The People Of Trenton Are Being Lied To Again In EPA's Superfund Listing
NJ Has A Notorious Legacy Of Poisoning People Inside Their Homes
EPA Superfund Cleanup Ignores High Lead Levels Found Indoors
EPA Dismissed Blatant Environmental Justice Issues
Veteran investigative reporter Jeff Pillets of The Jersey Vindicator has a good story on the Trump EPA's listing of East Trenton as a Superfund NPL site due to toxic lead risks, read the whole thing:
Bill Wolfe, a former state Department of Environmental Protection official who writes a notable blog on environmental policy, pointed out that the state documented high lead levels inside East Trenton homes decades ago, yet failed to act.
He said any remediation of the historic pottery sites should now address lead wherever it’s found.
“The plan should address the inside and the outside of homes. If not, it’s fatally flawed,” Wolfe said.
As I've been writing for years now, back in 2005, in response to the illegal disposal of contaminated soil during the construction of the Martin Luther King, Jr. school, the DEP contracted with the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute to study Trenton lead exposures. That study found outrageously high levels of lead inside homes, see:
The sophisticated Rutgers study included swipe samples of dust on the windowsills of nearby Trenton homes (p. 6)
Dust samples were collected using either a wipe sampler (Lioy et al. 1993) from interior samples or a sweep method from sample collected from exterior window sills. … The areas sampled inside homes were areas that had not been disturbed over the previous year, such as windowsills, the tops of cabinets and the top shelf in book cases.
The mean (average) lead level found inside Homs was an astonishing 3,488 ppm, almost 10 TIMES the DEP hazardous waste site soil cleanup standard! (see the data in Table 5 on page 33).
Despite that data, this is how that Rutgers report downplayed the high lead levels found inside homes. Note that the text mentions the mean and standard deviation of the data, but does NOT mention what those numerical values actually were or how they compare to DEP's cleanup standards, which are based on protection of human health (Importantly, indoor lead exposures are far greater than the exposure assumptions DEP used to derive that 400 ppm residential soil standard) :
One metal of particular interest because of its toxicity and that was present in the fill is lead. However, lead showed no consistency in concentration in the samples collected from the outside the homes either spatially or within the any group, as evident by the standard deviation for all but one group being larger than the mean value. The levels measured around the residences are generally higher than the levels in the soil or concrete aggregate samples on site. That, combined with the high variability suggests highly localized sources around many of the residence, most likely from old exterior leaded paint on the windows. There may also be some contribution from soil previously contaminated with leaded gasoline. This is common for an area containing pre-World War II homes of the age of this community. Thus, the transport of soil and dust from the site during construction was not a major source of lead to the community….
A similar evaluation was made of the wipe dust samples collected from inside homes and unoccupied school classrooms in both Thomas Jefferson School and Martin Luther King School (Figures 6 a to j). No consistent trend is observed for any of the metal examined. Thus, there is no clear signal that material blown from the site was present in the neighboring homes or schools. Since the samples in the homes and schools were collected from areas that had not been disturbed in the recent past, it should have contained material that penetrated into the structures. It is possible that the concentration could be different in the home/school if they had different dust settling rates, but an evaluation of the ratios of the metals also did not reveal any consistent pattern.
The primary purpose of that Rutgers study was to absolve the illegal contaminated soil disposal at the school construction site as the source of the problem. It was NOT to protect public health.
And somehow the Rutgers experts and the DEP failed to note that the homes were located nearby major historic industrial sources of lead that are the basis for the EPA Superfund listing today.
I want to make a few additional points to followup on the initial post I wrote yesterday afternoon after quickly reading the EPA press release on Superfund designation.
The East Trenton lead contamination issue opens up a Pandora's box, and impacts Trenton residents well beyond the East Trenton neighborhood designated by EPA.
EPA's own "Hazard Ranking Score" (HRS) documents explain why the lead contamination is geographically broader in scope than East Trenton: (p.22 - 23, citations removed):
Potteries in Trenton manufactured tableware, sanitary ware, electrical porcelain, and art ceramics. Lead was used in the ceramic glazes required for the manufacture of many of these products, which were subject to high temperatures in the firing kilns.
The number of pottery kilns in Trenton increased from 1 to 258 between 1852 and 1903. Depictions of the Trenton kilns show smoke emanating from their stacks and moving with the wind; lead would have been released in these kiln emissions and then settle into the soil downwind from the kilns (the prevailing wind direction in Trenton is northwesterly, and a large majority of wind direction is distributed across the western half from northerly to southerly). Soil and debris containing ceramic pieces that was used as fill material during development of the residential neighborhoods is also adding to the lead contamination.
EPA found lead to be one of the most leachable metals from the ceramic chips, indicating that leaching of lead from the chips over time is one of the mechanisms of soil contamination. ...
Results for the Grant Intermediate School, where there are 542 students and 45 full-time faculty members, show lead concentrations more than three times above background levels in several grass- and soil-covered areas on school grounds.
The high lead levels documented inside homes by the 2006 Rutgers study are located about 1/2 mile due west, downwind of these kiln industrial emission sources. Lead contaminated soil and debris was used in their construction as well.
The takeaway points are:
the lead contamination in Trenton is far more widespread than the East Trenton neighborhood EPA designated a Superfund site;
there are very high lead levels INSIDE people's homes; and
EPA Superfund and NJ DEP toxic site cleanup programs ignore indoor exposures and risks. EPA Superfund documents (i.e. "For the Historic Potteries site, EPA is evaluating the soil exposure and subsurface intrusion pathway—soil exposure component." (p.23) and an EPA Press Office email to me confirm this fact.
I) NJ Has A Notorious Legacy Of Ignored Indoor Risks
The people of NJ have suffered a series of disasters concerning exposure to toxic contamination inside their homes, daycare centers and schools.
The NJ DEP has long ignored and suppressed the risks of these exposures.
Let me share a few major horror stories from that ugly legacy:
1) Hoboken Artist colony - mercury poisoning of children (early 1990's). Read the NY Times story:
[Residents] say the State Department of Environmental Protection declared the building free of hazardous materials after nothing more than a walk-through inspection and historical information provided by David Pascale.
But the department's assistant commissioner for site remediation, Richard Gimello, insisted that the department complied with the law. The agency might have been looking for mercury had it done its own historical research, he said. But that is something the D.E.P., which will lay off 171 employees in the 1997 fiscal year, just cannot afford, he added.
2) Kiddie Kollege - daycare mercury poisoning of toddlers (2006). Read the NY Times expose:
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection knew in 1994 that a building that later housed a Gloucester County day care center was so dangerous that state inspectors were instructed to use respirators when entering the building, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times yesterday.
But the site remained contaminated, and as far as the department knew, unoccupied, until inspectors visited it in April and found that Kiddie Kollege, a day care center serving children as young as 8 months old, was operating in the building. Yet the center, which is in Franklin Township, was allowed to remain open for more than three months, until state environmental investigators determined in late July that the site was still contaminated. ...
The internal memo, dated Oct. 12, 1994, said "Level C at a minimum is required for entry into the building," meaning respirators were required, said Bill Wolfe, a former department employee who is the director of New Jersey Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group that provided a copy of the memo.
3) Jersey City chromium - again the NY Times: (6/26/89)
For decades, thousands of tons of slag from three local chromium refineries were routinely used as fill in building sites and dumped in vacant lots. Now, years later, the highly toxic wastes have seeped through some building walls and leached up to ground level. ...
Some Jersey City officials, particularly the chief health officer, Lou M. Manzo, believe the state has been slow to react to the problem, particularly at the school. On May 16, Mr. Manzo ordered the school, Whitney Young, closed and its 1,100 students transferred to another school after state air sampling found elevated chromium readings in its basement.
''The state could not give me any conclusive proof that the contamination wasn't in upper floors,'' Mr. Manzo said.
Potentially, tens of thousands of Hudson County residents face health risks from the chemical, hexavalent chromium, state health officials say.
5) Jersey City - 9th street firehouse: (#96 of 212)
6) Vapor intrusion - thousands of homes, schools and daycare centers were found to have toxic indoor air levels from nearby contaminated sites. Vapor intrusion blurs the scientific and regulatory lines between indoor and outdoor exposure.
Vapor Intrusion Rules Cast into Regulatory Limbo as Horror Stories Multiply
Trenton — Rules seeking to accelerate indoor air sampling and provide more rapid response to toxic vapors seeping into homes, day-care centers and other buildings were recently set aside by New Jersey authorities and the new administration of Governor Chris Christie has pledged to kill them altogether, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This regulatory gap occurs as new evidence shows even more widespread contamination of groundwater and soil than previously thought and as the state moves to pick of the pace of “brownfields” redevelopment of contaminated sites.
For an example of a vapor intrusion disaster, see Dupont Pompton Lakes:
We broke that Dupont story on 1/18/12, more than 6 YEARS before the Bergen Record reported it on 2/14/18:
7) The Schools Construction Corp scandal - With DEP's approval, the SCC spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build schools in poor districts on toxic waste sites. Remember the former Manhattan Project nuclear site SCC proposed for a school.
II) EPA Knows The Problem Is Not Limited To East Trenton And Is Not Cleaning Up The Superfund Site
EPA's own documents state that contaminated properties were excluded from the East Trenton Area designated. EPA also openly admits that they are not cleaning up the site:
Exclusion of properties from scoring does not indicate an absence of contamination—properties excluded from scoring include properties with soil lead concentrations equal to or greater than the RML of 200 mg/kg but below three times background levels, and properties that have not yet been sampled. Soil removals have not been performed and are not scheduled for the properties scored as subject to observed contamination within the AOC. EPA is installing temporary, protective cover materials at the Grant Intermediate School as an emergency measure. This interim action does not include removal of contaminated soil from the property, and the cover materials are permeable and less than 2 feet thick (i.e., topsoil, sod, and mulch) and do not represent a permanent cleanup solution.
Did you catch that? No cleanup. No commitment from EPA to do anything (other than provide "raised bed gardens").
III) EPA Completely Dismissed Environmental Justice Issues
The East Trenton neighborhood designated by EPA has a high concentration of disadvantaged poor and minority populations. The DEP also designated Trenton as an environmental justice community under NJ's environmental justice law (a legal fact that EPA is required to consider in the Superfund cleanup process as an ARAR).
But EPA flat out dismissed environmental justice issues - worse, EPA said the Superfund NPL listing was basically meaningless. Here the text of the official Federal Register Notice: (9/5/24)
"J. Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations
The EPA believes the human health or environmental risk addressed by this action will not have potential disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority, low-income or indigenous populations because it does not affect the level of protection provided to human health or the environment. As discussed in section I.C. of the preamble to this action, the NPL is a list of national priorities. The NPL is intended primarily to guide the EPA in determining which sites warrant further investigation to assess the nature and extent of public health and environmental risks associated with a release of hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants. The NPL is of only limited significance as it does not assign liability to any party. Also, placing a site on the NPL does not mean that any remedial or removal action necessarily need be taken.
And this was the Biden EPA, who claimed to support environmental justice and had an EJ policy (all since repealed byTrump's Executive Order on "DEI").
So, there you go.
There's no viable responsible party for EPA to sue and pay for the cleanup, the federal Superfund is already spoken for and broke, and there is no funding appropriated by Congress for any cleanup.
This is all a manipulative and cynical show and a continuation of the legacy noted above.
EPA and DEP have learned nothing from NJ's notorious legacy and are in fact repeating exactly the same errors.