A corroded sprinkler triggered the 2024 BioLab fire in Conyers, a disaster the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) said likely would not have happened if the company had addressed years of documented corrosion and equipment failures.
In its final report released Tuesday, the CSB found that a sprinkler system component failed inside BioLab’s Plant 12 warehouse, releasing water onto chemicals used to clean pools and spas stored inside. It set off a series of reactions that produced toxic smoke containing chlorine, hydrogen chloride, bromine and other substances. Two fires followed, eventually destroying the warehouse.
“The conditions and circumstances at the Bio-Lab Conyers warehouse were completely unacceptable,” CSB Chairperson Steve Owens said in a statement. “There were nearly 14 million pounds of reactive chemicals stored in the warehouse without proper safeguards in place.”
An earlier CSB report found that the warehouse held nearly 14 million pounds of oxidizers when the fire began, more than twice the approximately 6.2 million pounds BioLab said it expected to store there when the building was permitted in 2019.
According to this latest report, the corrosion was a well-documented issue. Fire sprinkler inspections in 2021 and 2022 found more than 500 corroded sprinkler heads in the area of the warehouse where most of the chemicals were stored, an area workers called “the bunker.” The company responded by replacing sprinkler heads there with corrosion-resistant versions in late 2022. A December 2023 inspection later identified more than 1,100 corroded sprinkler heads in other parts of the warehouse where chemicals were also being stored.
Randy Garcia, a former engineer who worked at BioLab from August 2022 to April 2024, previously told GPB that corrosion in the fire suppression system was a persistent issue.
“When I first saw the fire, I assumed it was the leaky sprinklers, because it was a constant issue,” he told GPB last May.
Rather than replacing all of the vulnerable components, the report says BioLab continued repairing or replacing parts after they had already corroded and begun leaking or allowing the system to “run to failure.”
“Had Bio-Lab Conyers taken steps to proactively prevent sprinkler system leaks instead of allowing the system to run to failure,” the CSB wrote in their report, “the incident likely would not have occurred.”
KIK Consumer Products, BioLab’s parent company, had claimed that rain from Hurricane Helene may have entered through the roof and started the reaction. But investigators found that the documented roof leaks were located away from the chemicals that first began reacting.
BioLab has experienced multiple chemical accidents between 2004 and 2024. Despite those incidents, the CSB said KIK failed to consistently apply lessons learned across its facilities. The report describes smaller off-gassing events as having become “normalized” at the Conyers plant.
The report also highlights a gap in federal chemical-safety rules. The pool-treatment chemicals involved in the fire can generate large quantities of toxic gases when they react with water or heat, but they are not covered by federal programs intended to prevent major industrial chemical accidents.
Because the oxidizing chemicals and related compounds in the 2024 fire are not included under U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Process Management standards or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program, BioLab was not required to conduct the same formal hazard reviews.
The CSB is renewing recommendations originally made in 2002, urging OSHA and the EPA expand their programs to cover the reactive chemicals.
CSB Board Member Sylvia Johnson said in a statement, “We urge OSHA and the EPA to act to expand coverage of these hazardous chemicals so that severe incidents, like the one at Bio-Lab Conyers, do not keep happening. These incidents negatively impact workers and the surrounding communities.”
BioLab ceased manufacturing in May of last year and listed the property for sale in January. In a statement, BioLab said it “cooperated fully” with the CSB’s investigation and is reviewing the agency’s final report.
For more on the 2024 BioLab fire and GPB’s investigation, Listen to Manufacturing Danger: The BioLab Story wherever you get your podcasts.
