Testing after BioLab fire missed additional dangerous chemicals, experts say

Caption

Chris Lovejoy and Stephanie Donnelly stand in front of the ServiceMaster by Lovejoy location in Conyers on April 4, 2025.

Credit: Pamela Kirkland/GPB News

Nearly 16 months after the fire at the BioLab facility in Conyers produced a toxic plume of chemical smoke over their ServiceMaster franchise on Blacklawn Road, Chris Lovejoy said the equipment and materials in his warehouse are still inside — untouched and unusable. 

Lovejoy and his business partner, Stephanie Donnelly, ran the disaster cleanup business just yards from BioLab’s Plant 12, the warehouse that caught fire on Sept. 29, 2024.

"As a company that cleans as part of our main service, that's really frustrating for us," Donnelly told GPB. "There's probably nothing we haven't cleaned except for this situation."

The pair eventually moved their business one town over to Covington. But they say thousands of dollars of equipment are left behind, along with some of their clients’ belongings. More than a year later, Lovejoy and Donnelly still don’t know what chemicals may have settled or disturbed their materials in the warehouse, or whether it is safe to use them again. 

"We're kind of in this state of limbo," Donnelly said. 

She said BioLab’s insisted that her company evaluate items inside the warehouse before issuing payments to the operators of the ServiceMaster.

"'It's not that bad' and 'We can clean it,'" Donnelly said BioLab stated. "'We don't know how, but we know we can. Just trust us.'" 

The problem is Lovejoy and Donnelly have never seen the testing results. Donnelly said in the immediate aftermath, employees reportedly suffered from headaches and other physical symptoms from being on site. And without knowing what she and Lovejoy are dealing with, they also can't make decisions about how to handle the contaminated equipment or to start the reimbursement process through insurance claims.

"Trying to get somebody that can explain [testing results] to you is one thing, and then getting somebody that's a hygienist to write you a protocol for how to clean," Donnelly said. "As a company that cleans as part of our main service, that's really frustrating for us. We can't use any of the traditional methods that we would normally use."

Assurance given weeks after the fire

On Oct. 18, 2024, BioLab officials announced it had completed its emergency response, which included the treatment and removal of chemicals from the site, and shifted into remediation and site cleanup. Rockdale County officials said cleanup at the BioLab site would continue under the oversight of Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division. Shelter-in-place orders within a 2-mile radius of the plant were lifted, citing monitoring data that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials said showed no ongoing hazard.

“Right now, it’s a matter of dealing with residual chemicals that are non-hazardous,” EPA Region 4 official Jose Negron said at the time after the trichloroisocyanuric acid (TCCA) stored on site had been removed. 

But documents obtained by GPB show the testing left out entire categories of chemicals that independent experts say could pose serious long-term health risks.

The records detail BioLab’s findings, including benzene and arsenic, and what they did not look for after the fire, including hexavalent chromium, which GPB previously reported that GHD specifically  excluded from testing even after it was flagged by Georgia’s EPD. 

The results were never shared publicly, leaving nearby businesses and residents without a clear picture of what contamination they may still be dealing with.

Independent experts who reviewed the hundreds of pages of documents at GPB’s request, pointed to gaps in the testing done by one of the contractors hired by BioLab, GHD USA. 

'You could almost predict they’d be formed'

After reviewing the documents in December, Dr. Ted Schettler, science director of the national nonprofit advocacy group Science and Environmental Health Network and a former EPA advisory committee member, said that another major group of chemicals was also missing from the analysis: dioxins and furans.

Dioxins and furans are a family of chemicals that can be toxic. They can form as byproducts when chlorine-based chemicals burn, as in the conditions during the BioLab fire.

“Dioxins and furans are families of chemicals that you could almost predict would be formed in this kind of fire,” Schettler said. 

What concerned Schettler the most is the range of possibilities when it comes to exposure and their tendency to persist in the environment.

"Some of them are thousands of times more toxic than others, but there are some among those in that family where extraordinarily low doses can be hazardous," Schettler said. "They don't break down; they don't go away easily."

Scott Smith, an environmental advocate and whistleblower with the Government Accountability Project, shared those concerns with the EPA and Georgia's EPD. Smith conducted his own sampling near the BioLab site in the days after the fire in 2024, including at the ServiceMaster location across the street. 

"What we found is elevated dioxins above the EPA health screening threshold," Smith said. "We're talking multiples of 2 times and more."

GPB found no evidence that the state or BioLab’s contractor GHD tested for dioxins or furans at the BioLab site or in surrounding neighborhoods. Georgia’s EPD did not review Smith's independent samples.

EPD’s laboratory is not certified to test for dioxins, which must be measured at extremely low levels using specialized equipment. But the lab GHD used for other analyses is capable of conducting that type of testing.

Smith worries the lack of analysis left the public exposed without knowing it.

"You've got an area in Conyers where a cluster of homes have all been people [having] to move out because all the pipes have broken down from what appears to be from exposure to these acidic gasses," Smith said. 

"[The pipes] were exposed for the same time period as your lungs," Smith told GPB. "I don't understand how that can be dismissed as acute exposure."

Caption

Environmental advocate and whistleblower Scott Smith, in the GPB studios on Dec. 19, 2025, presents samples of ash and debris from the 2024 BioLab fire.

Credit: Pamela Kirkland/GPB News

Internal emails show that concerns about dioxins were raised early within the EPA itself. In an October 2024 email obtained by GPB News, a senior official in EPA Region 4 asked staff to look into the potential for dioxin formation related to the BioLab fire, specifically citing the involvement of trichloroisocyanuric acid, or TCCA, the  chlorine-based pool chemical BioLab produced. 

GPB found no subsequent records showing that the concern led to dioxin testing, nor any documentation explaining why such testing was ultimately not pursued. 

The detection limit problem

Even when chemicals were tested for, experts say the laboratory methods often limited what could be reported.

Schettler explained that laboratory results depend on two different thresholds: the minimum level at which an instrument can detect a chemical, and a higher level at which a lab can report its concentration with confidence.

“The reporting limit is the level a lab can say with confidence not only that a chemical is there, but they can tell you with a lot of specificity what the of it is,” Schettler said. “The minimum detection limit is often much lower than the reporting limit.”

Schettler said that means a chemical can sometimes be detected without being reported with a precise concentration.

Smith said that distinction matters when results are used to reassure the public.

"Everyone’s familiar with drunk driving," Smith said in a metaphorical example. "It's effectively being still drunk, but the detection level is 2 and you're at 1.5 … nothing to see here, you're not drunk. Go ahead and drive away."

Experts also questioned how limited the sampling was geographically. Most samples were taken on or near BioLab’s property. Debris that landed in residential yards was never tested for chemical contamination, to GPB’s knowledge. EPD has said the nearest homes were about 1,700 feet from the fire.

“You can't sample everywhere, but you can do a lot of analysis by simply looking at the meteorologic conditions at the time of the fire,” Schettler said. “You need to look in a methodical way because a substantial amount of ash fallout can occur quite a distance from a fire like that.”

Stephanie Donnelly said allowing BioLab to hire and oversee its own testing undermined confidence from the start.

"The decision to allow BioLab to contract their own people and handle their own testing and all that kind of stuff seemed crooked," she said.

Chris Lovejoy agreed.

"Pretty much everyone just went with, 'BioLab says it’s safe, so it’s safe,'" he said.

For businesses like theirs, that assurance still isn’t enough.