Incredible video captures massive cloud of petcoke dust rising above Windsor, Ont

Want to see one of the scary by-products of Alberta tarsands bitumen?

This video was captured on Saturday, July 27th, by Randy Emerson, a member of the environmental group 'Windsor on Watch', while he was standing on the Windsor side of Detroit River.

The billowing cloud of 'smoke' that you're seeing isn't from a fire or an accident. It's a substance called petroleum coke, or petcoke, which is left over after processing tarsands bitumen. The petcoke comes from the Marathon Petroleum Corp. refinery in Detroit, which according to the Windsor Star, started processing bitumen in fall of 2012.

"It is a great video because it really illustrates the problems we are having in controlling the dust," Ruth Germain, a resident of Windsor who lives in a high-rise condominium just west of downtown, told the Windsor Star. "That dust just went all over our condo. It happens on a regular basis even though they say it doesn't. They say it’s inert, but it sure doesn't appear to be."

The petcoke was being stored in open piles at Detroit Bulk Storage, just across the river from the Ojibway Prairie Complex in Windsor. According to Daniel Cherrin, a spokesman from the company that spoke to the Windsor Star, the piles are sealed with an epoxy seal to keep it from blowing away. However, the seal was broken on that day, because they were transferring the petcoke to a container ship for transport.

"On that day there was a storm and wind that moved in," Cherrin told the Windsor Star. "It carried some of that into the air as a result."

According to a Winsdor Star report from April 13th of this year, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) stated that these petcoke piles "do not pose a significant public health risk for inhalation exposure," were "essentially inert" and did not cause "more than a minimal amount of airborne dust."

Petcoke is over 90% carbon and can cause irritation to the lungs if breathed in. It may take "repeated exposure" and "repeated inhalations over a long period of time", as Andrew Hartz of the MDEQ told the Windsor Star, but that's true of any kind of air pollutant.

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Scientists, like those at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment's Air Quality Office, warn people about fine particulate matter exposure all the time, even at the lowest levels. Studies have shown that there isn't a lower limit to the amount of air pollution that can damage our lungs, and new research has shown that air pollution kills 2.5 million people annually, around the world.

"We already have a very poisoned air shed in the west end of Windsor," said Jim Brophy, another member of Windsor on Watch, according to the Windsor Star. "Now we’re adding this exposure."

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