Source: http://www.pressconnects.com, June 1, 2014
by: Tom Wilber

New studies prompt reevaluation of exposure guidelines

Exposure to TCE pollution deemed unsafe for village residents is acceptable for workers at the Huron Campus, state health officials determined in 2005.
That assessment may change this year, however, as the state Department of Health takes into account new evidence that TCE is more toxic than previously thought.
Eliminating trichloroethylene (TCE) vapors has posed mechanical and engineering challenges at the manufacturing buildings, which sit over the highest concentrations of a chemical plume spreading from the former IBM campus through 300 acres of the village. Pollution forms gases that enter buildings and enclosed spaces — a process known as vapor intrusion. The type of systems used to divert chemicals from under smaller residential buildings are ineffective on large cement structures, according to officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The campus, former quarters for IBM Corp.’s microelectronics division before it sold the site in 2002, is now home to BAE Systems, i3 Electronics (formerly Endicott Interconnect), Binghamton University and other smaller firms that collectively employ about 2,000 workers. Air samples taken from manufacturing buildings in 2005 and 2011 found TCE levels to be detectible, but below what officials considered a significant health threat.
The major question: What are safe levels of TCE vapor exposure? That’s open for debate and interpretation.
The state Department of Health is reviewing data in the context of recent studies about TCE risks “to ensure that previous decisions and recommendations continue to protect public health,” agency spokesman Jeffrey Hammond said in a recent email. Officials have been evaluating TCE’s impact on public heath and the environment in Endicott since 1979, when the pollution was discovered.
In 2003, after vapor intrusion was discovered in Endicott, the state changed the guideline from 0.22 to 5 micrograms per cubic meter. (A cubic meter is an area roughly the size of a large refrigerator. A microgram is equivalent to one millionth of a gram.) At the time, vapor intrusion sites were being discovered throughout the state, contamination was prevalent, and eliminating the chemical from the environment would be prohibitively expensive if not impossible.
“There is a lot of politics around it because how ubiquitous TCE is and how expensive it is to clean up,” said Steve Schwarz, an attorney who represents villagers suing IBM for damages related to the pollution. “It’s not only about what’s safest, but what’s attainable. Absolute zero is the safest. There has to be some judgment about what people can accept.”
Indoor air samples at 42 campus buildings collected in 2005 — the last time the state oversaw testing — ranged from zero to 17 micrograms per cubic meter in some areas that tended to be occupied. Levels were much higher in other areas — often registering between 50 and 300 micrograms per cubic meter in tunnels and tank rooms below Building 18, for example. Concentrations in the soil directly below the buildings often exceeded 10,000 micrograms per cubic meter and sometimes were over 100,000. Before moving into the campus in 2012, BAE tested air in several buildings and found them within acceptable limits.

Company shares data

BAE officials have shared information about TCE levels on campus with workers and will continue to voluntarily monitor air quality at the plant, company spokeswoman Liz Ryan Sax said in an email. The company commissioned another round of testing recently, and results are expected later this year.
“The health and well-being of our employees are primary concerns, and we are committed to providing all of our teams with a safe working environment,” she said. “Whenever safety guidelines change in relation to any BAE facility, we work with the necessary parties to understand the impact and take appropriate action,” she added.
Robert Nead, president of i3 Electronics, responded in a statement that the i3 buildings “are currently in compliance, and we will continue to comply with regulations of the Department of Health and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to ensure our employees’ safety.”
IBM Corp. is responsible for cleaning the plume of TCE and other industrial solvents, which had drained orleaked or were dumped into the ground for an unknown number of years at the manufacturing site, and eventually seeped into surrounding parts of the village. Under the state’s supervision, officials have adopted a policy to reduce TCE levels wherever they have been detected within the chemical plume’s footprint outside the industrial park — an area with an irregular boundary that reaches approximately a half-mile to three-quarters of a mile south of the compound.
A study of mortality rates of IBM workers, completed by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health earlier this year, found people who worked at the campus had relatively high rates of deaths from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mesothelioma, pleural cancer, rectal cancer and testicular cancer. The study also found a “statistically significant relation” between exposure to tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene, or PCE, and deaths from nervous system diseases, and between exposure to TCE and deaths from a certain type of leukemia. The study looked at records from 34,494 workers from 1969 through 2001, including people who had worked at the site before TCE was phased out.
Following the release of the NIOSH study, Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Endwell, sent a letter to the state Department of Health asking it to adopt a more stringent standard for TCE vapor exposure.
Lupardo is among a group that believes there should be a non-discretionary approach and a much lower threshold, especially in light of the review of the 2011 literature by the Environmental Protection Agency that documented risks associated with even minute levels of TCE.
Lupardo argued in her request to the Cuomo administration that New York state is woefully behind the curve because of policy changes enacted under Gov. George Pataki’s administration. The current state guideline is above standards developed in California, Colorado, New Jersey and by several EPA regional offices where thresholds range from 0.016 to 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter, which fall in line with the 2011 EPA assessment.
Based on the 2005 and 2011 tests, health officials concluded that risks from TCE exposure on the campus were “low,” according to an April 21 email from Hammond, which echoes public documentation and fact sheets about the investigation issued several years ago. That means officials do “not expect to be able to associate health effects” from exposure.
Officials say that determination will not “significantly change.” But there appears to be room for more safeguards after the EPA released a 2011 assessment that tied exposure to cancer and birth defects.
“Once DOH’s review of the TCE air guideline is complete, previous determinations will be reviewed and any recommendations for additional action will be made as necessary,” Hammond said.

Exposure examined

TCE exposure has long been associated with acute and chronic illness ranging from skin rashes to neurological diseases. But policy on exposure guidelines has been a moving target for state and federal governments because of an imprecise and developing body of knowledge about just how much exposure is dangerous, and the controversy over the cost of cleanups and liability ramifications.
Not until 25 years after the Endicott pollution was discovered in 1979 did officials uncover a major problem. TCE in the ground was forming vapors collecting in buildings through a process called vapor intrusion. After the discovery in 2003, IBM equipped more than 475 structures with systems to divert the chemicals, while state and federal officials — pushed by concerned residents — began a series of studies to evaluate the health of people living over the pollution.
The results of the first of these studies, by the state Department of Health, came in 2005. It concluded that people living in the polluted area had significantly elevated rates of birth defects, testicular cancer and kidney cancer. Both the state study of residents and the federal study of workers lacked data to determine a causal relationship for the illnesses, although TCE exposure remains a primary suspect and fundamental hypothesis for both studies.
Nathan Graber, director of the state’s Center for Environmental Health, told Lupardo on March 7 that his agency is in the process of a review of allowable TCE vapor limits. Graber wrote the agency “will consider the EPA’s health risk assessment and any other scientific studies published since the existing guideline was established in 2006, including the recent National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study.” He added: “We are not aware of any groups opposed to a revision of the guideline.”
Although the guideline is 5 micrograms per cubic meter, the agency evaluates risks on a case-by-case basis, Graber said, taking into account multiple factors, including background levels of TCE. In some instances, the health department will recommend remediation even if levels fall below the guideline.
Lupardo sponsored a bill in 2008, yet to make it to the Assembly floor, that would revise TCE exposure policy to incorporate “the most protective underlying assumptions” about risks. Rather than a guideline, Lupardo said she is pushing for a number that will “serve as a line for action, especially given what we know about TCE from the EPA Health Assessment and the NIOSH study.”

Changes considered

If workers are not using TCE as part of the job, they should not be exposed to it above background levels, said Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, a California-based environmental advocacy organization that has been following IBM’s TCE legacy.
If they are exposed to it, then they should know the risks, Siegel said, pointing to recent studies associating risks to child-bearing women exposed to relatively minor concentrations of the chemical over short periods.
“Birth defects are not caused over 30 years,” he said. “They come in the first trimester of pregnancy. And we don’t know whether that exposure might come in three weeks or one day.”
Lupardo said she finds the application of the current guideline unsatisfactory. Occupational health officials justify higher exposure tolerances to dangerous chemicals at the workplace partly due to the logic that workers are exposed to the chemicals for only part of the day. But the guideline fails to consider thatpeople working at the former IBM campus and living nearby may have suffered exposure in both their work and their homes.
As a member of the Environmental Conservation Committee, Lupardo has been following the state’s TCE policy since vapor intrusion was discovered in 2002. In 2008, she sponsored a law requiring landlords to notify tenants of polluted property. She lauds BAE’s practice of notifying employees of TCE levels, and she thinks other companies located over polluted sites should do the same.
“I think workers have a right to know similar information about their workplaces,” she said.
Vapor intrusion levels tend to fluctuate with many factors, including seasonal changes in underground water levels and temperature differences between indoor and outdoor air. While the studies by IBM in 2006 and by BAE in 2011 provide snapshots of exposure risks, accurately tracking TCE levels constantly on the move through soil, water and air requires ongoing monitoring, Siegel said.
The plant — under both IBM and Huron — has served as a major economic engine of the Southern Tier, and politicians and labor proponents have an especially keen grasp on its legacy as well as its importance to the future well-being of the area.
“Our area in particular has learned that ignoring these concerns will hurt our ability to attract new businesses and industries in the long run,” Lupardo said. “The people of Endicott have endured a lot through all of this. My father would have said, ‘They’ve been through the mill.’ They deserve some peace of mind and closure.”