Date: September
16, 2003
To: Board
of Directors, East Chicago Waterway Management District
From: Kim Scipes, Ph.D., Executive
Director of The Calumet Project
Re: Air
monitoring data, East Chicago Central High School
At the
January 21, 2003 meeting of the Waterway Management District—and you can find
this on pp. 84-92 of the meeting transcript—I discussed air monitoring done by
the Army Corps of Engineers at East Chicago Central High School. Although I had initially made a mistake in
the written material I provided the Board, I corrected it verbally at this
hearing, as the transcript reflects. I
specifically discussed the findings reported by the Corps at the high school of
three specific chemicals: Benzene,
Naphthalene and PCBs. I pointed out
that Benzene is a recognized carcinogen, recognized developmental toxicant, and
recognized developmental toxicant; Naphthalene is a recognized carcinogen and
suspected of a bunch of other things; and PCBs are recognized carcinogens,
recognized developmental toxicants and suspected of a number of other toxic
risks.
I found the actual amounts recorded by the air
monitors established by the Army Corps at Central High School during the summer
of 2002. Because the Corps did not do
the research to indicate what levels are dangerous to human health—ignoring a
very basic component of any health-based science—we cannot tell at what level
these chemicals are dangerous to human health.
So what we were forced to do was compare the findings at the high school
in relation to the detection level in the laboratory, below which these
chemicals cannot be detected.
For Benzene, the
detection level—below which you cannot detect it—is .20 parts per billion. Admittedly, this is very small amounts, but
again, it is important to compare actual findings to detection level because of
the way the Army set this up, it is the only way to have some idea of what the
findings indicate. I reported five
findings above the detection level, with the highest finding by the Corps
during the summer of 2002 as being .64 ppb.
For Naphthalene, the high
end of the detection range, is 7.95 nanograms per cubic meter of air. There were three findings at Central High
above the detection level: 54.05, 54.77, and 128.13. The highest reading for this recognized carcinogen that attacks
red blood cell creators in the body and is especially potent for those with
sickle cell—African-Americans and people from the Mediterranean area—was over
16 times the high end of the detection level.
For PCB-8, to focus on just one of a number
of different “types” of PCBs, the high end of the detection level was 3.98
picograms per cubic meter of air. Four
of the readings were well above the detection level, with the high being
91.92: over 23 times the high end of
the detection level.
I argued that with these findings, that we had a
public health emergency facing our students and faculty at the high school and
junior high as well as across the entire East Chicago community and the region
as a whole. I argued that all trenching
and/or construction be halted immediately until an independent consultant could
be hired and could complete a full investigation of these public health issues.
One question:
why has this taken so long to be done, and why is any trenching and/or
construction taking place before this has been done?
At the last meeting, on August 13, 2003, I reported
to the Board that I had searched the Army’s web page for their air monitoring
data, and that there was no data presented for 2003. This was unsatisfactory to a number of Board members, and Mr.
White said the monitoring had been done, and that it would be posted on their
web site.
I returned again to the Army’s web page on September
11, 2003. The data had been posted for
the first two quarters of 2003, which I appreciate. But what did I find?
For Benzene, whose detection level is .20
parts per billion, and whose highest finding in the summer of 2002 was .64, I
found a reading from April 3, 2003 of .74, and on June 14, a reading of .89. A bad situation is found to be even worse.
For Naphthalene, whose high end of the
detection level is 7.95 nanograms per cubic meter of air, and whose highest
reading in the summer of 2002 was 128.13, I found a reading of 263.32 on May 9,
2003! This is over twice as high as an
already high level! Other levels above
120 were on May 3 (125.94), on May 21 (121.04), on May 27 (195.22) and on June
2 (125.68). A bad situation is found to
be much worse.
For PCB-8, whose high end of the detection
level is 3.98 picograms per cubic meter of air, and whose highest reading in
the summer of 2002 was 91.92, I found a reading of 139.59 on May 9, 2003. Another bad situation that is found to be
much worse.
In short, for each of these three chemicals—and they
weren’t the only ones—we see that readings much higher than last summer’s
readings have been found. Last
summer’s readings were already so troubling that I had argued in January that
they suggested that we had a public health emergency—and what we can see is that
they have gotten even worse this year.
And, in fact, Naphthalene was more than twice as bad as an extremely
high level last year.
What I want to know is when is this Board going to
address these serious charges of the current situation at the ECI site, which
can only be made worse by further trenching and/or construction? When are you going to get answers and tell
the community that they are being poisoned and that the majority of the Board
of the East Chicago Waterway Management District is doing nothing?
This project must be stopped, and the existing
public health threats must be addressed.
Link
to initial air monitoring data (actual data)
Link
to Army Corps of Engineers’ web page with actual air monitoring data
