The variety of illnesses reported by hundreds of north Fayette and south Fulton residents nearly a year ago after breathing chemicals emanating from the Philip Services Corp. waste treatment plant on Ga. Highway 92 in Fairburn appeared to pose no long-term adverse health effects and no public health threat, according to a May 14 Health Consultation study by Georgia Division of Public Health and U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The public release of the report late yesterday presents a stark contrast to the initial, and in some cases, prolonged health effects that some in the two-county area maintain they have experienced. Whether coincidental or not, numerous residents described serious, and sometimes long-lasting, health effects that entered their lives only after exposure last spring and summer to the onion-like odor associated with chemical odorant Propyl mercaptan and organophosphate pesticide MOCAP, or ethoprop.