For Sandy Creek Road resident John Abernathy and his wife Delores, there is no question that the onion-like smell of the pesticide component Propyl mercaptan coming from the PSC waste treatment plant on Ga. Highway 92 across the county line in south Fulton is responsible for the renal failure he suffered in June.

The Fayette resident first smelled the chemical during the first full week of June. It was a smell he described as garlic. John is not alone in that description, as a number of north Fayette and south Fulton residents during the past two months have described the mercaptan smell as onions, garlic or a combination of the two.

A kidney transplant recipient five years earlier, John said the smell was present at his home most every morning and afternoon during that week. But it was on June 15 that things changed.

On that day, Abernathy began getting sick. He experienced vomiting, dizziness, diarrhea and “acting weird, like he was not coherent,” Delores explained. During the next three days the illness continued and during those three days John lost 13 pounds.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” John said Monday. “I thought I had food poisoning, but it didn’t go away.”

Delores took John to the emergency room at Piedmont Fayette Hospital on June 18, where he was examined and his creatinine level was checked. John has that level checked often since the transplant.

The level during the past five years has fluctuated in the safe range from 0.9 to 1.1, a level that indicates normal kidney function, John said.

But on June 18, his creatinine level registered at a staggering 5.6, up from a level of 1.0 when he was tested less than three weeks earlier on May 30, Delores said.

“They didn’t admit John. They told us he was going to Piedmont Hospital (in Atlanta),” said Delores. “A level of 5.6 is the point of going into renal failure. That’s about the level he was at five years ago when he had to have the transplant.”

John was admitted to Piedmont in Atlanta and spent the three days in the hospital’s immediate care section, Delores said, where he was given fluids and antibiotics.

“His kidney was shutting down but nobody knew why,” she said. “The doctor said he had all the symptoms of renal failure, but he had no infection. We were told he had encountered something toxic but they didn’t know what.”

Discussing the series of episodes that put his life in danger, John said he remembered some of the nurses at Piedmont Fayette talking about the onion smell as they entered the emergency room after going outside the building.

Whether some people associated smell with some of the nearly 250 reports of symptoms in recent weeks, John is not deterred by those who choose to believe people in north Fayette and south Fulton are overreacting or perhaps exaggerating symptoms of illness directly related to Propyl mercaptan.

“There is no doubt in my mind that what happened to me is from the chemical,” John said. “I hadn’t had any problem in five years and all of a sudden my creatinine jumped so high in just two weeks. That’s almost impossible.”

John Abernathy is not the only person to find the presence, extent, pervasiveness and effects of Propyl mercaptan nearly impossible to explain.

Whether numerous county and state environmental officials or company representatives, no one to date has explained how such a reportedly small amount of chemical could have the wide-ranging presence and effects seen in the lives of north Fayette and south Fulton residents.

No one to date has explained why the onion-like smell has been specifically identified in Fayette and Fulton as early as Memorial Day.

Local officials and Environmental Protection Division say no reports were filed until late June, but that does not hold water with people who cooked out on the Memorial Day holiday and smelled the now familiar odor of onions, the same odor detected then as now.

Residents said they had no reason to report what they believed was a neighbor celebrating the holiday at the backyard grill.

Others, like John Abernathy, had other ways of marking the date. One of those was south Fulton resident Tanya Coleman, whose family left for vacation June 15. According to Coleman, her family had smelled the same odor prior to leaving for vacation. Her family and their puppy became ill.

To date, no one has been able to explain how such a reportedly small amount of chemical could have been detected over an area easily covering 200 square miles. The area includes reports from Clayton County, south Fulton, across nearly all of north and central Fayette, Tyrone, Peachtree City, over to Sharpsburg and down to I-85 in Newnan.

To date, no one has been able to explain why an estimated 40 square mile hot zone in north Fayette and south Fulton continues to be sporadically but dramatically exposed to the smell that has sickened or continues to sicken nearly 250 residents identified thus far.

login to post comments