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Agency: Chemical Traces In Apartments Match Plume

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By MARK DOUGLAS

News Channel 8

Published: September 17, 2008

The Florida Department of Health says air tests have uncovered one of the same chemicals found in the Raytheon groundwater pollution plume in the indoor air of five apartments and condominiums near the company's defense plant at 1501 72nd St. N. in St. Petersburg.

That plume began when a previous company owned the defense plant and has been spreading under the surrounding neighborhood for years.

According to EPA standards, 1,2 dichloroethane, also known as DCA, poses an increased cancer risk when inhaled over a lifetime at levels above .04 micrograms per cubic liter.

The Department of Health measured levels of DCA at 50 and 52 micrograms per liter inside two apartments at the Brandywine Apartment complex on August 26, 2008. Those amounts are more than a thousand times greater than what the EPA says is safe. The elevated readings of DCA means residents in those two apartments are at "moderate risk" of getting cancer as a result of breathing the air of their apartments, the agency said.

Tim Gallant is a quadriplegic who lives with rotating caregivers in the apartment with a 50 reading of DCA. "I would hope they would investigate it further to see what's going on, I mean, that's just common sense," Gallant said.

Department of Health spokeswoman Judi Spann said much lower levels of DCA detected in the air of a third apartment at Brandywine and two condominiums at the Stones Throw complex nearby means those residents have "no apparent increased cancer risk."

Evaluating the risk is one puzzle, but figuring out where the chemical came from is quite another. "We don't know the source of 1,2-DCA found in five apartments and condos near the Raytheon site," Spann said.

Department of Health scientists do have a working theory why the cancer-causing chemical showed up at elevated levels in the two apartments, according to Spann. "Smoking likely contributed to the higher levels of 1,2-DCA," she said.

Spann said the agency didn't know one of the tenants smoked cigarettes until they delivered the air sample canisters, "we found out after the testing that another location was also a smoker. We would have preferred to test only homes of nonsmokers, but our choices were limited."

Air quality studies referenced by the Department of Health do show homes with smokers have higher levels of DCA than nonsmokers, but the differences amount to fractions of a microgram and that factor alone can not account for the much higher concentrations recently found in the two apartments, according to Eckerd College Environmental Studies Professor Kip Curtis.

Curtis believes there is another source for the DCA—the underground plume of contaminated groundwater that has been spreading from the Raytheon plant under the neighborhood since 1999.

"Given the existence of it under the ground, it would seem extremely unlikely that it's coming from any other source," Curtis said.

Public records on file with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection show that consultants hired by Raytheon previously reported levels of DCA in six test wells within 200 yards of the two BrandyWine apartments with tainted air. The DEP reports show three of those test wells are located under Raytheon's buildings. One is on the Pinellas Trail that separates Raytheon's property from BrandyWine, one is near a tennis court at Stones Throw Condominiums next to BrandyWine, and one is on BrandyWine's property within about 100 feet of the two contaminated apartments.

DEP records show the depth of those test wells ranges from near the surface to 70 feet below ground. The highest reading came from a well under the Raytheon plant in July 2007, at a depth of 38 to 40 feet underground.

The Department of Health's primary job is to protect public health and the task of determining the source of contamination is up to the Department of Environmental Protection, Spann said. DEP has been overseeing the Raytheon contamination problem since 1995 under a consent order requiring the defense plant property owner to assess and clean up the pollution, a job that remains unfinished.

DEP spokeswoman Pamala Vazquez said staff members involved in the Raytheon case are still reviewing the Department of Health air tests and are not ready to make any public comments on the source of the airborne DCA or its relationship to the groundwater plume.

Wednesday morning, residents of BrandyWine received one interpretation of what it all means when Community Manager Jack Pummel distributed a written notice to the complex's tenants.

The one page notices say "the air tests indicated no findings of the main chemicals associated with the Raytheon contaminated ground water (TCE, 1,1 DCE and vinyl chloride."

The BrandyWine notice also makes mention of the elevated DCA levels in the two apartments, and suggests the residents have only themselves to blame. "DOH says that these higher levels pose no immediate health risk and may very well be the result of cigarette smoke present in the apartments."

The proximity of DCA in nearby test wells makes him curious, but the DCA could come from a number of sources, including household glue and solvents, according to USF St. Petersburg Ecology Professor Jim Gore.

There just isn't enough data or evidence to draw any firm conclusion and agrees with Professor Curtis that the matter begs for more study, Gore said.

"Regardless of whether it's connected to the Raytheon plume or not, something is going on in those apartments," Gore said.

One smaller mystery the Department of Health still hasn't resolved involves four test samples that vanished during shipping and remain missing. Two of those samples are from the same two BrandyWine apartments showing elevated levels of DCA.

"We are still waiting on word from the shipping company on the fate of the four missing canisters," Spann said.

It's not clear whether the Department of Health plans to conduct further testing at BrandyWine. Spann said a final report could take weeks to complete.

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