Source: http://www.northjersey.com, April 3, 2015
By: Scott Fallon
Anyone who regularly went onto the Quanta Superfund site in Edgewater before some of the pollution was removed has an increased risk of getting cancer and other diseases, according to a new health study by the state.
A Department of Health official said the increased risk is still minimal and would affect only adults and children who went onto the former Hudson River industrial site and inhaled or ingested contaminated soil.
The 92-page report, a statistical model based on pollution samples, is limited in scope and does not assess the overall health of nearby residents or people who may have worked at the site decades ago. Nor does it provide a direct link between the Quanta pollution and diseases in the community.
But it does offer for the first time the possibility that coal tar, PCBs, arsenic and other contaminants at the site may have harmed people.
“When we say someone could have been exposed, it’s a very cautious statement,” said Joe Eldridge, director of the agency’s Consumer, Environmental and Occupational Health Service. Quanta’s pollution “may have harmed people’s health, but there are lots of questions and uncertainty,” he said.
The report, which was quietly posted to the DOH’s website last month, drew criticism from some environmentalists who said it doesn’t go far enough.
“It’s like they scratched the surface and stopped there,” said Gil Hawkins, president of the Hudson River Fisherman’s Association. “It’s says people may have been harmed by the site and then it tells you all the reasons you don’t have to be alarmed.”
Cleanup plan
The report comes as federal environmental officials are finalizing a controversial cleanup plan that would entomb most of the pollution at the site in lieu of excavation.
The site has long been a community concern, but town and state environmental officials have allowed developers in the last 15 years to build hundreds of housing units in the area. Some are just a few hundred feet from Quanta, a former tar factory and oil-processing plant.
Pollution at the site dates back more than a century, long before Edgewater transformed itself from an aging factory town to an upscale bedroom community across from Manhattan.
Toxic coal tar was manufactured at the site for roofing and paving before the facility was turned into a plant to recycle waste oil in the 1970s. It was shut down in 1981 when state inspectors found more than a million gallons of oil contaminated with a high concentration of PCBs sitting in more than 70 storage tanks. The site languished for years until it was declared a federal Superfund site in 2002.
There is no current exposure to pollution, since the site has been fenced for years and much of the pollution remains underground, according to the report. A federal study in 2008 determined there was no exposure to contaminated dust particles from the site, although that threat had existed in the past, the report says. And although chemicals have been detected in the indoor air at an office building next door at 115 River Road, the levels are not great enough to cause harm to workers or children at a day-care center that used to be housed in the building.
But the report says that people who have a greater risk to contract cancer from contaminants in Quanta’s soil would have had to trespass onto the site at least four times a week for a year. The report does not estimate how many people may have done this, nor does it give a timeline for when the site was not fenced. The report only refers to a photo showing the site without a fence in the mid-to-late 1980s.
No need for alarm
Eldridge said longtime Edgewater residents do not need to be alarmed by the report. “In these kinds of instances, you need to talk to your personal physician, but we are not suggesting anyone needs to go for more cancer screenings based on the data we evaluated,” he said.
The study was posted to the Department of Health’s website in early March. Although copies were sent to the Edgewater Health Department, to the local library and to a representative of a community group that advises the EPA on the issue, some who have attended public hearings on the issue did not know about the report.
“What’s the point of issuing this if no one knows about it?” said Debbie Mans, executive director of NY/NJ Baykeeper. “They need to remind folks and explain what it means.”
The public comment period for the report ended Friday, but it may be extended if requested, said Dawn Thomas, a DOH spokeswoman.
Officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are reviewing the health report and would not comment this week.
The agency is developing a controversial $78 million cleanup plan funded by Honeywell International Inc., which inherited the liability of Quanta, and 23 other companies, most of which had their waste oil disposed at the site.
Almost all of the 150,000 cubic yards of thick coal tar creosote, most of which is buried under the site, will remain there after undergoing in-situ solidification, a process that has been likened to mixing concrete. Many residents and environmentalists had pushed for Honeywell to dig up all the pollution and haul it away saying it was the only way to ensure public health. But EPA officials said that plan, which would cost $134 million more than entombing, would be too disruptive forcing nearby residents to be temporarily moved and businesses to close. City Place, a large condominium and retail complex, was allowed to be built next to Quanta despite the site’s pollution.
Options for river
An EPA spokesman did not have a time frame for when the major work at Quanta will begin. The cleanup project also requires the 115 River Road building to be demolished.
Local developer Fred Daibes, who owns the building, bought 11 acres of land along the Hudson River in 2012, including the Quanta site. He plans to build hundreds of residential units, an office building, ferry service and possibly a marina at the southern edge of the borough.
The report could not determine whether there was any increased health risk from the 750-foot-long plume of coal tar and other contaminants that leached into the Hudson River from Quanta. The EPA expects to issue a study this summer on the cleanup options for this portion of the river.