The Margin

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The Margin and interviewed seven Waterfront South neighborhood residents who experienced acute health symptoms or lingering psychological impacts after repeat fires at the EMR metal scrapyard recycling site.

Christina Allen shares how her and her son’s health have been affected.

“It looked like it could be a big fire cloud,” Christine Allen said. “It looked like something from out of a movie scene.”

When Christina Allen came home from work in February 2025, the sky above her Camden, New Jersey, neighborhood had turned dark. White ash the size of snowflakes fell from the air.

The smell of burning plastic filled her lungs. Less than a half mile away, a mountain of scrap metal had erupted into a four-alarm blaze at a facility run by EMR, a multinational metal recycling company, where 14 major fires have ignited at its Camden operations since 2020.

Camden city officials negotiated a deal with EMR to protect residents, like Allen, who opposed it from the outset. City Council approved it anyway. Then, on May 29, 2026, another fire broke out, and so did questions about whether the embattled agreement the city council signed could offer the protections as outlined.

Today, in partnership with , The Margin published “Up in Smoke," an investigation by Katrina Janco and Sophia Schmidt into what happens when a city makes promises to a neighborhood it can't keep.

Read the investigation now: https://bit.ly/Margin-Up-in-Smoke

"I just itched all night. And then it dawned on me...this residue is in my house."

In September 2024, a fire at the BioLab plant in Conyers, Georgia, sent toxic chemical smoke across Rockdale County for weeks.

Teresa Ervin-Springs lived nine miles away.

She drove through the plume without knowing it, went to urgent care uninsured and came home to find chemical residue coating her sofa, walls and floors. More than a year later, she's still seeing a pulmonologist.

This is what it feels like when a chemical disaster doesn't end. Comment BIOLAB to watch the live event.

📍 Conyers, GA