Manufacturing Danger: The BioLab Story
Sep 29, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
Two years after the BioLab fire in Conyers, Georgia, we return to a question that has followed this investigation from the beginning: what were people actually exposed to? You’ll hear why…
Pamela KirklandHost
If you've recently listened to seasons one and two, you can skip the next two minutes and 45 seconds of this recap.
we got here.
Where's the other person that's there with you? I gotta go and get him.
Okay.
He's my partner.
He only...
BioLabs Conyers plant used to manufacture chemicals used to clean swimming pools and spas.
That morning, chemicals stored inside BioLabs warehouse got wet, triggering a reaction that led to two fires and sent a massive chemical plume into the air.
In seasons one and two of this podcast, we followed Conyers residents like Jean Sadler and Cheryl Garcia as they tried to get answers about what they'd been exposed to after the 2024 Biolab fire.
We looked at Biolab's history of incidents, the emergency response, and started asking, what exactly was inside that plume? By season two, some pieces of that answer were starting to emerge.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates major industrial chemical accidents, found Biolab was storing nearly 14 million pounds of oxidizers on site, more than double what they told Rockdale County they were storing.
Randy Garcia, a former Biolab engineer, described recurring problems inside the warehouse.
I mean, when you're holding that much TCCA, it's very corrosive.
And that was honestly the main reason why we were having so many issues with the sprinkler heads.
If you've recently listened to seasons one and two, you can skip the next two minutes and 45 seconds of this recap.
we got here.
Where's the other person that's there with you? I gotta go and get him.
Okay.
He's my partner.
He only...
BioLabs Conyers plant used to manufacture chemicals used to clean swimming pools and spas.
That morning, chemicals stored inside BioLabs warehouse got wet, triggering a reaction that led to two fires and sent a massive chemical plume into the air.
In seasons one and two of this podcast, we followed Conyers residents like Jean Sadler and Cheryl Garcia as they tried to get answers about what they'd been exposed to after the 2024 Biolab fire.
We looked at Biolab's history of incidents, the emergency response, and started asking, what exactly was inside that plume? By season two, some pieces of that answer were starting to emerge.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates major industrial chemical accidents, found Biolab was storing nearly 14 million pounds of oxidizers on site, more than double what they told Rockdale County they were storing.
Randy Garcia, a former Biolab engineer, described recurring problems inside the warehouse.
I mean, when you're holding that much TCCA, it's very corrosive.
And that was honestly the main reason why we were having so many issues with the sprinkler heads.
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