Documents show the EPA tracked whistleblower Scott Smith from East Palestine, Ohio to Conyers, Georgia where he tested soil and water after the BioLab fire in 2024.
BioLab, a chemical plant in Conyers, Ga., about 25 miles east of Atlanta, manufactured products to clean pools and spas. The facility caught fire on Sept. 29, 2024, sending a plume of smoke into the air forcing evacuations and shelter-in-place orders. Nearly a year later, residents are still pressing for answers about what was released into the air and how it might affect their health which we explore as part of GPB’s continuing reporting on the disaster.
Records released to the public on Aug. 18, 2025 suggest the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitored and downplayed testing done by an environmental activist, Scott Smith, who traveled to Georgia last year to test for water and soil contamination after the fire at the BioLab facility.
The documents were shared with GPB by the Government Accountability Project, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C. that defends whistleblowers across the country and represents Smith. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made by the group detail what they describe as a months-long campaign against him.
Who is Scott Smith?
Smith is an independent environmental testing expert and founder of the Blue Shirt Justice League, a nonprofit environmental watchdog based in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Smith is known on social media for his remediation technology patents, which help fund his travel to disaster sites around the country, including facilities such as BioLab, at the request of local residents affected by fires, spills and chemical contamination.
Smith gained national attention in 2010 when his medical grade oil-absorbent foam, was credited with aiding in the cleanup of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Before turning to disaster response, Smith was the owner of a plastic foam manufacturing company in upstate New York called Cellect LLC. In 2006, a catastrophic flood destroyed the factory.
“And that's when I realized that there were still chemicals in the water, and [state and federal regulators] were taking instantaneous grab samples from the surface,” he said during an exclusive interview at the GPB studios in Atlanta on Aug. 15. “Water and contamination were never in equilibrium. I'm like, wow, all these standards are based on assuming everything's in equilibrium or a steady state, and it's not.”
Smith said he’s been summoned by residents after more than 70 chemical disasters across the U.S. and often recommends testing for chemicals that elude typical protocols.
“I’ve never referred to myself as a scientist,” Smith said. “But I’ve learned in the field from scientists for 19 years.”
Smith said his approach is simple. Once he’s on the ground after a chemical disaster, he collects water, soil, and debris samples and sends them to certified labs, like Eurofins, for analysis. Eurofins is an international laboratory network with accredited facilities across the U.S., including Atlanta, that specialize in environmental testing. Its labs are accredited under the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) and follow EPA-approved testing methods, meaning they use the same procedures government agencies themselves rely on.
“I don’t interpret my own results,” Smith said. “I have a whole team of scientists around me. I review everything with experts before it’s presented.”
After a Conyers resident reached out to Smith, he traveled to Georgia on Oct. 4, 2024–five days after the fire at BioLab. He told GPB he’s traveled to Conyers seven times since that first trip.
Once in Conyers, he tested soot, ash, soil, and water near the BioLab site — samples he says showed troubling levels of dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), both potentially toxic byproducts of burning chemicals.
“The problem is the responsible parties and the EPA, they don't look for the full spectrum of chemicals,” Smith told GPB. “Then they declare everything safe.”
Emails obtained by GPB from Rockdale County show that a third party contractor, GHD, working in coordination with the EPA, conducted air monitoring in the weeks after the fire last September. The debris samples were analyzed for asbestos at Eurofins, the same lab Smith has used for his own testing.
“If you don’t tell them to look for benzene, you’re not going to find benzene,” he said.
On Oct.17, 2024, the EPA stopped monitoring air quality in the area.
For residents like Cheryl Garcia, the revelations about EPA surveillance raise new concerns about whether the agency was more focused on optics than public health. Garcia, who is retired but spent her career in occupational health, first contacted Smith in December after seeing other Conyers residents post about reaching out to him on social media.
Frustrated with the lack of clear answers after contacting Rockdale County, Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the EPA, she decided to ask Smith to test samples from her property.
“I don't know if this will be a Superfund clean-up site or what, but I don't trust EPD or EPA at all. Because they were so silent for so long,” Garcia told GPB during an interview at her home in August.
Garcia reached out to Smith to test some of the soil and plants at her home. She was concerned that state and federal regulators hadn’t tested the soil after the BioLab fire and wanted to know if the fruits in her garden were safe to eat.
At an Aug. 16, 2025, town hall for residents about BioLab held in nearby Covington, Georgia, Smith traveled in from Massachusetts to present preliminary test results from samples he collected over the past year in Rockdale, Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Newton counties. Smith said testing from Garcia’s persimmon tree turned up a series of semi-volatile organic compounds including anthracene and benz(a)anthracene that are considered possible human carcinogens.
“If you were in a workplace in an environment and exposed to these, people would get in trouble,” Smith said.
Residents in East Palestine, Ohio called Smith to test for toxic chemicals that were released after the 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, where he found elevated levels of dioxins.
GPB viewed documents obtained by the Government Accountability Project, which showed EPA officials began tracking Smith’s movements and circulating his social media posts to agency employees within days of media appearances Smith made about the samples he collected near the derailment.
Those same documents also show the agency dismissed Smith’s findings at the Ohio site in 2023 as not an accurate measure of risk.
In October 2024, while Smith was on his way to Georgia from East Palestine to respond to the aftermath of BioLab fire in Conyers, records show an EPA on-scene coordinator in Ohio contacted a counterpart in Georgia about Smith’s social media posts before he arrived.
In a statement to GPB, an EPA spokesperson said the agency takes concerns about its emergency response seriously but did not address specific questions about whether EPA monitored Scott Smith or contacted officials in Georgia ahead of his Conyers testing.
“We are very concerned by claims that have come to light over the past few months. The Trump Administration is committed to maximum transparency and as such we intend to conduct a thorough review of decisions made in the aftermath of the train derailment,” a spokesperson said.
During the interview, Smith insisted he has reached out several times to share his results in Georgia with the EPA and BioLab. Neither have responded to him. A similar offer was made to the EPA and Norfolk Southern in July of 2023.
GPB contacted BioLab, which declined to comment on this story or Smith’s offer to share his testing results.
The EPA has pushed back on Government Accountability Project reports in the past.
“None of this is about me,” Smith said. “It’s about chemically impacted communities. I’ll sit down with EPA Region 4 or BioLab any time for the benefit of the people who live [in Georgia]. But this is a systemic failure at all levels of government, across both parties.”
In May, BioLab announced they would no longer manufacture pool and spa cleaning products at the Conyers facility, but would continue to use the facility for distribution. In that same announcement, the company said it had completed remediation efforts. On June 5, 2025, Georgia EPD responded in a statement to GPB saying negotiations over a formal cleanup plan are still ongoing.
Rockdale County’s federal lawsuit against BioLab that was filed in October is ongoing, along with class action cases brought by nearby residents and business owners.
Almost a year later, the community is still pushing for answers about what chemicals they were exposed to and what the long term health effects may be.
“We've tried to get life back to normal,” Cheryl Garcia said. “But it really still isn't the same.”
___
UPDATE: Georgia EPD responded to this story on Aug. 21, 2025, with the statement: "EPD did not conduct soil sampling and did not review any documents from Scott Smith. We do not have further comment."
