{"id":307,"date":"2011-05-31T14:27:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T18:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environmentalriskmanagers.com\/erm\/?p=307"},"modified":"2011-05-31T14:27:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T18:27:04","slug":"testing-for-toxics-at-schools-sparks-questions-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estrategist.com\/members\/testing-for-toxics-at-schools-sparks-questions-lawsuits\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing for toxics at schools sparks questions, lawsuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Blake Morrison and Brad Heath, USA TODAY<\/p>\n

NATRONA HEIGHTS, Pa. \u2014 On crisp fall mornings in the Allegheny River valley, the fog that hangs over Highlands High School usually burns off by the first bell. What remains in the air is the question.<\/p>\n

ACROSS THE NATION:<\/strong> Controversies brew over possible toxic emissions<\/p>\n

Almost a year after tests by USA TODAY found significant levels of two potentially toxic metals in the air outside the school, local health officials expanded their own monitoring efforts here. The reason: Air samples taken by the county earlier this year showed even higher levels of the metals than what USA TODAY found \u2014 on two days, at least nine times more.<\/p>\n

Highlands, flanked by two metals plants, is among scores of schools where regulators \u2014 local, state or federal \u2014 are monitoring outdoor air for toxic chemicals, many that pose unique dangers to kids. The monitoring is not required by law but came in response to the USA TODAY investigation that identified hundreds of schools where chemicals from nearby industries may permeate the air.<\/p>\n

Since Allegheny County health officials here found high levels of chromium and manganese in monitoring during January and February, they have urged patience. Air samples gathered in the past few months seem to offer some reassurance. Health officials say the most recent samples, made available to USA TODAY last week, indicate lower levels of the most dangerous type of chromium than their earlier estimates. That news is likely to come as a relief to parents who have children at Highlands, a school of about 950.<\/p>\n

Even so, questions remain about dangers from long-term exposures to the other metal found: manganese, which may affect brain development, behavior and the ability to learn, especially in children.<\/p>\n

“We don’t know enough to say it’s a problem, but we don’t know enough to say it’s not a problem,” says Keeve Nachman, an environmental toxicologist with Johns Hopkins University who examined the county’s findings for USA TODAY. He says the county’s findings reflect “potentially concerning exposures.”<\/p>\n

Such unanswered questions have prompted action across the nation. Residents in Indiana and South Carolina have filed lawsuits against industries in their communities. Activists in Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio continue to fight construction of facilities they believe would threaten the health of children in the area.<\/p>\n

The government also has responded. In an unprecedented step, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a $2.25 million program to examine air quality outside 63 schools in 22 states. In addition, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson appointed a new director for the agency’s Office of Children’s Health Protection soon after the Obama administration took office. Ruth McCully, the former director, told USA TODAY last year that examining air quality outside schools was “not my responsibility.”<\/p>\n

To date, the EPA has begun monitoring at 60 of the 63 locations. As at Highlands, officials stress that the first samples are intended to discern whether students face any immediate dangers from toxic chemicals, not to evaluate chronic health risks, which often requires longer monitoring periods.<\/p>\n

At a few schools, preliminary results indicate chemicals at levels that generally are considered safe for short-term exposures. At other locations, monitoring continues. At Stevens Creek Elementary in Cupertino, Calif., for example, regulators plan to monitor for at least a year because a nearby cement kiln wasn’t operating when the first samples were taken in July. Such facilities typically release chromium.<\/p>\n

“This is a really important effort. We see this first and foremost as an effort to help us understand the broader issues we might be dealing with,” says Peter Grevatt, who replaced McCully as the director of the EPA’s children’s health office.<\/p>\n

“By no means do we think that the focus is just on these” 63 schools. “It’s really an effort to try to understand broadly the scope of the issues we might be looking at nationwide.”<\/p>\n

‘We’re concerned’<\/strong><\/p>\n

At Highlands, local officials took the lead in monitoring. What they found in this small town outside Pittsburgh offers an example of how complicated and frustrating the process can be.<\/p>\n

In January and February, regulators with the county health department found elevated concentrations of chromium and manganese during about 10 days of testing. On Feb. 6, health department documents show levels of manganese at seven times above the federal government’s safety threshold for long-term exposure.<\/p>\n

Precisely what danger students at Highlands and three nearby schools might face from the metals is far less clear.<\/p>\n

Airborne chromium can take two forms. The more dangerous form, known as hexavalent chromium or chromium 6, can cause cancer. It can be released during steelmaking and cement production. The other, chromium 3, is relatively harmless.<\/p>\n

Results from the recent samples indicate most of the chromium is of the benign variety, health department spokesman Guillermo Cole said Friday. “Parents should have no concerns about chromium 6 levels posing any significant cancer risk,” he says.<\/p>\n

The high levels of manganese appear more troubling. The EPA has not determined whether manganese causes cancer, but high exposures can cause mental disabilities and emotional problems. Children \u2014 who breathe more air in proportion to their weight than adults do \u2014 may be more vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who leads a unit on children and the environment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, says manganese acts as a neurotoxin. Exposures early in life, he says, can cause “loss of IQ, dulling of intelligence \u2014 basically the same types of effects as lead.” Moreover, Landrigan says, children may be at least 10 times more susceptible than adults.<\/p>\n

Cole acknowledges that manganese levels were above what the EPA considers safe for long-term exposure. “Fortunately,” Cole says, “the children spend most of their time inside the school and the levels found there earlier this year were well below” safety thresholds.<\/p>\n

Officials need to know more before they can pronounce the air safe, says Hopkins toxicologist Nachman. In part, that’s because the readings changed dramatically from one sample to the next, and the highest level was more than seven times above the EPA’s long-term safety threshold. Those thresholds generally are based on studies of adults. Nachman says officials need to understand how often \u2014 and why \u2014 that happens before they can assess long-term health risks that children here face.<\/p>\n

Meantime, the school has taken steps of its own. Besides working with the county to monitor the air outside and in the school’s library, Highlands principal Tom Shirey says the school replaced “every door and window in this building since this summer. This place is sealed up tighter than a snare drum.”<\/p>\n

Shirey says “there’s no readily apparent sign” of pollution from the two plants near the school, each within a mile.<\/p>\n

The largest of the two, a steel mill operated by Allegheny Ludlum Corp., reported to the EPA that it released at least 1,280 pounds of chromium and 2,602 pounds of manganese into the air last year. Reporting laws do not require that the company differentiate between the types of chromium, but company spokesman Dan Greenfield says the emissions aren’t harmful.<\/p>\n

“Let’s not go through this scaring people again by calling something dangerous which isn’t dangerous,” Greenfield says.<\/p>\n

Greenfield also took issue with USA TODAY’s findings late last year, when the newspaper recorded elevated levels of chromium outside a school in nearby Midland, Pa. An Allegheny Ludlum mill there was one of three industrial facilities nearby that reported releasing chromium into the air. Greenfield said that the chromium there was not the carcinogenic form.<\/p>\n

The superintendent of Midland’s schools immediately asked the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to begin monitoring there. Department spokeswoman Teresa Candori says air samples taken over six months in Midland \u2014 and over shorter periods outside six other schools in the state \u2014 “did not detect any hazardous levels of pollution.”<\/p>\n

Because of the recession, the steel mill in Midland was not operating during most of the state’s monitoring; it was last year, when USA TODAY found elevated chromium levels.<\/p>\n

Battles continue<\/strong><\/p>\n

Battles about the impact of pollution and the dangers residents might face continue across the nation. In some cases, concerned parents have asked courts to intervene. In at least one case, the government has reached a settlement with a polluter. Among the controversies:<\/p>\n