

“I just feel like everyone was treated unfair[ly] healthwise, whether you got respiratory problems before and it worsened, or you got respiratory problems when it happened,” she said. “Where’s the empathy, where’s the care?"

Chemical Incidents in the Southeast United States

The following map depicts chemical explosions, fires, and leaks that have occured between 2021-2025. Additional details are available for each individual incident.

Data is provided by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters.
 

The Opposite Effect

After several months of visiting urgent care, I mentioned to my doctor that I would get sick every time I went out to pick up groceries, shop for clothes, or handle other errands. She told me, "I need you to stop going out." I kept repeating her words to myself on the way home, feeling helpless. At that point, the only option I saw was to leave the area entirely.

While searching for housing in neighboring counties, my symptoms worsened just before Christmas—I thought I might die. I had to look for a house, pack mine up, then unpack a whole house, all while I was deathly sick. I felt so weak I couldn't even sit up long enough to make a bowl of soup. After a trip to urgent care and taking more medication, I would start feeling better after about a week, only to experience weakness, exhaustion, stomach pain, and difficulty breathing again. I purchased a health care plan at the beginning of this year, which I could barely afford. If Congress lets the Affordable Care Act subsidies lapse, I’ll be uninsured again. Lately, I’ve been seeing a pulmonologist—it’s been a relentless cycle of doctor's appointments, X-rays, CT scans, and, most recently, an MRI.

I’m trying to focus on the bright spots. 

There are people like Cheryl Garcia of Conyers, who was also preparing to go to church the Sunday of the fire, but paused when she saw news reports. She had a metallic taste in her mouth, smelled chlorine in her home, and her husband complained that his eyes, throat, and nose were burning, and his chest felt tight after being outside. Garcia, who is a retired nurse practitioner, developed vocal cord dysphonia and underwent eight weeks of speech therapy twice a week. She and her husband had all the vents cleaned, the crawl space in the basement encapsulated, and their roof replaced. And they pray—a lot. She’s also fighting for accountability from local officials and industry.

“I have pretty much forced myself onto the local emergency planning committee, which was not active before BioLab, and I made a lot of noise about that,” she said. “They are now meeting monthly. And as a citizen, I am there every month to hold them accountable, and hopefully that will prevent something like this from happening again.” 

There is a disaster waiting to happen in every community on the margins, from the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, to the petrochemical plant explosion in Roseland, Louisiana, to the ammunition factory explosion in Tennessee, to the recent ammonia leak near Yazoo City, Mississippi, where a plume of yellow smoke spread through the air. 

It's easy to become isolated—many of us were literally encouraged to stay home and isolate. In many ways, we are still emerging from the shadow of that plume.

However, it is having the opposite effect, and I hope communities are becoming aware of how much we need each other. It’s part of why, this September, almost a year to date from the fire, I completed Henry County’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training to learn disaster response skills, search and rescue techniques, and disaster medical operations. Next, I’ll learn CPR. In the event of the next emergency, I will not merely seek assistance from others but serve as a proactive resource to aid my community.

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