Polluted Homes

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All three days of stories will be accessable from the front page of The

Denver Post web site at:

http://www.denverpost.com Only the main story (Sunday) is forwarded

in its entirety below.

Toxic Toll - Home Deadly Home, Toxins in Air

By Mark Obmascik

Denver Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 06, 2002

About this series

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11419,00.html

Unseen by its victims, unaddressed by many government regulators,

toxic gases from industrial sites threaten the health of thousands of

Americans. This three-part series shows why and how this has

happened. Today - Chemical vapors are seeping into homes, causing

sickness. Federal officials are aware of the problem but have done little

about it. Monday - The computer model widely used to predict levels of

toxic fumes in homes is often inaccurate. Yet federal officials still use it

to gauge health threats. Tuesday - Colorado accidentally became a

leader in battling toxic gas. Regulators are checking whether cancer

rates are high in a Denver neighborhood.

EPA errs in dropping toxic-gas probe

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11419%257E315287,00.html

The top federal environmental agency, using false information, dropped

an investigation last year into whether it ignored health risks from toxic

gases. Even the Environmental Protection Agency managers who would

have been targets of the audit said the agency's inspector general relied

on erroneous evidence to justify abandoning the review.

A state-by-state look at all 50 states - not all test for toxins!

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11419%257E315424,00.html

To learn more - links (more than the standard list)

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11419%257E315434,00.html

(MAIN STORY)

Home deadly home: Toxins in air

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11419%257E315538,00.html

By Mark Obmascik

Denver Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 06, 2002

Brice nearly died from lupus - after her twin daughters

convulsed with seizures. Ralph woke up paralyzed down his right

side. While Bob Gillette battled an inoperable brain tumor, his mother

died of liver cancer.

More than 4,900 people in a five-state federal study suffered strokes,

anemia and urinary tract disorders, including prostate trouble, at rates

double or triple the national average.

All these people lived in homes polluted with toxic gas.

Beneath dozens of neighborhoods flow streams of industrial chemicals,

oozing from local dry cleaners, auto shops and factories. The pollution

was supposed to be safe underground as long as people didn't drink it.

But now thousands of Americans, including hundreds in Colorado, face

a frightening fact: They've been breathing it.

The contamination became gas.

It leaked inside their living rooms.

Environmental regulators often did little or nothing. Even today, after two

decades of scientific warnings, few state agencies are doing much

about the health threat.

The federal agency that's responsible for protecting people from

environmental hazards instead has downplayed and even disregarded

the problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's main

computer model, which judges whether it's safe to breathe inside

thousands of polluted homes, often underestimates the threat. And the

EPA relied on false scientific information in dropping a planned review of

toxic gas in homes around the nation's worst hazardous-waste sites.

EPA also admits that it ignored the threat of toxic gases in the 1980s

and 1990s while deciding how dozens of polluted neighborhoods would

be cleaned up. The agency now is re-examining cleanups that were

supposed to be completed.

That just happened in County.

After 12 years of chemical cleanups, managers of the Hamilton

Sundstrand factory believed most work was done. But residents of the

Perl Mack neighborhood worried that toxic gas still leaked into their

homes.

An official EPA statement in August 2000 dismissed the threat: " Based

on past groundwater monitoring data, EPA does not expect to find

dangerous levels of (gas) in indoor air. "

Then the factory finally tested the neighborhood for toxic gas.

And found it.

54 homes decontaminated

Since November 2000, 54 homes have been purged of health-

threatening levels of chemical vapors.

" Based on EPA's guidance, we didn't think we'd find anything. But then

we went in and tested and we found something, " said Moyer,

project manager for the Hamilton Sundstrand factory. " It's a new issue.

It's the progress of science. "

There's probably more bad news to come.

It's not just that many polluted neighborhoods haven't been checked for

toxic gases.

It's that EPA doesn't even know how many neighborhoods the agency

has checked.

It may well be a big number.

In an EPA program that oversees major cleanups of still-operating

factories, less than half of the 1,714 worst factories have been screened

for gas. Managers of EPA's Superfund program, which directs the

nation's biggest hazardous-waste projects, concede they are unsure

how many of the 1,220 cleanups have been screened for toxic gas.

" If anyone at EPA says they thought 10 years ago about doing this,

they're not very believable, " said Frisco, who supervises EPA

Superfund cleanups in New York and New Jersey. " Maybe it's a

Pandora's box. "

In the past, regulators found toxic gas in homes but refused to make the

polluters spend $2,000 or so per house to clean it up.

Infrequent checking

Also, at least 13 states either never check or rarely check

neighborhoods for toxic gas. They are Alabama, Delaware, Georgia,

Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South

Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

" It's scary to see what's going on in other states, " said Rob Elder, a

hazardous-waste cleanup manager in Kansas, one of the few states

that aggressively protects homeowners from vapor pollution.

National EPA managers defended their handling of the issue. They said

EPA has been issuing advisories telling state regulators to check

polluted neighborhoods for toxic gas, and noted that the agency will

offer training seminars to state and federal regulators during a national

hazardous waste conference on Jan. 17.

" I think Americans can sleep soundly at night knowing that EPA is

concerned with this issue, " said EPA Assistant Administrator nne

Horinko, the agency's top national hazardous-waste regulator.

Fifty years after the great manufacturing boom of post-World War II

America, taxpayers have grown accustomed to paying hundreds of

millions of dollars to clean up Superfund sites and other toxic leaks. But

now a new environmental bill is coming due.

It's from the chemicals that stripped grease from the gears of the

Industrial Revolution.

The manufacturing of metal parts relied on vast quantities of oil and

gunk. To remove this grease from steel and aluminum - and to lift dirty

spots from suits and dresses - engineers developed a series of

chemicals called chlorinated solvents.

With an alphabet soup of names including TCE, PCE and DCE, these

solvents were cheap, easily manufactured and popular.

At its peak in the 1970s, the industry used more than 2.4 billion pounds

a year of just the three most popular solvents, TCE (metal degreaser),

tetrachloroethylene (dry cleaning spot remover) and carbon tetrachloride

(refrigerant component and degreaser).

That was 10 pounds a year of solvents for every man, woman and child

in America.

But all those chemicals did more than combat grease.

They also made people sick.

Exposure to many of these solvents at high levels, or over a long period,

hurts the liver, kidneys and nervous system, medical studies show.

Many of these chemicals also are linked to cancer, especially of the

liver and kidneys.

The government tried to protect workers with indoor air standards in

factories. But the chemicals often didn't stay in factories.

The problem: All these solvents were dumped in thousands of places

across the country.

Today they are the most common chemical pollutants in America,

turning places such as Love Canal, N.Y., and Woburn, Mass., setting of

the movie and best-selling book " A Civil Action, " into front-page national

news.

Many states now have dozens, or even hundreds, of little-publicized

streams of underground toxins.

The government allowed many of these plumes to remain unchecked

beneath homes.

At the time, EPA instructed regulators that the main risks from solvent

contamination came from drinking polluted groundwater or eating

polluted dirt. EPA's rules presumed that low levels of pollution wouldn't

contaminate homes with toxic gas.

EPA was wrong.

In three Denver neighborhoods, five years of tests found houses with

unsafe levels of invisible and odorless gases from underground industrial

plumes. More than 425 homes outside the Redfield rifle scope factory,

Colorado Department of Transportation headquarters and Hamilton

Sundstrand factory have been decontaminated.

Colorado now has cleaned more homes of vapors than any other state.

That's not because Colorado is more polluted than anywhere else,

officials said. It's because Colorado is one of the few states that

regularly check for toxic indoor vapors.

" There's absolutely no reason for us to find vapor trouble in Colorado

more than highly industrialized states, " said Roitman, chief

hazardous waste regulator for the Colorado Department of Public Health

and Environment. " The only reason we find it more is that we look for it.

Other places don't test like we do. "

In fact, only Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts,

New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, West Virginia and

Wyoming regularly test polluted neighborhoods for toxic gas.

Many of the biggest states - especially heavily industrialized areas such

as Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania - take the federal

government's advice. They skip actual tests of air and instead use an

EPA computer model to estimate whether it's safe to breathe inside a

home.

Though EPA long has advocated direct testing of indoor air for another

toxic gas, radon, the agency takes a different tack when checking

homes for contamination by carcinogenic industrial solvents.

The agency's published advice on solvent gas pollution is: " EPA

recommends that site managers use a screening level model developed

by and Ettinger to evaluate exposure. " Several state officials

say they now run the model dozens of times a year without ever testing

air inside homes to verify the model's accuracy.

But the model can be strikingly wrong.

At the nation's largest toxic gas cleanup site, in the southeast Denver

neighborhood outside the former Redfield rifle scope factory, the EPA

computer model predicted that fewer than three dozen homes would be

beset with health-threatening levels of industrial solvent gas.

In fact, air tests inside homes proved that more than 300 homes

required toxic gas decontamination. In some cases, actual pollution

inside southeast Denver homes was 200 times worse than the

government model predicted.

RobbieEttinger, one of two inventors of the EPA model, ran data from

Redfield through his own computer at the request of The Post. He

confirmed that the EPA formula underestimated home pollution there.

Nevertheless, EPA's Superfund program, which regulates most of the

nation's worst toxic sites, continues to rely on the model to predict

indoor air pollution. It's rare for the agency to take air samples in

homes. Air tests usually cost $1,000 each.

" This indoor air issue is not a new thing, " said Lown, an engineer

for the North Carolina state Superfund section. " EPA has brought it up.

But EPA doesn't quite know what to do about it. I don't know what to do

about it. "

Not a new subject

EPA has known for decades that toxic gas could pose a threat in the

home. The health risk from vapors was a main reason why then-

President Jimmy approved the emergency evacuation of 950 Love

Canal families from 1978 to 1980.

A 1978 government report on Love Canal noted that liquid pollution was

becoming gas inside basements and " resulting in hazards to health. "

National fears over Love Canal led Congress to pass the Superfund law,

one of the world's best-known pieces of environmental legislation.

But Love Canal's lesson about toxic vapors has since gone unheeded

by EPA, which repeatedly has overlooked - or dismissed - the same

threat at other polluted sites across the country.

A prime example is the BKK Landfill of West Covina, Calif., where 19

homes were evacuated in 1984 after public utility crews found explosive

levels of methane gas in backyards.

While testing inside homes for methane vapors, regulators also

detected vinyl chloride gas, a carcinogen, at concentrations 900 times

worse than what the government says is safe. Vapors from four other

industrial solvents were detected, some at levels up to 60 times worse

than health standards.

The BKK Landfill case was widely publicized, and scientists at the time

warned that similar vapor threats could be found at other polluted sites

across the country.

EPA didn't heed the warnings.

Though the agency did order BKK to decontaminate the landfill's edge,

cleanup standards were so loose that residents were allowed in 1984 to

reoccupy homes that still could have been polluted with unsafe levels of

toxic industrial gas, records show.

Still there

Today contamination from the same BKK Landfill continues to seep 10

feet below dozens other homes in West Covina. But 17 years after the

first evacuations, none of those homes has been tested for indoor air

contamination.

In response to Denver Post questions, Kathy Baylor, an EPA

hydrologist working on the BKK Landfill cleanup, said, " It's definitely

something we'll look into. We're looking at what happened in Colorado,

and it definitely gave us pause here. "

Other states have tested for toxins, but disregarded findings that

residents' health was at risk.

In the central Missouri town of Macon, Ralph lived the past 30

years downhill from the Toastmaster appliance factory. After the

company admitted that its plume of industrial chemicals, especially

TCE, flowed toward 's property, his home was tested in May 1996

for unsafe vapors.

At the time, Missouri regulators said their health standard for vapor

exposure was 2.6 parts per billion of TCE.

's home tested at 26 parts per billion, 10 times the health standard.

So Missouri weakened its health standard tenfold.

That meant no cleanup of 's polluted home.

Rules different elsewhere

If lived in many other states - Colorado, Massachusetts or

California, for example - his two-bedroom, one-bathroom home would be

detoxified.

Missouri officials voiced no regrets.

" It was borderline, so we didn't do it, " said Priddy, who

supervised the initial Toastmaster cleanup for the state Department of

Natural Resources. " That's about all I can say about it. "

That's little consolation to .

" I don't feel OK. I woke up one day in January and my whole right side

was paralyzed, " said , 75, a retired salesman. " I don't know why

I'm paralyzed. The doctors can't tell me why I'm paralyzed. I haven't had

a stroke or anything like that.

" The state came in here and told me my air is fine. I don't know what's

going on. Do you think the air is why I'm paralyzed? "

Despite story lines in movies such as " Brockovich, " medical

experts say it's difficult to blame any one person's health woes on home

exposure to industrial chemicals. That's because cancer strikes so

many people, and many of the afflicted smoke, maintain poor diets and

receive heavy chemical doses at work.

Still, there is no dispute that industrial solvents have hurt and even killed

people.

Scientific studies long have linked chlorinated industrial solvents to

neurological damage, as well as liver, kidney and heart woes.

In the worst cases of on-the-job exposure to solvents - often when

workers scrubbed the insides of industrial tanks for long periods with

degreasers - victims suffered severe dizziness and vomiting before death.

No one at home faces such high concentrations of solvents. But the

federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say long-term

exposure at lower levels of pollution also makes people sick.

Cancer looms large. Vinyl chloride, a component of PVC pipes and

breakdown product for several other chemicals, is a known human

carcinogen. And the federal government says other solvents, such as

tetrachloroethylene dry-cleaning fluid, or PCE, are probable human

carcinogens.

The cancers most often associated with solvent exposure are

leukemias, especially for children, and cancers of the brain, bladder,

colorectal system, lymph nodes, liver, pancreas and stomach, the CDC

reports.

The CDC began regular health checks in 1988 on 4,900 people in 15

neighborhoods in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania

where home drinking water supplies were contaminated by TCE. Many

of those people also breathed TCE seeping through their home

foundations and vaporizing from contaminated water as they showered

and washed dishes.

Children under 9 suffered speech impairment, deafness, anemia and

urinary tract disorders at rates significantly exceeding the national

average, the CDC found.

Adults suffered from anemia, diabetes, deafness, hypertension, kidney

disease, liver problems, skin rashes, speech impairment, strokes and

urinary disorders at rates significantly exceeding the national average.

Immune system disorders, such as lupus, have been linked to solvents.

One of those in the CDC study is Bob Gillette.

Illinois case

In Rockford, Ill., the Rust Belt town that once called itself the Screw

Capital of the World, Gillette and his mother, Faith Gillette, lived

for 32 years across the street from a metal parts manufacturer.

The factory, Swebco Manufacturing, turned out to be one of 17 sources

of industrial solvent plumes that polluted home water supplies and led

10 square miles of the city to be classified as a Superfund cleanup site,

officials said.

In 1992, at age 44, Gillette blacked out and was rushed to a hospital,

where doctors found an egg-sized tumor in the right frontal lobe of his

brain.

He has inoperable brain cancer.

" I've got a very rare type of tumor, and the doctors at the Mayo Clinic

told me they think it had to do with odors from factories, " said Gillette, a

former Swebco worker who said his company made parts for Denver-

based Gates Rubber Co. " I've got a 30 percent chance of surviving 10

years. "

His mother, a non-drinking hospital worker, died in 1996, at age 68, of

liver cancer, a malady that has been linked to solvent exposure.

Illinois state regulators tested Gillette's southeast Rockford

neighborhood and found five types of toxic gas in several homes. In one

house, levels of one gas were 75 times worse than EPA health

guidelines.

EPA let Illinois state government direct the environmental reviews. State

regulators ordered no home gas cleanups.

They said the national health guidelines, designed to protect invalids

and newborns who spend much time at home, are too stringent.

" We assumed one-third of your time is spent in a rec room. How many

people spend one-third of their time in a rec room? I doubt very many, "

said Mike Moomey of the Illinois Department of Public Health.

After Denver Post inquiries, however, Illinois state officials said they will

consult with federal EPA regulators about the best way to check for

toxic vapor inside Rockford homes.

Post questions also led EPA to call for toxic gas checks in Roscoe, Ill.,

where Brice and her twin daughters suffered a string of health

woes after the town's largest employer, Warner Electric Brake and

Clutch Co., leaked a 1,200-foot wide stream of an industrial chemical

into their rural subdivision.

" They told us not to drink the water, that it was suitable for washing and

bathing, but not for cooking or ingesting, " Brice said.

It was bad advice.

Toxic gas exposure from washing and bathing actually can exceed

exposure from drinking polluted water.

Though the pollution beneath her neighborhood was severe - the plume

contained TCE, TCA and DCE at levels up to 400 times worse than

drinking water standards - regulators never ordered the polluter to test

anyone's home air for leaking toxic gases.

In 1985 and 1986, Brice's 12-year-old daughters suddenly were stricken

with a series of non-epileptic grand mal seizures.

Then in 1992, at age 42, Brice was stricken with lupus, an immune-

system disorder that attacks body joints and internal organs. The 5-foot-

7 Brice plunged from 135 pounds to 92 pounds in just six months.

She was stricken with major skin rashes, painful fingernail cracks and a

severe case of thrush, an inflammation of the esophagus that made it

nearly impossible to eat solid food.

Then she got hepatitis.

Brice was admitted to the hospital, where she developed tuberculosis.

She required open-heart surgery to combat a severe case of pericarditis,

a painful infection of the heart cavity.

Doctors prescribed chemotherapy. She lived six months in the hospital.

" I was a single mom, " said Brice, an admissions worker at a local junior

college. " I lost the ability to walk. I couldn't work. I was throwing up. I

was catheterized. I had the children at home, and we had to go on food

stamps.

" With the girls, we went to the Mayo Clinic. I wanted to know why this

happened. I wanted to know why for myself, too. The doctors never

would tell me what caused all this. But they would not say, " No, it's not

the pollution.'

" I think it's the pollution. We've had such sickness. I think it's the

pollution. "

Like the Gillette family, the Brices are part of the CDC study that found

some sicknesses at double and even triple the national rates in their

neighborhoods.

Still, regulators allowed the vast majority of pollution to remain beneath

the homes of Brice and her neighbors.

In response to questions from The Denver Post, Black of the

Chicago regional EPA office said regulators shouldn't ignore the risks of

toxic gas around the Brice home.

" We should assess it, " Black said.

Mark Obmascik can be reached at Mobmascik@... or 303-

820-1415.