2011 CPEO Brownfields List Archive

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:38:53 -0800 (PST)
Reply: cpeo-brownfields
Subject: [CPEO-BIF] "Leasing Rules Eyed after Toxic School's Closure" (Bronx, New York)
 
LEASING RULES EYED AFTER TOXIC SCHOOL'S CLOSURE

When a Bronx school shut this summer because of contamination, parents of students who'd attended the site over the past two decades worried about their children's health—and wondered why the problem wasn't detected earlier.

Jasmeet Sidhu
City Limits
December 28, 2011


The Bronx New School (P.S. 51) had seen its share of typical childhood illnesses during its 23-year history. But ever since the city told parents in early August that their northwest Bronx building was contaminated with dangerous levels of an industrial toxin, each memory of a headache or nosebleed - plus one story of a former student who died of kidney failure - has caused added anxieties.

The news meant that for the last two decades, kindergartners through fifth graders at the school located in a former lamp factory at 3200 Jerome Avenue may have unwittingly inhaled daily doses of trichloroethylene (TCE), a metal degreaser that was recently declared to be a carcinogen to humans by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Department of Education officials knew as early as January, 2011 that the level of TCE contaminants found in its hallways were nearly 10 times above the current safe exposure standards set by New York State. Another test in March found TCE nearly 10,000 times above the safe level in the soil vapor below the first floor cafeteria. However, parents were not informed of the toxins for several more months, after the decision to transfer all P.S. 51's children three miles away to a Catholic school in Crotona had already been made.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4500/city-leasing-rules-eyed- after-toxic-school-s-closure

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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