ROCKDALE COUNTY, Ga. — A mother says her perfectly healthy son now has breathing problems he may have to deal with for the rest of his life. She is blaming the chemicals in the air after the Biolab fire and she says her son’s doctor agrees.
He was a perfectly healthy kid before any of this,” Ryann Gibson said about her 7-year-old son.
Gibson told Channel 2′s Tom Jones her son was a bundle of energy. Now she says after days of chlorine-filled plumes of smoke from the Biolab fire her son began constantly coughing.
“It just sounded like he was coughing up a lung and he came and he was holding his chest and saying Mommy it hurts. My chest hurts,” she recounted.
Gibson says an Urgent Care doctor diagnosed her son with Acute Bronchitis. She says doctors gave her a document that explained what brought it on.
“We have right here, toxic effects of gas exposure,” she said, showing the document.
Attorney Bert Brock is not surprised. He represents hundreds of business owners and people who have sought medical treatment after the fire.
“The medical professionals that have seen our patients are attributing the flareups in their asthmatic conditions to the conditions in the air,” Brock said.
Brock has filed a class action lawsuit against Biolab.
“I could not breathe,” one of his clients, Nadine Little Moore told Channel 2.
Moore says she felt ill after she had to evacuate because of the fire and spent the night in her car.
“My face started burning. My throat started burning,” Moore said.
She says her doctor told her it was an Asthma attack.
“They didn’t say exactly what caused it, but something triggered an asthma attack.”
She says it was due to the plumes of smoke from the fire.
Meanwhile, Gibson keeps a clear plastic bag of medicine her son now has to take.
“His inhaler that he has to take,” she said, pulling out an inhaler.
Gibson says her son has to take the medicine until further notice. She says his heart rate was elevated and he had high blood pressure.
Doctors also told her he has fluid on his lungs. She blames it all on Biolab.
“This place needs to be shut down and held accountable,” she said.
A Piedmont Rockdale spokesperson told Jones in the days after the fire, Emergency Department volume increased 15 percent to 40 percent with symptoms like coughs, shortness of breath, itchy eyes and headaches.
He said the volume is returning to normal.
A spokesperson for Biolab said he could not comment on the medical issue.
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