Fells Point residents worried about unusual flour dusting near industrial bakery
BALTIMORE -- Several homes in Fells Point were covered in flour over the weekend.
Residents tell WJZ that the flour dusting could only have come from the industrial bakery next door.
They say they're concerned with the bakery's response.
Megan Brewer said she woke up on Sunday morning thinking that it had snowed overnight—until she realized the white substance coating her patio wasn't snow at all. It was flour.
"There was just flour coating all of our backyard and the roof and the neighboring roof," she said. "We came to find out that it was every single one on the block."
The flour was still there when Brewer spoke with WJZ on Monday.
She lives on the 600 block of Bethel Street in Fells Point, which is about 20 yards away from H&S bakery.
"That's what it has been looking like for the last 24 hours," Brewer said of a white puff in the air. "It looks like steam, but it's actually flour because it settles on our houses."
Brewer said she contacted the bakery about the situation and started seeing workers cleaning flour from the roof of the factory on Monday morning.
She said she has been concerned that the flower will attract vermin to her typically clean street.
"H&S actually is very good about making sure that we don't have rats in this area, but I can't imagine that they can keep rats out if this continues," she said.
An even bigger concern for Fells Point residents is that flour is combustible dust as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Flour explodes when its particles become suspended in the air in a dust cloud and are then ignited.
"I feel like they should have been working on it before I called," Brewer said.
