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Some residents who live around Moffett Federal Airfield near Mountain View, Calif., say they are scared. Others say they’re not worried at all.
Depending on whom you talk to, the Environmental Protection Agency’s findings of higher than expected levels of TCE in the air and in the groundwater near the Mountain View property is either a cause for big concern or no big deal.
But one thing is certain. Everyone is talking about the new test results from the EPA showing a presence of toxic chemicals in the air and in the groundwater in and around the Middlefield, Ellis, Whisman (or M-E-W) Superfund site.
According to the EPA, the underground Superfund site include a wide variety of toxic chemicals including PCE and vinyl chloride, chemicals left over from the budding semi-conductor industry that got its start in the buildings along Middlefield and Whisman Roads and Ellis Street.
The chemical of most concern and most quantity in the toxic underground plume is a chemical called trichloroethylene, known as TCE. It's a cleaning solvent once commonly used by the military and the budding semi-conducting industry 30 years ago.
The EPA says that TCE is a toxic solvent that causes cancer in people and heart deformities in unborn babies. According to EPA experts the toxic plume has been lurking underground for decades ever since nascent semi-conductor companies apparently dumped or allowed TCE and other chemicals to leak into the ground.
According to EPA officials the United States military also used TCE to clean airplanes and vehicles during that same time period.
The plume extends from under the runway at Moffett Field a mile and a half south and west under Highway 101 and past Middlefield Road. To the north it goes to Whisman Road and south to just past Ellis Street.
The plume of mostly TCE is believed by EPA investigators to be about a half-mile wide at its widest point.
After NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit began asking questions in April 2012 about possible health effects of the TCE plumes, the Cancer Prevention Institute of California (CPIC) opened its own probe.
After exhaustive research and analysis of three decades worth of health data, California’s state cancer registry announced that it found a higher than expected number of people living in neighborhood surrounding the M-E-W Superfund site who had contracted a group of cancers the registry’s scientists call non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The higher than expected incidence of these cancers occurred during the years 1996 to 2005.
NBC Bay Area
Now the EPA admits that until recently it had somehow missed some “hot spots” of higher than acceptable levels of TCE in groundwater and in the air in several homes and more than 20 commercial buildings in the area. Two of the hotspots were found by EPA investigators along Evandale Avenue outside the original plume area.
That concerns some residents who live on that road. Residents like Theresa Larrieu, who has lived in a home along Evandale with her family for a quarter century. Larrieu said that the family always knew the M-E-W Superfund was nearby but figured it didn’t directly affect them since it wasn’t right next door. The Superfund site was far enough away, Larrieu thought, to be present but not an impact on her family’s health or life. Now, with these new EPA test results, the TCE plumes appears to actually be right next door and it may even be under Larrieu’s home. The EPA has conducted air, water and soil tests in and around the home but the results have not come back as of this writing.
Larrieu says she's worried and is holding her breath waiting on the results of those air and water sample tests the EPA took from her home. “Scared. Nervous. Worried. Very worried,” Larrieu said when asked to describe her emotions. “(There’s) way more suspense than I need in my life.”
“Your first thought is your health, is this affecting us is this affecting other neighbors that I know had health issues,” said Larrieu.
The EPA shares Larrieu’s concerns and M-E-W Superfund Site manager Alana Lee emphasizes they are working hard to address and clean up the mess. “We cleaned up over 5 1/4 billion gallons of contaminated water and over 110,000 pounds of toxic contaminant,” said Lee.
But Lee also said that the EPA also missed these hot spots of TCE both in groundwater and in the air inside some buildings along Evandale Avenue including two homes outside the original plume area.
“The concentration (found there) is very high,” said Lee, “A very high concentration.”
How high?
According to documents from test results, the highest TCE levels that the EPA measured in ground water in the area reached 130,000 parts per billion. The EPA considers anything over 5 parts per billion unsafe.
In the commercial buildings nearby, including two now occupied by Google, EPA tests found TCE in the air at levels 26 times higher than the level considered by the EPA to be acceptable and safe.
“Once we found these concentrations, which were a surprise, we took immediate action,” said Lee.
EPA
Bruce Panchal’s home is one of the two houses located on Evandale where the EPA found high levels of TCE. The companies responsible for the toxic chemical cleanup installed a series of four pipes in and around his home to ventilate the toxic TCE fumes leeching from the ground away from the house’s interior to the outside.
Even so Panchal said he’s not worried. “They found a high concentration and with the system it pumps out all the fumes so it safe,” said Panchal.
Panchal and his family have lived in his home along Evandale for 45 years. He said he worked for the budding semi-conductor businesses that got their start in his neighborhood. He even said he handled the chemicals now in question and dumped them in the ground back then.
Despite the new contraptions now pumping air away from the inside of his house, he says he isn’t worried about his or his family’s health. “I’m living proof that they have an issue with the fumes but it is not death defying or a detriment to your health,” said Panchal.
EPA officials said they also found high levels of TCE in more than twenty different commercial buildings between Whisman Road and Ellis Street. Included among those buildings are two new office complexes for Google employees where, the EPA says, renovations and construction allowed higher than expected levels of TCE to leech from the ground through the buildings’ concrete slabs and into the air inside.
It is in some of these buildings where EPA investigators found levels of TCE vapors in the interior air that were as much as 26 times higher than acceptable safe levels with air conditioning systems off.
The EPA says it has systems in place in and around those buildings to keep vapors outside.
Google tells us they take this matter seriously and they’ve already taken measures to ensure that the buildings and the work area is safe.
Theresa Larrieu worries that it may be too late to keep her family from feeling the health effects of this toxic plume. She wonders how long they may have been exposed to these vapors and chemicals that went undetected until recently.
“It is scary,” said Larrieu. “I’m very scared. I have children. I have grandchildren.”
Larrieu also remains concerned that not even the EPA can say how long the fumes have been leeching into the neighborhood or how long she and her family have unknowingly been exposed.
When we asked the EPA if they knew exactly how long have these newly discovered TCE hot spots had been there the EPA’s Superfund Site manager Alana Lee said, “We don’t know.”
When we asked whether the toxic chemicals migrate underground or traveled down Evandale Avenue or whether those chemicals had been lurking there underground along with the rest of the toxic plume for decades, Lee had the same answer. “We don’t know.”
The EPA said it will take decades more to clean up this toxic mess.
Leave a Comment:
All those chemicals came out of the ground when they were made anyway. So it doesnt matter much cause they will get deluded and not be a problem anymore in like 10 more years.
Most Special: Allow me to go out on a limb, and to hazard a guess: you are not a chemist ( right? ). And speaking of "deluded", there's scant comfort in your supposition that the toxic plume will become harmless with no mitigating action. I speak from the authority of being a resident of NJ, home to scads of Superfund sites.
Here's how a typical semiconductor plant works, like the ones that created this mess in California. Water is taken from the city water supply at a rate of 5 million gallons per day. The water which is clean by household standards are further purified with reverse osmosis and ion exchange units. The final water is 100% pure water with zero particlulates and zero chemicals. This ultra-pure water is then used to rinse hydrofluoric acid (HF) off the silicon wafers which are used for solar panel parts. HF is extremely toxic. Pregnant women are not allowed to work around the chemical at the plant. Where that contaminated water goes is anyone's guess.
The next time you feel good about having solar panels at your home, ask yourself where the panels came from.
Back in the ground in 10 years, interesting.
Chemical Classification: Volatile organic compounds
Summary: Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a nonflammable,
colorless liquid with a somewhat sweet odor and a sweet, burning taste. It is
used mainly as a solvent to remove grease from metal parts, but it is also an
ingredient in adhesives, paint removers, typewriter correction fluids, and spot
removers. Trichloroethylene is not thought to occur naturally in the
environment. However, it has been found in underground water sources and many
surface waters as a result of the manufacture, use, and disposal of the
chemical.
Hazard Summary-Created in April 1992; Revised in January 2000
Most vinyl chloride is used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic and vinyl products. Acute (short-term) exposure to high levels of vinyl chloride in air has resulted in central nervous system effects (CNS), such as dizziness, drowsiness, and headaches in humans. Chronic (long-term) exposure to vinyl chloride through inhalation and oral exposure in humans has resulted in liver damage. Cancer is a major concern from exposure to vinyl chloride via inhalation, as vinyl chloride exposure has been shown to increase the risk of a rare form of liver cancer in humans. EPA has classified vinyl chloride as a Group A, human carcinogen.
Hmmm, you're Green state has some things to wash.
So a yokel who said he dumped the chemicals himself says he is living proof it is safe...yeah that's really frickin comforting.
"Wouldn't it just be cheaper to move all the people out of that area and fence it off?"
That would not stop the pollution from affecting the community because it has spread into the groundwater. The plume they mention in the article is the pollution traveling underground. Pollution spreads in various ways, for instance, if it rains it gets in the rainwater and the runoff will travel with the pollution in it. That's why you have to clean it up. Putting up a fence doesn't stop the pollution from traveling.
The last line of this article isn't very comforting.....
Well it's a good thing it happened in California, it will give Governor Moonbeam another excuse for even more taxes!
They'll tell ya it's OK! just like the Japan nuclear accident and fish China's pulling out of the water and shipping here to the USA it's OK!. Genetically modified food it's OK! How bout camp LeJuene I was stationed there in that time frame. They were worried about the costs.
What's in store for us say twenty years down the road when the mercury-laced Obama light bulbs reach critical mass at our landfills to affect the groundwater?
http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
The article said the chemicals in this super-fund site came from semiconductor plants. Semiconductor plants also make parts for solar panels at a rate of 5 million gallons of water per day. Ever wonder where all that contaminated water from these plants go? I spent two years at one of these plants and was never told where that hydrofluoric acid contaminated water goes.
JobSeeker,
If you want to know where the water goes follow the pipe. If it goes into a truck, follow the truck.
The hydrofloric acid can easily be neutralized converting it into a harmless salt. Heavy metals, like germanium or others, removed from the material being washed, are more difficult but can be effectively dealt with if it is done well.
Really? Charles
Hydrofluoric acid (HF) is a solution of hydrogen fluoride in water. It is a valued source of fluorine and is a precursor to numerous pharmaceuticals such as fluoxetine (Prozac) and diverse materials such as PTFE (Teflon).
Hydrofluoric acid is a highly corrosive acid, capable of dissolving many materials, especially oxides. Its ability to dissolve glass has been known since the 17th century, even before hydrofluoric acid had been prepared in large quantities by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1771.[2] Because of its high reactivity toward glass and moderate reactivity toward many metals, hydrofluoric acid is usually stored in plastic containers (although PTFE is slightly permeable to it).[3]
Hydrogen fluoride gas is an acute poison that may immediately and permanently damage lungs and the corneas of the eyes. Aqueous hydrofluoric acid is a contact-poison with the potential for deep, initially painless burns and ensuing tissue death. By interfering with body calcium metabolism, the concentrated acid may also cause systemic toxicity and eventual cardiac arrest and fatality, after contact with as little as 160 cm2 (25 square inches) of skin.
6dogs,
Yes, really. If you mix the hydrofloric acid with a base if forms a salt. If the base is sodium hydrozide, the salt is sodium floride. If the base is calcium hydroxide, the base is calcium floride. If the resulting solution is kept neutral it is not longer corrosive under normal conditions.
You get your teeth "florided" at the dentists, right?
Yes, hydrofloric acid is nasty stuff. And yes hydrogen floride gas is very nasty stuff. But once appropriately neutalized the nastyness goes away.
According to the GOP we do not need the USEPA? Oh ya!. Every abandoned and current federal maintenance site in the US and overseas has similar issues. Better living through chemistry.
Think about this, corporations and government are always lobbying to cut any type of over-site because they consider it an unnecessary expense that cuts into their profits and interferes with their ability to do business. The EPA has had its funding cut and been downsized to the point that they are unable to function efficiently. Corporations get rich and standards are ignored when doing work for government agencies and the public and workers are left with the health-care and clean up costs that result from this negligence.
Any business that may produce chemicals or products that could have an impact on health and the environment should have to undergo an inspection and evaluation on a yearly basis and if it is found that contaminates are leaching into the air or soil it should be shut down immediately until those issues are addressed. If the company fails to clean up the contamination and address the causes then their accounts should be seized and a proctor assigned to address the problems.
Saternsrim,
I am confused by your post.
The first paragraph and the second paragraph seem to contradict each other.
Please clearify.
Oversight,by deffinition is an excuse to say oops and cop out.
EPA, generally, is worthless. Not because what they do is not needed, it's their own policies. State pollution control agencies, generally, do a very good job. Of course, the Feds suppress the states, and nothing gets done. If something does get done, it takes years/decades.
F the EPA.
TCE and vinyl chloride are not to be trifled with. Yes, of course some individuals can tolerate higher levels than those considered as safe, but for the most part they will make you sick. It is great that the United States has agencies like the EPA, as wll as similar state entities to quide cleanup of existing sites as well as help prevent situations like this from occurring in the US again.
The United States does offer another alternative to companies based here - to relocate plants to other countries where pollution is not so regulated and dump the pollution in those lands in the interests of profit$$. My understanding is that many of the people in those lands would rather take the pollution and a paycheck rather than have neither.
Pollution is a planet wide problem. We need not to dump on the earth, period. Instead of a war on drugs, a war on those of other faiths, a war over boders, etc, it would be truly great to see the human race wage "war" against those that dump their garbage on the planet.
Just fence off California.
George pauljohn re:
"LOLO43, not true. They very often get away with it. they own the gov. they own the courts. Case in point. A case in Massachusetts where two major companies, Beatrice and Grace pretty Much paid their way out of responsibility by stacking the deck , or should I say, the Courts. John Travolta starred in a true life movie of those events. called "A Civil Action". The real life lawyer spent every penny he had trying to get justice. That lawyer went on to fight for people in a cancer cluster in New Jersey.
We have the best Judge's in America that Money can buy."
I'm not talking about civil matters involving torts. Meaning that people were injured as a result of the pollution and are asking to be compensated. Unfortunately, that does not always turn out well. What I am talking about is obtaining monies from the polluters and their insurers to pay for the clean up. I'm not talking about "Civil Action" and "Erin Brockovitch" like civil matters. Different types of civil matters. Besides, those are movies. You've never worked in law? Have you?
a comfort knowing that Dr. Pachal has the supernatural ability to see the biological processes within both his and the bodies of all mankind. Kudos dude.
@ JohnColorado (#14.1) - nice try, but the baby boomers did not invent the internet. The foundations for the internet were laid in the 1950s and 60s and the precursor of the internet - ARPAnet - was functioning and capable of sending messages across a network in 1969 - when the oldest 'baby boomers' were 23 and the youngest were 5. At most, the baby boomers refined technologies that were created when they were adolescents.
After reading this article, I have come around to agree with the teabaggers and the GOP - we don't need an EPA, we all know that corporations do the right thing without being forced to do so. No way would any corporate employee dump toxic chemicals in the ground in order to make a buck. /sarcasm off
This is an awful situation. While we have done better cleaning up the air and water and land since the seventies, we have a long way to go. It is just plain dumb to trade short term gain, for long term degradation of the very resources we must have to survive (air, water, and land) The primary reasons we have the government regulations and EPA in place is because of public outcry pushing the government to put these regulations in place. It would be a fools folly to get rid of these regulations or the EPA, or scale them back. things would only get worse. Capitalism is a pretty good system, I am glad we have it, but Capitalism unregulated is not ethically and morally pure. Businesses will not always do what is right for their employees or the surrounding community.
What about the new light bulbs? The Superfund's as they were called did very little or the minimum. Batteries are going to be a very serious problem along with all that mercury and sewage going into the environment. Most of the monies that went into Superfund was syphoned off for pet projects and most went to a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods. The power companies in their whole history never paid for infrastructure or disposal costs. All cost were past to consumer as are the expenditures of oil and gas. Big polluters like the governments around the world destroying the oceans is secondary to economics. Just like this story, they knew what was happening then and chose to continue under the direction of EPA and government regulators. Fracking is pumping antifreeze into the ground to liquefy shale. Do you know how much antifreeze it takes to kill?
EPA? That's your fed.gov. This situation appears to be another instance of failure to perform by a federal agency charged with simply making the environment clean and safe for the citizens. There can be no question of available funding or available legislative power ... seems they just don't care because they get paid anyway. The point being, the fed.gov can't do anything effectively except squander tax money and diminish the peoples' guaranteed rights. Neither is in the job description.
It's is not reasonable nor prudent to continue supporting a failed government. The people of The United States deserve better. The imprudent destroying the American dream deserve to feel the full brunt of taxpayer malaise brewed by the startling incompetency of elected officials at all levels of government. The obvious is blatant and undeniable. ©2013