Residents near metals plants in Texas worry about health affects from red dust storms

POINT COMFORT, Texas （AP） - When the wind blows in this Texas Gulf Coast town, the rusty red dust that drifts from the nearby metals plant sometimes creates hazy storms of dust, coating lawns, trucks and traffic lights.

The dust, along with the red mud lakes that kiss Lavaca Bay, are reminders that the small town of Point Comfort and its Alcoa alumina factory are not far — industry-wise — from Hungary, where a red mud reservoir burst earlier this month, unleashing a massive flood of caustic red sludge that covered nearby villages and killed at least nine people.

Many say the disaster in Hungary is unlikely to happen here. But the United States' three alumina refineries — two in Texas and one in Louisiana — have their own pollution worries.

In both cases, much of the pollution comes from the waste left after alumina, which is used to manufacture aluminum, is extracted from bauxite ore.

In Hungary, the waste— which is packed with zinc, iron and caustic mercury soda — is stored as mud in manmade reservoirs. But in the U.S., the refineries don't store the waste as mud. Instead, they dry the mud, which turns into red dust. That dust is then stored in reservoirs that residents call "red mud lakes," and on breezy days, the rust-colored particles blow in the air creating tiny dust storms.

Though U.S. plants remove and recycle much of the caustic soda, making the waste less acidic, the dust still affects the lives of nearby residents.