Volatilized Pcbs Creating Worldwide Environmental Hazard, Scientist Warns - the Berkshi

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Volatilized PCBs creating worldwide environmental hazard, scientist warns

By Heather Bellow Thursday, Jun 30 News 9 Comments

Heather Bellow

Despite its idyllic appearance, the Housatonic River is contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a probable carcinogen. The Environmental Protection Agency seeks to remove PCB-laced sediment from the river Volatilized PCBs creating worldwide environmental hazard, scientist warns - The Berkshi... Page 2 of 7

and its banks for treatment in a licensed facility; General Electric Company, the polluter, proposes to landfill PCB sediment adjacent to the river.

Great Barrington — If you have a garden near the Housatonic River, you should wash and peel your zucchinis and cucumbers, says Dr. David Carpenter, since their fatty skins can be repositories for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), determined to be known carcinogens and which studies indicate do leave the river environment and move through the air.

The process is known as volatilization, and it is the reason PCBs have drifted to even the most remote parts of the world, carried on the wind, and particularly to cold climates.

Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at SUNY Albany, Carpenter is a physician and expert on the health effects of these “known human carcinogens.” He was, for instance, an expert witness in a lawsuit against PCB

Dr. David Carpenter, at the forum on PCB dumps. Photo: Heather Bellow manufacturer Monsanto, brought by several people with high PCB blood levels who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That was a $48 million win against the company and three other defendants.

And Carpenter also consulted in an ongoing legal battle against the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District over unsafe PCB levels in the buildings, and a cancer cluster there.

“This is not trivial stuff,” Carpenter told an audience of nearly 75 Berkshire County residents at the First Congregational Church Tuesday (June 28). The lecture was organized by Stop the Dumps, which with Housatonic River Initiative, began a grass roots effort that sprung from General Electric Company’s plan to create three PCB landfills in the county as part of its Environmental Protection Agency-mandated clean up of the rest of the Housatonic River.

The $200 million bill to ship PCB contaminated sediment out of state after its $600 million cleanup has GE eyeing the local sites in Housatonic at Rising Pond, Woods Pond in Lenoxdale, and a location near Goose Pond in Lee.

The EPA says it wants GE to pay to have the waste shipped out.

The waste was generated from GE’s Pittsfield plant, which for decades used the chemical as a fire retardant during the manufacturing of electrical Dr. David Carpenter answers questions during the forum. Photo: Heather transformers. Bellow Volatilized PCBs creating worldwide environmental hazard, scientist warns - The Berkshi... Page 3 of 7

Stop the Dumps has organized a march down Main Street this Sunday, July 3 at 12 p.m., to reach people who may not realize what GE has up its sleeve, and to continue to apply pressure to the company and the EPA.

As a natural Berkshires gem — and health hazard — the river has inspired a complex relationship between it and the county’s residents.

Carpenter did not come bearing news that might soothe, either; there’s nowhere to hide. “If you live within 7 kilometers of the Housatonic you’re undoubtedly exposed to some degree,” he said. It is a fact that we breathe these chemicals, and so does nearly everyone, and everything, since PCBs are everywhere.

“There is no safe level of PCBs in the air,” Carpenter said. “They are distributed all over the face of the earth. There’s nobody that’s not exposed, mainly because of this air transfer.”

He said he could perhaps live with the idea of 0.5 nanograms or less of PCBs per cubic meter as “safe,” but he says air testing isn’t done much mainly because it’s so expensive. Testing blood levels is also expensive, he said.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Jim Murphy, noting that There have, however, been bioremediation of PCB contamination is an unproven technology — as yet. enough blood tests initiated by Photo: Heather Bellow Carpenter’s studies that show besides cancers, PCBs are endocrine and thyroid disrupters, are linked to diabetes, and have estrogenic effects that affect reproduction. PCBs also reduce IQ in both children and adults.

The air around some PCB landfills, Carpenter said, has reached 25 ng/m and during a demolition he has seen levels reach 300. He said dredging and remediating will raise levels, without question, but says the work must be done to protect endless future generations from exposure.

He says it is the process of summer drying after the spring floods that releases PCBs into the air. He said PCBs volatilize less in cold weather, making a better case for not dredging during summer.

Though PCB air levels peak when they are disturbed, Carpenter is still an advocate for dredging river sediment to get them out. “People who live by the river before dredging have health problems. Until there are other options, get them out.”

One of those “other options” is bioremediation, where contaminated soils are cleaned by applying a formula that strengthens the soil’s own native bacteria so they will break down the organic compounds. A recent pilot program in Great Barrington, though plagued by problems and shut down by the state, did show promising results. However, EPA and state officials say more research is required. “It must be proven,” said EPA spokesperson Jim Murphy, who answered a few questions at the lecture.

Carpenter is pushing to get them out of the river, and fast. “I’m not convinced that bioremediation is ever going to be the solution,” he said. “Get them out. The only way to destroy them is to incinerate the soil. It’s expensive and it’s not good for the soil.”

Carpenter said EPA “landfills” are generally secure, but this audience, knowing of a failed PCB dump liner in Pittsfield, is nervous. When asked about Volatilized PCBs creating worldwide environmental hazard, scientist warns - The Berkshi... Page 4 of 7

the wisdom of dumping the toxins in landfills next to the river, as GE has planned, Carpenter said “putting it next to a river is unwise unless it’s on a very high hill.”

Anxiety was rising. If there were a sustained dredging project on the Housatonic River, asked Great Barrington resident Jon Rosen, how concentrated would PCB levels be?

Carpenter couldn’t answer with certainty, but said he thought if Housatonic resident Reed Anderson, asking whether it was safe to eat the levels rose to a peak value of 5 vegetables from his garden. Photo: Heather Bellow ng/cu it would be “dangerous — it depends on how long it’s elevated.”

“There’s no safe level,” he added, yet again. But he said if dredging and containment are done properly, those levels can be reduced.

Yet we are not alone with the struggle. Carpenter explained, for instance, that studies of PCBs in Lake Michigan show levels there have decreased. But 10 years ago, the levels stopped decreasing. “It turns out that there are a lot of PCB contaminated sites in Chicago. They go into the air and come down in Lake Michigan.” He added that many of these sites are old and abandoned, but he says a dependable source of PCBs everywhere are wastewater treatment plants because so much contamination goes into them from human waste and other sources.

Great Barrington resident Adrienne Cohen, who lives close to the wastewater plant, wondered if that was good reason to have a cover installed over it.

“There are some nasty things that come out of wastewater treatment plants,” Carpenter said. “There should be a mechanism to capture what is released into air.”

PCB levels can also be unsafe in basements, he said, when contaminated soil migrates up.

It was Housatonic resident Reed Anderson who asked about whether he should just pack up his vegetable garden, since he lives about 100 yards from the river, and next to where GE plans to locate one of its dumps. Carpenter said he didn’t have to stop growing vegetables, but to wash that fatty skin layer, since PCBs adhere to lipids.

And West Stockbridge resident Jon Piasecki wondered about grazing his animals near the river. Carpenter, who said he himself is a beef farmer, said the concern would be dust and sediment blowing onto pasture land. He said reducing consumption of animal fats will lower human PCB intake.

Anderson then asked Carpenter to put himself residents’ shoes, asking him what he would want to see happen if he lived near the river.

“It’s understandable that people don’t want a dump site near them,” Carpenter said. “If it’s well constructed there should be no PCB [levels] after it is enclosed, but significant air levels when it’s being dug and capped.” Volatilized PCBs creating worldwide environmental hazard, scientist warns - The Berkshi... Page 5 of 7

Housatonic River Initiative’s Tim Gray said “it’s still better to clean it up even if there’s temporary rise in emissions.”

GE is fond of trotting out all sorts of reasons why the company shouldn’t dredge, Gray has said previously, or why it shouldn’t clean up as much of the river as possible. Carpenter says without cleaning the river, there will be “an increase in disease forever.”

Mickey Friedman, who made a Environmentalist and filmmaker Mickey Friedman; to his left, Tim Gray of documentary film about PCB the Housatonic River Initiative. Photo: Heather Bellow pollution in Pittsfield, said after GE and the EPA dredged the first two miles of the river in Pittsfield, Army Corps of Engineers tests showed reduced levels in the air. “We know from experience that dredging works,” Friedman said.

“We need to look to the long term better good of society,” Carpenter said. “Nobody’s going to want to have a PCB dump near them — and they should be as removed from populated areas as much as possible.”

But, he added, “dredging is better than not dredging, if done properly.”

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