CONYERS, Ga. — At Cheryl Garcia’s house, the start of fall typically brings a harvest of happiness. But for the second-straight September, her season of sharing is clouded with concerns.

“Once you taste it, it’s like, wow, that’s really special,” Garcia told 11Alive. “Do we eat or do we not? Do we get cancer? It’s like, help us.”

That internal debate began on a day marked by a sky full of smoke on Sept. 29, 2024, when a fire broke out at the BioLab plant in Rockdale County, several miles from her house. An estimated 17,000 residents were forced to leave their homes due to the release of toxic chemical compounds following the plant’s eruption. 

“You could taste some metallic taste in your mouth, and you could smell chlorine. It was pretty strong,” Garcia said. “During that time, I really started coughing and having a lot of trouble breathing.”

One year later, residents like Garcia continue to wonder about the aftermath.

It took several months of doctor’s appointments for a specialist to start connecting the dots.

“She says, ‘You see those white spots there? I can’t exactly say they’re burns, but they look like burns,’ ” Garcia said. “I’m worried that this may, at some point, become cancerous.”

Months of medication and speech therapy are helping her voice recover. However, soil testing conducted by an independent expert, Scott Smith, revealed evidence of dioxins and carcinogens on her property.

She wants to know what the long-term health effects will be for her and her loved ones.

“The citizens really want BioLab gone, completely gone,” she said. “I’m concerned that the county is not going to hold all of the chemical companies that are here as responsible as they should and could.”

In May, BioLab announced that it would permanently end its manufacturing operations in Conyers, following an assessment of its future business needs.

However, it said the distribution center will “remain operational and will continue to fulfill customer orders for finished products from other manufacturing facilities.”

The Georgia Department of Health is also conducting a survey to assess community health concerns.