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State Testing Air In Homes Near St. Pete Raytheon Plant

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By MARK DOUGLAS

News Channel 8

Published: August 26, 2008

The Florida Department of Health has begun testing indoor air quality in homes surrounding the Raytheon defense plant in St. Petersburg.

"We are checking it because there was a concern from the community and also concern from the facility itself, and we just want to double-check that everybody's OK," said Susan Skye, a state Department of Health environmental scientist who organized the tests.

This marks the first time the health department has tested any home in the area for signs of indoor air contamination in connection with contaminated groundwater flowing from under the Raytheon site.

Starting before dawn today, two teams of health department scientists delivered vacuum cylinders designed for collecting air samples to nine homes to the east and south of Raytheon's property.

The test sites include Brandywine apartments, Stone's Throw condominiums, two apartments on 70th Street, an apartment on 65th Avenue, a single-family home on Lynnwood Drive and the Azalea Park concession stand.

An investigation by the state Department of Environmental Protection indicates an underground plume of industrial waste started spreading from under the Raytheon site at least 17 years ago when E-Systems owned the property.

In 1995, E-Systems signed a consent order with DEP calling for assessment and cleanup, and Raytheon bought the company, the site and the problem.

Now the health department wants to know whether hazardous chemicals from the groundwater pollution are vaporizing into nearby homes.

Skye said the air quality testing now under way can detect 34 volatile chemicals, but her teams are looking for three in particular: 1,4-dioxane, trichloroethylene and vinyl chloride.

Those are some of the chemicals showing up in high concentrations in groundwater under Raytheon's property.

"We don't expect to find the levels very high," Skye said.

But if they are, the agency would speak with DEP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "and decide what we're going to do and find some solution to this," she said.

Scientists are using devices called Summa canisters that draw in air by vacuum pressure over 12 hours. Then the canisters are replaced with fresh ones for a second round of air sampling.

Test results are expected in about two weeks.

Similar air sampling at Azalea Elementary School, west of Raytheon, did not turn up worrisome levels of contamination, according to Raytheon and the Pinellas County School Board.

Health is on the mind of Danny Summa, whose name by coincidence is the same as that of the sampling device now sitting on his parents' bedroom dresser at Stone's Throw condominiums.

Summa says his mother has failing kidneys and undergoes dialysis three times a week. He wants to make sure the Raytheon pollution is not adding to her health troubles. He's hoping the test results will bring some peace of mind.

"That's what I'm looking for. It gets my mind off things -- about the issue with her," Summa said.

His mother and father have lived in their complex for 12 years, but Summa says they had no idea the DEP started looking into chemical dumping and groundwater pollution at the nearby defense plant at least five years before that.

"No one said anything when they moved in back in 1996," Summa said.

Raytheon is required to file a final environmental assessment report on its groundwater pollution by Saturday to meet a deadline set by DEP.

Previous testing revealed that at least 19 private irrigation wells have chemical contamination that exceeds state limits and dozens of other wells in the neighborhood have traces of those same chemicals.

Health risk studies by the state and Raytheon have concluded no one is in danger from the pollution. Raytheon still is obliged to clean up the mess.

Raytheon officials say they are working toward an interim cleanup plan to attack the highest concentration of contamination directly under the company's property.

Reporter Mark Douglas can be reached at (727) 536-9603 or MDouglas@wfla.com.

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