A state environmental official said testing found no evidence of elevated levels of the cancer-causing chemical benzene during a December air study in Fort Worth, but WFAA-TV has learned that further analysis of testing did find benzene.
In January, John Sadlier, deputy director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, appeared before the Fort Worth City Council to discuss benzene levels. Emissions from natural gas production facilities have been under scrutiny since the cancer-causing chemical was found at some Denton County sites last year.
"Benzene is non-detect on all the slides," Sadlier said during the January presentation.
Sadlier didn't tell council members that the analysis equipment that TCEQ used in the field wasn't sensitive enough to detect lower levels of benzene.
That information was included in an internal TCEQ report obtained by WFAA-TV on Wednesday.
A few days after Sadlier spoke to the Fort Worth council, TCEQ's lab tested the samples with equipment that could detect the levels they were looking for. Scientists found that four of the eight samples taken indicated benzene above what the commission considers safe when considering long-term health effects.
But Sadlier and TCEQ decided not to tell the public.
"I don't even know how to respond to that," Sadlier said in a telephone interview. "I don't think there's any need to. These values are so small."
Sadlier said that he didn't know the analysis equipment used in the field was incapable of detecting the lower levels when he talked to the city. He also said he told a Fort Worth staffer about the discrepancy last week.
Sadlier did not inform state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who has been active in natural gas issues.
"This agency that has been charged with ensuring the health of our community has broken our trust, in terms of assuring us that they're going to look out for our safety vs. looking out for their own reputations and their own concerns about the fact that they failed to do the job that they should have been doing," Davis said.
Sadlier said follow-up testing at the sites in question detected very low levels of benzene.
Fort Worth now plans to conduct its own testing, and Calvin Tillman, mayor of the tiny Denton County community of Dish, has called for an investigation of TCEQ by the Department of Justice.
