For nearly 20 years, Texas environmental regulators have kept a disturbing secret. People living in a small, unincorporated community east of Houston are routinely breathing dangerous levels of benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia and other blood cancers. Emerging research also connects it to diabetes and reproductive problems.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, has not told residents about the health risks they face. And it has done little to rein in the facility that the agency knew was releasing large amounts of benzene. Instead, the TCEQ has allowed K-Solv, a chemical distribution company nestled in Channelview’s Jacintoport neighborhood, to expand its operations four times since the problem was discovered in 2005. Today K-Solv is legally allowed to release almost 20 times more volatile organic compounds — a class of chemicals that includes benzene — into the air each year than it did back then.