To save money and help the environment, Wayne Gray, who lives in north Castlegar, likes to hang his laundry out to dry naturally.
He didn't count on having it covered with soot, which caused him to have breathing problems.
"On Monday, we were drying all our sheets and pillowcases when they had that fall out," said Gray, who has a background in millwork. "My neighbour complained about it because he saw it all over his vehicles. We've had some respiratory problems as a result of it."
Gray says he had trouble sleeping Monday night as a result of breathing problems. "In order not to disturb my wife, I turned on the night lamp and all I could see was these particles floating around the room," he said. "That got me wondering. The stuff had dried on our sheets and pillowcases."
Zellstoff-Celgar confirms that the ash debris did come from the mill during their shut-down.
"The incident occurred during what is a normal procedure for all craft mills roughly on an usual basis," said Kevin Anderson, managing director of operations at Zellstoff-Celgar. "After we shut down, we water wash our boiler. We run water down to wash out what's called 'salt cake' or sodium sulphate. It's a normal part of our process. Unfortunately, in this case we had too much draft. Fans operating and blowing through that caused some of the ash to entrain and carry out the stack of the recovery boiler. What was deposited in the community was sodium sulphate ash or 'salt cake'."
Anderson said that release of the ash into the air is not something that normally happens and they couldn't warn residents.
"There was a procedural error. We had too much draft on and that's why it happened," he said. "It wasn't something we could anticipate. We've taken steps to ensure this won't happen again in the future."
The sodium sulphate ash is not normally harmful, but can aggravate breathing issues.
"If you go to the MSDS chemical database, it's very clearly non-toxic. It's not unstable or reactive. It's non-flammable," said Anderson. "The only thing is it is a minor irritant. It's a one on the scale. That's very low. It says exposure to this would cause minor irritation. One example of that would be temporary asthma or eye irritation. It's very similar if there was a forest fire in the area. Some people that are susceptible to it might have some minor symptoms."
Zellstoff-Celgar would like to apologize to residents for the incident.
"Although we don't consider this a serious environmental or community impact incident - we take it very seriously and are taking steps to avoid it happening in the future," said Anderson. "I would like to go on record apologizing for any concerns that this may have caused to residents in the community."