About 300,000 people in nine counties entered their third day Saturday without being able to drink tap water or use it to bathe or wash dishes or clothes after a foaming agent escaped the Freedom Industries plant and seeped into the Elk River. The only allowed use of the water was for flushing toilets.
Allison Adler of the Department of Health and Human Resources says 32 people sought treatment at area hospitals for symptoms like nausea and vomiting. Of those, four people were admitted to the Charleston Area Medical Center. Their conditions were not immediately known.
Adler added that authorities were still trying to figure out the safety level of the water and that more information should be available to residents later Saturday.
In the first hours after the spill, residents concerned about potential health effects deluged the West Virginia Poison Center with calls. Adler said about 50 people called with queries about keeping goats, chicken and other farm animals safe from exposure.
Federal authorities, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, opened an investigation into Wednesday's spill. Just how much of the chemical leaked into the river was not yet known.
The company's president issued an apology to West Virginia residents.
"We'd like to start by sincerely apologizing to the people in the affected counties of West Virginia," company President Gary Southern said. "Our friends and our neighbors, this incident is extremely unfortunate, unanticipated and we are very, very sorry for the disruptions to everybody's daily life this incident has caused."
Some residents, including John Bonham of Cross Lanes, were willing to accept Southern's apology.
"Yeah, I understand that stuff can happen," said Bonham, who also works in the chemical industry. "I don't think it's going to get him out of legal liability. OSHA is the one they're going to have to answer to."
Officials are working with a Tennessee company that makes the chemical to determine how much can be in the water without it posing harm to residents, said Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water.
"We don't know that the water's not safe. But I can't say that it is safe," McIntyre said Friday.
For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the system until it's in low-enough concentrations to be safe, a process that could take days.
The leak was discovered Thursday morning from the bottom of a storage tank. Southern said the company worked all day and through the night to remove the chemical from the site and take it elsewhere. Vacuum trucks were used to remove the chemical from the ground at the site.
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