Georgia fire took place at pool and spa product manufacturer “BioLab,” not biological laboratory

Thick, dark smoke filled the skies after a fire broke out Sept. 29 at BioLab, a pool and spa manufacturer in Conyers, Georgia. About 17,000 people were evacuated from surrounding Rockdale County. 

On social media, another narrative unfurled, with some people online inaccurately referring to the site as a biological laboratory.

"NOTHING TO SEE HERE JUST A BIOLAB IN GEORGIA ON FIRE AND SENDING MASSIVE PLUMES OF SMOKE INTO THE SKY RIGHT BEFORE THE 2024 ELECTION," Matt Wallace, a conservative political commentator whom PolitiFact has previously fact-checked, wrote on X. The post was accompanied by footage of rising smoke plumes. 

A Sept. 29 Instagram post sharing video of the fire was captioned, "A Biolab has caught on fire in Georgia." 

The Instagram video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Stefano Costanzi, an American University chemistry professor, told PolitiFact that a "biolab" or biological laboratory, is "where experiments intended to study living organisms are carried out."

The BioLab site in Conyers manufactures pool and spa products. Costanzi said "a facility that simply manufactures and stores chemicals is not a biological laboratory" but that he couldn't comment specifically on BioLab, because he's not familiar with its facilities and operations.

Daniel Hoadley, a BioLab spokesperson, told PolitiFact via email that BioLab’s facility produces no biological weapons and does no contagious disease research.

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PolitiFact has previously rated conspiracy theories False that U.S.-run biolabs in Ukraine produced deadly diseases, such as COVID-19, to use as biological weapons.

The U.S. had a bioweapons program in the mid-20th century. President Richard Nixon ended the program in 1969. Today, the U.S. does not develop or produce any bioweapons as part of the United Nations’ Biological Weapons Convention. 

We searched Google and did not find any credible reports of bioweapons labs currently existing in the U.S. The Department of State said on X in 2022 that the U.S. is in compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and "does not develop or possess chemical and biological weapons anywhere."

The World Health Organization defines bioweapons as microorganisms or toxic substances. Anthrax, plague and smallpox have been used to produce bioweapons. BioLab manufactures pool and spa products that contain chemicals, including chlorine and bromine. Andrew Weber, a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks, a security policy institute, said chlorine is a "toxic industrial chemical." Chlorine has been used as a chemical weapon before, including by the Syrian government in 2015. 

Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDaniel said during a Sept. 29 press conference that the fire started at around 5 a.m. on BioLab’s roof and was reignited around noon, when the plant’s sprinklers caused a chemical reaction with a water-reactive chemical product. The fire was contained at around 4 p.m. the same day, McDaniel said.

The fire was the third one to occur at the plant in the last seven years, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. 

We rate the claim that a biolab caught fire in Georgia right before the 2024 election False.

CORRECTION, Oct. 3, 2024: We updated this article to correctly reflect Costanzi's comments to PolitiFact about not being able to speak specifically on BioLab.