Contamination Study May Extend Veteran Benefits

By: Nathan lamb

A recent study has shed new light on long-standing water contamination issues at a North Carolina military base—and that could help veterans claiming adverse health impacts from their time at that post.

The study indicates that drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune had elevated levels of carcinogens for more than 60 years, according to this story from the Kansas City Star.

At peak levels, the contaminants were 150 times higher than safety standards—and the report estimated up to one million service personnel and their families may have been exposed while at the base.

A special law enacted in 2012 provides screening and health care for those at the base from 1957 to when the contaminated wells were closed in 1987—but the study suggests the problem could date back far as 1948.

Federal lawmakers are calling for additional hearings on the issue and a bill has been filed to extend coverage back to 1953, which is thought to be when the contamination first exceeded health standards, according to this story from the Washington Post.

The contaminants include trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial degreaser that can cause a variety of short- and long-term health impacts. The other contaminants were from dry-cleaning and fuel, according to the Marine Corps, which as recently as last year claimed there was insufficient evidence to link health problems to the drinking water.

Retired Marine Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger has long alleged the connection between the camp water and health impacts. He was stationed at Lejeune and lost his 9-year-old daughter to a rare leukemia in 1985. Ensminger credited advocates like himself for bringing the issue to light.

Dry-cleaning byproducts a costly problem in Medford

By: Nathan Lamb


Contaminants from a long-gone dry-cleaning business are the prime suspect behind a costly problem in Medford, Mass., according to a local news story.

At issue are high levels of tetrachloroethylene at a city parking lot and three nearby businesses. Also known as perchloroethylene (or perc), the chemical is often used in dry cleaning, but it also produces vapors that can cause a variety of short- and long-term health problems.

The City of Medford is seeking federal grants to help pay for a $1.8 million remediation project to remove tainted soil from the parking lot.

Medford took ownership of the property via eminent domain in the early ‘60s. Before that, the parcel was home to three different dry cleaning operations, and city studies indicate that was the source of contamination. As owner, the city is responsible for cleanup.

Tetrachloroethylene has been linked to several different types of cancer, along with aversely impacting the body’s neurological system, kidney, and liver, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website.

Perc often migrates in liquid form through soil, and three neighboring businesses have spent roughly $300,000 on state mandated remediation measures over the past five years. Two of the businesses' owners recently went on record saying the city should cover those costs, and that issue has yet to be resolved.

The dry-cleaning business that most recently operated at the site declared bankruptcy in 2008.

The city is commissioning a $90,000 engineering study of the site, which must be delivered to the Department Of Environmental Protection by March.

Florida Communities Decide to Root Out Uncertainty

By: Duane Craig

Government officials and property owners in Alachua County, Florida have decided the uncertainty of contamination at brownfield sites isn’t worth the lost business opportunities. So, four communities, Alachua, Hawthorne, Newberry and Waldo, have banded together seeking a federal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate rumors of contamination.

By combining their efforts and going for one grant, the county and four communities can leverage $1 million from the EPA’s coffers and avoid costs and time associated with each one doing its own grant application. The county also already has experience with brownfield grants. The entities have agreed there will be at least one brownfield investigated from each area, according to this report.

Of prime concern, and the most likely types of places to be investigated, are former dry-cleaning establishments and former gas stations. City managers and county environmental officials say the uncertainty about contamination at the sites makes investors unlikely to redevelop them.
Counties and municipalities in Florida are very familiar with the process of gathering federal money to deal with contamination issues. Since 2000, governments in Florida have applied for and received 44 assessment grants.

Boulder, CO, Xcel Testing Downtown Groundwater For Toxic Chemicals

September 27, 2010 - Two chemicals that can lead to major health problems have been detected in the groundwater near city-owned property in downtown Boulder, prompting a monthlong study on how widespread the problem is.

Officials say they don't think the benzene and naphthalene -- common industrial agents -- are threatening the city's drinking water, but they are investigating how and when the chemicals seeped into the groundwater at 1717 15th St.

They are looking into whether the site's history as a coal gasification plant in the early 1900s, or its more recent use as a dry cleaner business, are possible causes of the contamination. Most experts are already pointing to the old gas plant as the likely culprit, which could mean the chemicals have existed underground for decades.

Regardless of the source of the potentially dangerous compounds, Xcel Energy and the city of Boulder have agreed to share the cost of a $30,000 study into the surrounding groundwater as well as the costs of a possible cleanup effort.

While the city manager first publicly acknowledged the problem in a brief memo sent Friday to the City Council, Boulder spokesman Patrick von Keyserling said the city has known about the contamination since mid-2009.

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TCE Cleanup of Former NY IBM Facility Progressing

August 25, 2010 - Contamination cleanup efforts near the former IBM facility in Endicott are progressing ahead of schedule, but there is still plenty of work to do, state and IBM officials said Wednesday.

The company and the state Department of Environmental Conservation gave presentations on the remediation process to about 20 people during a public meeting at Union-Endicott High School.

IBM has been held responsible for the cleanup of trichloroethylene (TCE) pollution surrounding its former facility on North Street. TCE is a cleaning solvent used heavily by industry decades ago, and the pollution stretches into a large part of the village.

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Chemical Cleanup Underway at North Andover, MA Plaza

August 7, 2010 - Work is underway to remove chemicals in the soil below North Andover Plaza that leaked from a dry cleaning business there.

A patch of ground below Ace Cleaners, 66 Peters St., is believed to be the origin of contamination, according to a cleanup plan on file with the North Andover Health Department.

Located at the intersection of Route 114 and Peters Street, the plaza is also home to five other businesses — Rocky's Ace Hardware, Panera Bread, Burger King, Den Rock Wine & Spirits and Supercuts. There is also a Bank of America ATM adjacent to the dry cleaner.

Soil tests below the businesses and plaza parking lot have detected the solvents tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene, according to the cleanup plan.

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Polluted Water Found Statewide

July 26, 2010 - Three months ago, environmental regulators in Delaware received a blunt warning from the Environmental Protection Agency after workers in Dover drilled a deep test well where federal investigators were tracking shallow groundwater pollution.

Check first before drilling, the EPA said, or pay the price for endangering the public’s water.

The letter warned that the drilling might allow the "extensive" contamination to leak into "deeper water-bearing zones used by the City of Dover for drinking water."

At issue are toxic chemicals spreading underneath one of the most iconic spots in Delaware – The Green, a town square where Caesar Rodney and other signers of the Declaration of Independence once gathered and political life in Delaware still thrives.

Today, docents in period costume lead tours on the brick walkways and lush lawns near the General Assembly. Crowds gather on The Green for summer concerts, in some places just 26 feet above soils tainted by the residues of coal, gas and dry-cleaning solvents.

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Illinois Tougher Than Feds on Water Contamination

July 25, 2010 - Tucked in the southeastern suburbs of Cook County, there is a town on the brink of a budgetary disaster.

But a $2 million budget hole is the least of its worries.

A chemical has leached into a well in Sauk Village.

It's the same chemical that surfaced in a deep well in the scandal-marred village of Crestwood.

Because of the misdeeds uncovered in Crestwood, stricter state laws aimed at preventing another similar scandal and informing the public of contamination sooner were what led to the state clamping down on Sauk Village's use of the well.

The water contamination in Sauk Village is vastly different than that of Crestwood - the former stopped using the tainted well after alerted to its contamination and took it offline for public supply. Water samples have since come up clean.

Crestwood officials, however, were found to have kept use of that community's well as a portion of the village's total water supply hidden from regulators who had rendered it unsafe years before.

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Bank Sues Illinois Dry Cleaner for Contaminating Residential Property

June 8, 2010 - Forest Park National Bank is suing the owner, the company, and the bank that own River Forest Cleaners on Lake Street, holding them responsible for the dry cleaning chemicals that have contaminated the block and its surroundings.

Forest Park National names the property's owner, Edward Ditchfield, his former company E&H Enterprises and the bank that holds the property in a trust, U.S. Bancorp.

The bank's grounds for the lawsuit? It owns a house around the corner from River Forest Cleaners, a two-flat at 423 Ashland that the bank foreclosed on in 2009. Forest Park National said it has tried - and failed - to sell the property since at its market value because of the polluted ground under the building.

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Chemical Contamination Affects North Carolina Churchgoers

January 20, 2010 - Eight hours a week for more than two years, parishioners of the Word of Faith church in Durham flocked to a makeshift sanctuary inside a rented building near downtown and gathered for fellowship, prayer and healing. What the churchgoers did not know at the time, state officials believe, is that while they celebrated and sang in praise, the air they breathed was contaminated with the vapors of a toxic dry cleaning solvent—a probable carcinogen—that had seeped into the ground for years.

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Dry Cleaning Chemicals Cause Problems Decades Later

January 8, 2010 - State health officials are working with a Durham property owner to try to clean up decades of chemical contamination on the site of an old dry cleaner that closed in 1975.

The problem is a solvent called tetrachloroethylene (nicknamed "perc") which every dry cleaner used to pour down drains, and wasn't found to be dangerous until the 1980's. It can cause cancer, respiratory problems, neurological disorders and other problems.

It's a problem not just for the individual property, but neighbors as well.

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Dry cleaners leave a toxic legacy in Illinois

July 26, 2009 - For decades, one of the nation's most widely used dry cleaning solvents was billed as a marvel of modern chemistry that could safely remove dirt and stains from clothing.

Shops sprang up to take advantage of the chemical, perchloroethylene, also known as PCE or perc. People became familiar with the sharp odor of clothes freshly removed from plastic wrap, a sign that perc was used to clean them.

But over the years, with little if any notice to the public, the often sloppy use of perchloroethylene has poisoned hundreds of sites in Illinois.

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Old Dry Cleaner Site Causes Groundwater Contamination 30 Years Later

July 7, 2009 - The City Council took the first step Monday night toward extending the city’s public water supply to an area along Route 120 with groundwater contamination. The contaminated property at 3004 W. Elm St. (Route 120), now home to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, was the home of Gem Cleaners from 1970-77.

It was not unusual at that time for cleaners to release chemicals into the water supply, McHenry City Administrator Doug Maxeiner said. Solvents used in dry cleaning contaminated the soil and groundwater with volatile organic compounds, according to an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency report. The contamination extends beyond the property to the west toward the Fox River. Most homes and businesses along the Route 120 stretch use private wells, Maxeiner said.

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More tests needed to find Crestwood, Illinois contamination source

July 2, 2009 - Results from the June testing show area around the village's tainted well is contaminant-free, but chemicals from a nearby dry cleaner are polluting groundwater.

The results raise more questions than they answer in the investigation into Crestwood's secret use of the well to supplement drinking water for more than two decades.

More testing likely will follow in the effort to pinpoint a contamination source.

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California City Wins Lawsuit Regarding Dry Cleaning Pollution

May 20, 2009 - A San Francisco jury has awarded $18.3 million to Modesto in a long-running lawsuit the city filed 11 years ago against producers of dry cleaning chemicals that leached into soil and polluted groundwater.

Modesto intends to put the money away for groundwater cleanup and to pay its attorneys' fees in the case.

The city argues that the chemical makers -- Dow Chemical of Michigan and PPG Industries of Pennsylvania -- bear a share of the responsibility for what could amount to $100 million in costs to remove perchloroethylene, a chemical referred to as PCE that is suspected of causing cancer, from Modesto groundwater.

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Dry Cleaning Chemical Leaves Contamination in California's Valley

April 21, 2009 - Cities around the Valley are wrestling with a legacy of environmental contamination: a chemical used for decades by dry cleaners. Now suspected of causing cancer, the chemical has permeated underground water and soil. Cleanup is necessary, but expensive, and there's no easy way to pay for it.

Federal and state environmental agencies, alerted by high levels of the chemical in drinking water wells, dug six test wells last month near existing and former dry-cleaning businesses. The Environmental Protection Agency and California's Department of Toxic Substances Control were hunting for a plume of perchlorethylene -- called PCE -- used as dry-cleaning fluid since 1934 that started turning up in Valley water wells in the 1970s.

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EPA studies old solvent spill in New Mexico

October 6, 2008 - According to EPA officials, between the early 1960s and mid 70s, cleaning solvents were spilled onto the ground at Holiday Cleaners, causing the ground to be contaminated with water concentrations to be higher than EPA standards.

“The presence of chlorinated solvents in ground water as the GCSP site is a result of releases from dry cleaning operations,” the EPA reported stated.

The contamination was discovered in 1993 by the New Mexico Environmental Department and the agency immediately contacted the EPA and the investigation began. In 2004 the site was listed on the National Priorities Listing. In 2006 a Record of Decision was signed by the EPA making it a Superfund site.

The primary contaminant of concern is PCE, which has been found at levels up to 51,000 parts per billion in the ground water. The federal drinking water standard allowable under the Safe Drinking Water Act is 5 ppb.

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Dry cleaner chemicals linked to huge contamination plume under Las Vegas homes

September 29, 2008 - A massive plume of pollution under acres of homes, roads and a golf course in central Las Vegas is the worst of 28 sites in the valley contaminated by the same chemical.

The gas-like mass of perchloroethylene, PCE, also known as tetrachloroethylene, or TCE, is emblematic of the intersection of older, less regulated Vegas — indeed, the entire nation — with a world of science that discovers dangers in commonplace practices of years past.

The chemical is widely used for metal degreasing as well as for dry cleaning fabrics. Inhalation of its fumes can cause neurological, liver and kidney problems, according to the EPA. Studies have found that prolonged exposure increases the risk of cancer. The EPA is currently reassessing its potential carcinogenicity.

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San Francisco Neighborhood gets tested for toxic chemicals

August 16, 2007 - Some people in Castro Valley are about to find out just how contaminated their neighborhood really is. State workers took soil and water samples from around a dry cleaning business that has already tested positive for high levels of the chemical used to clean clothes.

The colorless odorless liquid used in dry cleaning machines is called perchloroethylene or perc for short. The state dept. of toxic substances control says initial testing, shows levels of perc, above the state maximum, contaminated the ground water around a Castro Valley cleaners.

Rose Linder, Peet's Coffee Employee: "We get headaches quite often."

Rose Linder says the letter sent out to residents, within a square mile of the cleaner, explains it all.

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New York State links chemical hazard in Brighton neighborhood with dry cleaner

July 27, 2007 - A Brighton neighborhood already dealing with two hazardous sites now has a third — the former Speedy's Cleaners at 2150 Monroe Ave.

Tetrachloroethene (or PCE), a chemical commonly used by dry cleaners, was found in high levels in recent groundwater samples and now has been linked by state environmental officials to Speedy's, which moved from the Monroe Avenue site about two decades ago.

Officials have been investigating a PCE plume they believed originated at a second dry cleaner on the other side of Monroe Avenue, as well as a substantial gasoline leak from a neighboring service station in 2003.

All three contamination sources apparently affect the same neighborhood just southeast of Brighton's Twelve Corners.

The Speedy's contamination likely will add to existing concerns about toxic vapors rising from the groundwater and pooling in basements. At least 11 homes or commercial buildings in the area already have had ventilation systems installed to remove petroleum or PCE vapors.

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