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A popular piping fix is making people sick

Nicole Fallert   | Paste BN

Rob Shoaff likened the smell to plastic model cement. It originated in the basement but soon spread to multiple floors of his three-story house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It irritated his nose and gave him headaches that lingered even after the smell was gone.

The cause? Cured-in-place pipe lining, an increasingly popular pipeline rehabilitation procedure that has been used on hundreds of millions of feet of underground infrastructure — a figure expected to grow as the nation races to rehab its aging water and sewer lines. The cost-effective solution has increasingly been linked to human consequences, causing sickness for residents like Shoaff. 

👋 Nicole Fallert here. Welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!). This week, we talk with Emily Le Coz, a senior reporter from Paste BN's investigations team about her look at effects of cured-in-place pipe lining projects. Read the investigation here.

But first, don't miss these stories made possible by your Paste BN subscription:

'It's not enough just to leave your windows open'

Le Coz got a tip via phone call bout five months ago about someone who had fallen ill and died following a pipe installation procedure outside their house. The death was linked to the cured-in-place pipe lining, a process which involves creating a new pipe inside an old one by inserting a soft, resin-soaked liner into a damaged pipe, inflating it with pressurized air, then heating it so it hardens.

Creating a new pipe within an old one seems like a pretty good idea compared to digging old pipes out of the ground to replace them. It costs about eight times less than a traditional pipe rehabilitation project.

But Le Coz started her own digging into the human cost of this infrastructure solution and was surprised to find many cases of people who had been exposed to the fumes of the pipe installation and fell ill as a result. Lawsuits are pilling up. Scientists and researchers backed up personal stories with information about the toxicity of these emissions and their effects. 

She consulted court and municipal records and other public records requests to piece together how these projects have prompted a national crisis. It's likely these changes have already been done in your community, Le Coz said. 

But to her surprise, at least two major companies responsible for the process never responded to her questions.

"There's a lot I hoped they would have told us," she said, adding she even received silence from the company responsible for inventing this process. 

Part of the value of investigative stories like this one is raising awareness and providing readers with useful information. Le Coz says the story can be used to let people know what to do if they think they've been exposed or begin to feel sick as a result of "apoxy-like" odors in their homes. 

"It's not enough just to leave your windows open," she said. 

And because the Paste BN Network has resources on the ground from Pennsylvania to Washington, Le Coz was able to interview people in local communities to bring their stories to the national audience.

 "We've been able to link together otherwise seemingly isolated incidents that otherwise don't seem connected and require a national solution," she said. "We have the time and resources to not gloss over this or do a narrow examination."

The investigation isn't just a "wonky paper" Le Coz said, but written in a way she hopes will bring a complex, overwhelming issue to a level of understanding for concerned readers. The key to this is to focus on the who: "This is a people first story. It's not just about the infrastructure. You're gonna meet a lot of people in this piece."

Have thoughts on Le Coz's investigation? Feel free to send her an email at elecoz@usatoday.com. 

Thank you.

I will be spending the weekend beating seasonal allergies and trying to catch some much-needed fresh air. Thank you for reading this column. Your readership means so much to me and our newsroom. See you next week!

Best,

Nicole Fallert

See below for more of the best reads from the Paste BN newsroom.

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