Of course, my understanding is that the combustion compounds are also toxic, but I wanted to respond to what you've written.
My point is the rush to resume normalcy and choose the risk of false negative reassurance when its clear this is not a well thought out procedure is terrible. Testing for raw components alone neglects the entire set of potential contamination and routes. Also is a one mile radius evacuation adequate for an open burn like that? I don't know what is but it'd be nice to have support to leave for a time if living on the outside margin of "might not die depending on wind direction".
The story coverage in newspapers is decently good I don't think anything is being swept under the rug. But the official response and effort to put the threat in the past seems like damage control to exit the news cycle vs having any concern whatsoever about the people that live there. It is a poor populated area of the country and it is acceptable to open burn a million pounds of chlorinated petrochemicals. I know this happens in different ways under environmental permitting all over the US like in the gulf, etc. so its not unique. Still its terrible.
And the state and local officials are handling the media coverage and disaster response while the US federal government is shooting down multiple balloons out of the air with $400k missiles in the great 2023 balloon wars. It is absurd.