Asthma, bronchitis and sinus problems are some of the issues United Parcel Service workers in KCK claim they have because of exposure to air pollution from a neighboring plant.
For months, those UPS workers have been documenting emissions from their neighbor, a company calledReConserve.
According to their website, the company is the largest recycler of food by-products.
The UPS workers showed the 41 Action News Investigators months of pictures with a gold dust accumulating on vehicles and in the parking lot.
They say it's been happening for years.
"And guys are driving feeder rigs down the road and they come back and the dust has never left, so what's that doing to our lungs?," said UPS driver Tim Larsen.
Larsen, who now routinely wears a mask, was so concerned about the dust, he said he collected a sample and paid a lab $700 of his own money to analyze it.
The tested sample was found to contain about 95 percent wood dust.
"It surprised me when it was wood dust," Larsen said.
According to OSHA, wood dust exposure can cause many different health problems.
They include eye, skin and breathing difficulties like asthma and even cancer.
Several UPS workers told the 41 Action News Investigators they've had those types of health problems.
"I myself, I've had two sinus surgeries from working down here," said Tom Michael who washes vehicles for UPS.
"I have sinus trouble every day, my nose runs," added UPS worker Jerry Graham who shifts trailers for the company.
"Over the years, it accumulated in some of my sinuses and they clogged up, so I had to have surgery on that," said UPS driver Francisco Pardo.
UPS driver Don Lowry said he has asthma and bronchitis and had to take time off under the Family Medical Leave Act due to his health problems.
"Nothing in my family about bronchitis or asthma or anything," Lowry said. "The past two years, I've been struggling," he said.
The 41 Action News Investigators went to Children's Mercy Hospital to speak to Dr. Jennifer Lowry about the UPS workers complaints.
Lowry is an expert on environmental health and serves as the chair to the Council on Environmental Health for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The 41 Action News Investigators specifically asked Lowry if the UPS workers claims of health issues due to pollution from ReConserve were plausible.
"Oh definitely, it would definitely be plausible," she said.
Dr. Lowry says the visible dust may not be the UPS workers biggest problem.
She says the smaller the dust particles become, the more likely they are to cause health issues.
"As it gets smaller and smaller, it can be more likely to be inhaled," said Lowry.
The 41 Action News Investigators exclusively obtained a 2011 U.S. EPA consent order with ReConserve.
The document said ReConserve, from at least the year 2000, had been operating the plant without a valid permit for the amount of pollution the plant has been emitting.
Specifically, EPA investigators found the plant was emitting more than eight times the allowable chemicals without that permit.
In April, 2011, EPA ordered ReConserve to pay more than $30,000 in emissions fees and to apply for the right permit.
Records the 41 Action News Investigators obtained show it took five years, until 2016, for ReConserve to get that permit.
"We contacted everybody we could contact and we even sent letters to the people who own ReConserve and they were ignored," Larsen said.
Records show KCK Unified Government and Kansas State Government have entered into a new deal with ReConserve designed to nearly eliminate the company's air pollution.
ReConserve has installed new equipment for that purpose. But under terms of the deal, the new equipment hasn't been tested yet.
"They spent a lot of money, they put new stuff in there this year and it's worse," Graham said.
The 41 Action News Investigators reached out to ReConserve for comment.
A local executive referred the 41 Action News Investigators to the company's corporate headquarters in California.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there's been no one from the company who has commented on the UPS workers complaints.
