Found this doing some railroad research - an abandoned zinc smelter in Taylor Springs IL
39.119029, -89.505566
Abandoned zinc smelter - Taylor Springs IL
Re: Abandoned zinc smelter - Taylor Springs IL
Did you go and check the place out? Looks super cool!
Re: Abandoned zinc smelter - Taylor Springs IL
We just went out there today and it was a roller coaster of emotions. One of us will get some pics up shortly. I'll probably get around to editing mine tomorrow sometime.
I dug into this place a little bit and found that it was called ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Co). Operations began at this location in 1912 and ceased in 2004.It's now an EPA superfund site. See the section below the following paragraphs. Anyway 1912 sounded pretty fucking tantalizing to me and I wasn't getting my hopes up yet but I definitely hoped some cool old buildings/equipment would still be there.
There weren't any great parking options so we had to hike a good ways, past a few houses and some traffic to even get to the site to see if anything was still standing. We walk up and behold: Not only does it appear that there are some original buildings left, they ALL look like they could be original, or at least old as shit in their own right. Fuck yeah! I won't lie, I kinda... really started to get my hopes up at this point. It looked like we had an office building in the front with some garages/shops in the middle and then the big operation in the rear-complete with a big ass power plant building that had a big crazy ventilation fan sticking out of the side of it. It looked like it was going to be awesome.
The front office building was actually not a disappointment, as far as those things go. There was one of those weird rooms where workers put their belongings in baskets and hoist them up to the ceiling. Along with some other random stuff like showers, lockers, a sound isolation booth etc.
Everything else was gutted and empty as fuck. The power building was completely emptied of all its goods except a bunch of lonely catwalks and stuff that would have once allowed access to the upper ends of whatever awesome old shit used to generate power up in there. And the rafters happened to be a roost of vultures whose shit occasionally rained down around us in dark, red colored chunks. The floor was several inches of shit and feathers. There was some weird halfassed office space built randomly in one side of the room, completely out of place and utterly offensive considering what should have awaited us inside.
The entirety of the rest of the structures were devoid of 97% of their former contents and the only stairs to the only upper sections were laying on the floor. Some big empty warehouse/docks a loading bay, several large steel buildings, etc. All empty.
UGH why did it have to look so awesome in person and get my hopes up at the last minute just to smash them into tiny little pieces?!?! I may never emotionally recover from this.
So yeah this place was a huge disappointment and highly not recommended partially due to the above, but also because of the following:
------Superfund means superbad------
According to the EPA's Public Health Assessment of this location, there are 4 main contaminants onsite that are cause for concern: Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium and Zinc. Basically, I got the impression that everything except the arsenic is pretty "meh" as far as dangers go. But it sounded like there was enough of a presence of inorganic arsenic that it wasn't something to just shrug off. Highly unpleasant/carinogenic/etc. So I decided to a wear an old and thus disposable set of clothes/boots/etc and change out of them before I got back into my vehicle, tossing them into a trash bag. Also brought a respirator and wore it inside one of the buildings, but that was mostly just because of the vulture shit.
http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/p ... elease.pdf
But check this out. They calculated not only the potential risk to workers, they even figured it for trespassers and not only that, they further differentiated between risks posed to child vs adult trespassers! LOL. I mean, damn, thanks for thinking of us, guys! To be honest, I wouldn't have taken any precaution had I not seen this, so I actually am grateful to have known that before going in.
I expected the buildings might all be kinda dusty with metallic, cancerous particulate floating around but that wasn't really the case. The buildings didn't seem to have any dust/particulate to worry about. I've been places where everything is coated in that shit and you can taste it after a few moments, that wasn't the case here. Instead, the contaminants here appear to be in the form of... the entire landscape outside of the immediate factory site. It's all moon/volcanic looking "rocks" everywhere varying in color and type all of which seemed unnatural/not something you want to stir up. The whole ground for like 100 yards around the site is all like this. Luckily we cut over and didn't spend too much time walking through that shit.
Anyway, here's the section on Arsenic exposure risks present here.
Arsenic
Residents and workers may be exposed to low levels of arsenic for prolonged periods. Long-term
exposure to low levels of inorganic arsenic may lead to an increase risk for a darkening of the
skin and the appearance of small “corns” or “warts” on the palm, soles, and torso. In addition,
trespassers and workers exposed to low levels of arsenic may have a moderate increased risk for
cancer over their lifetimes. For residents, a low increased risk for cancer may be expected from
exposure to arsenic.
The estimated dose for a child exposed to arsenic in residential soil (0.001 mg/kg-day), a child
trespassing onto the site (0.002 mg/kg-day), an adult trespasser (0.001 mg/kg-day) and an adult
worker (0.002 mg/kg-day) all are greater than the chronic minimal risk level (MRL) of 0.0003
mg/kg-day. The MRL is based on epidemiologic studies that found a no-observed-adverse-effect
level (NOAEL) of 0.0008 mg/kg-day and a lowest-observed-adverse-effect level (LOAEL) of
0.014 mg/kg-day for skin changes [ATSDR 2000]. The estimated doses are greater than the
NOAEL, but 7 to 14 times less than the LOAEL.
USEPA, the National Toxicology Program, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
and the International Agency for Research on Cancer consider inorganic arsenic to be a known
human carcinogen. Studies have associated the ingestion of arsenic mainly with skin cancer.
Studies also have shown that ingestion of arsenic can cause cancers of the bladder, kidneys, liver,
lungs, and prostate (ATSDR 2000). Cancers caused by chemical exposure often do not appear
until 10 or more years after exposure. Also, cancers caused by chemicals cannot be distinguished
from cancers that occur spontaneously.
I dug into this place a little bit and found that it was called ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Co). Operations began at this location in 1912 and ceased in 2004.It's now an EPA superfund site. See the section below the following paragraphs. Anyway 1912 sounded pretty fucking tantalizing to me and I wasn't getting my hopes up yet but I definitely hoped some cool old buildings/equipment would still be there.
There weren't any great parking options so we had to hike a good ways, past a few houses and some traffic to even get to the site to see if anything was still standing. We walk up and behold: Not only does it appear that there are some original buildings left, they ALL look like they could be original, or at least old as shit in their own right. Fuck yeah! I won't lie, I kinda... really started to get my hopes up at this point. It looked like we had an office building in the front with some garages/shops in the middle and then the big operation in the rear-complete with a big ass power plant building that had a big crazy ventilation fan sticking out of the side of it. It looked like it was going to be awesome.
The front office building was actually not a disappointment, as far as those things go. There was one of those weird rooms where workers put their belongings in baskets and hoist them up to the ceiling. Along with some other random stuff like showers, lockers, a sound isolation booth etc.
Everything else was gutted and empty as fuck. The power building was completely emptied of all its goods except a bunch of lonely catwalks and stuff that would have once allowed access to the upper ends of whatever awesome old shit used to generate power up in there. And the rafters happened to be a roost of vultures whose shit occasionally rained down around us in dark, red colored chunks. The floor was several inches of shit and feathers. There was some weird halfassed office space built randomly in one side of the room, completely out of place and utterly offensive considering what should have awaited us inside.
The entirety of the rest of the structures were devoid of 97% of their former contents and the only stairs to the only upper sections were laying on the floor. Some big empty warehouse/docks a loading bay, several large steel buildings, etc. All empty.
UGH why did it have to look so awesome in person and get my hopes up at the last minute just to smash them into tiny little pieces?!?! I may never emotionally recover from this.
So yeah this place was a huge disappointment and highly not recommended partially due to the above, but also because of the following:
------Superfund means superbad------
According to the EPA's Public Health Assessment of this location, there are 4 main contaminants onsite that are cause for concern: Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium and Zinc. Basically, I got the impression that everything except the arsenic is pretty "meh" as far as dangers go. But it sounded like there was enough of a presence of inorganic arsenic that it wasn't something to just shrug off. Highly unpleasant/carinogenic/etc. So I decided to a wear an old and thus disposable set of clothes/boots/etc and change out of them before I got back into my vehicle, tossing them into a trash bag. Also brought a respirator and wore it inside one of the buildings, but that was mostly just because of the vulture shit.
http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/p ... elease.pdf
But check this out. They calculated not only the potential risk to workers, they even figured it for trespassers and not only that, they further differentiated between risks posed to child vs adult trespassers! LOL. I mean, damn, thanks for thinking of us, guys! To be honest, I wouldn't have taken any precaution had I not seen this, so I actually am grateful to have known that before going in.
I expected the buildings might all be kinda dusty with metallic, cancerous particulate floating around but that wasn't really the case. The buildings didn't seem to have any dust/particulate to worry about. I've been places where everything is coated in that shit and you can taste it after a few moments, that wasn't the case here. Instead, the contaminants here appear to be in the form of... the entire landscape outside of the immediate factory site. It's all moon/volcanic looking "rocks" everywhere varying in color and type all of which seemed unnatural/not something you want to stir up. The whole ground for like 100 yards around the site is all like this. Luckily we cut over and didn't spend too much time walking through that shit.
Anyway, here's the section on Arsenic exposure risks present here.
Arsenic
Residents and workers may be exposed to low levels of arsenic for prolonged periods. Long-term
exposure to low levels of inorganic arsenic may lead to an increase risk for a darkening of the
skin and the appearance of small “corns” or “warts” on the palm, soles, and torso. In addition,
trespassers and workers exposed to low levels of arsenic may have a moderate increased risk for
cancer over their lifetimes. For residents, a low increased risk for cancer may be expected from
exposure to arsenic.
The estimated dose for a child exposed to arsenic in residential soil (0.001 mg/kg-day), a child
trespassing onto the site (0.002 mg/kg-day), an adult trespasser (0.001 mg/kg-day) and an adult
worker (0.002 mg/kg-day) all are greater than the chronic minimal risk level (MRL) of 0.0003
mg/kg-day. The MRL is based on epidemiologic studies that found a no-observed-adverse-effect
level (NOAEL) of 0.0008 mg/kg-day and a lowest-observed-adverse-effect level (LOAEL) of
0.014 mg/kg-day for skin changes [ATSDR 2000]. The estimated doses are greater than the
NOAEL, but 7 to 14 times less than the LOAEL.
USEPA, the National Toxicology Program, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
and the International Agency for Research on Cancer consider inorganic arsenic to be a known
human carcinogen. Studies have associated the ingestion of arsenic mainly with skin cancer.
Studies also have shown that ingestion of arsenic can cause cancers of the bladder, kidneys, liver,
lungs, and prostate (ATSDR 2000). Cancers caused by chemical exposure often do not appear
until 10 or more years after exposure. Also, cancers caused by chemicals cannot be distinguished
from cancers that occur spontaneously.
Re: Abandoned zinc smelter - Taylor Springs IL
Here's the blog post from this place. Just commenting it here because I said I would post some pics but never did.
https://sublunarphotography.blogspot.co ... mpany.html
https://sublunarphotography.blogspot.co ... mpany.html