A glitch at Chevron’s Burnaby refinery Sunday left neighbours’ cars and sundecks coated in silica dust.

Al Bianco, who lives several kilometers from the Willingdon Avenue site, said he awoke to find a thin, gritty layer of dust on his car.

But Bianco’s more concerned that Chevron didn’t alert neighbours.

(September 17, 2008 - Burnaby Now) by Brooke Larsen

“What scares me the most is that people don’t know about it,” he said. “It could be anything in that dust.”

Bianco said he’s concerned about the health effects of breathing the dust in, adding that he slept with his window open Saturday night.

“I know things go wrong, but you’ve got be notified as soon as possible.”

Chevron spokesperson Ray Lord said the refinery’s fluid catalytic cracker spewed a higher-than-normal amount of silica briefly late Saturday and early Sunday.

Crews noticed a problem Friday night and shut the catalytic cracker down for repairs.

“In the course of starting it up again, we had some compressor problems that led to high opacity levels,” Lord said.

The problem has since been fixed, he said. The catalytic cracker normally spews small amounts of silica dust, as per regulations.

“Chevron does not believe this represents any kind of a health risk,” Lord said.

Health inspectors from the Fraser Health Authority have been out to the site, spokesperson Naseem Nuraney said Tuesday. But Nuraney said it’s too early to know whether the incident posed any health risk to neighbours.

“They’re collecting data, is what they’ve told me,” Nuraney said.

Lord said Chevron didn’t alert neighbours because staff didn’t know whether it would impact them or not. Staff have opened a car wash station at the refinery, given residents car wash vouchers, and offered to send crews out to clean sundecks.