12/30/05 : Last Comment (for Now) on Nuke Paltz Dear Readers: Here [below] is the finished article on the New Paltz "it's all good" PCB test results from the Poughkeepsie Journal I mentioned the other day. If you've been reading this blog lately, you have a sense of my involvement in the PCB issue, and the depth of my research. I am basically dismissed as someone who lacks scientific credentials -- but happened to find the poisons! Maybe that means if you have scientific credentials, you are somehow debilitated from experiencing reality. However, lots of people who do have all the necessary sheepskin hanging on the wall get the same treatment. The "scientific credential" thing has come up lots of times for me in New Paltz, but most lately dates to the college's response to the samples I collected last year; they must not have been valid jars of contaminated dust from college dorms, because I was not personally a scientist. This is like saying you need to be a farmer to buy an apple. But that is the reasoning they used. I would note that nobody has ever accused me of falsifying my samples, i.e., spiking them with PCBs that I got elsewhere. This is because a) they know from a long relationship with me I am telling the truth, and that I brought witnesses into the building, and b) you cannot find PCBs so easily elsewhere. In fact, if I had to find PCBs in a jiffy for sure, the very first place I would go would be Capen or Gage halls. So they said, oh, you're not a scientist and this fancy lab in Sacramento you went to is not on our little list of approved labs so we don't accept your results. But note: I accuse THEM of falsifying their samples, by taking them where they know they will find no toxins, doing the samples without community witnessing, and processing them at their now safe-from-reality state lab (specifically, missing Drs. Bush and Carpenter, who were transferred/retired). I don't take this stuff personally; or not so personally. When you go to work for New York State, they must give you a list of cheesy tactics and dumb-ass answers that have been used since the days of Love Canal, which I began writing about when I was 19. Here is Wikipedia on that subject:     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal Yesterday's Poughkeepsie Journal article, the very existence of which is somewhat miraculous, since most years the anniversary passes unnoticed unless I rant about it in a regional magazine I write for called Chronogram -- is reasonably fair, accurate and sincere for a news article. At the same time, it's a pure and true example of how parties responsible for contamination do a cleanup job using your basic crude public relations methods. Like, what you don't say and conveniently forget exists. Nobody from the college acknowledges, for example, a well known fact: that there is no safe level of exposure to PCBs or dioxins. Nobody states that the weakest people are the ones who are going to be affected first, and worst. State health officials don't factor or admit special problems for a student who is already immune-compromised or who has already had toxic exposures, or who has an inherited genetic situation. Such a person could and likely would be affected by substantially lower levels of toxins than someone else. Nobody mentions that one's lifetime dose of PCBs or dioxins is cumulative: each exposure adds to what is already there. There is no acknowledgment of a known "hot spot" problem in the buildings -- that the contamination is not evenly distributed. Nobody mentions that if the hot water heat pipes are contaminated, which they are, when the heat comes on in winter the toxins volatilize and enter the air. Therefore, real air sampling needs to be done near a radiator in the winter with the heat on. It's all just "fine." I get quoted at the end. Extra points to Dan Shapley for mentioning the unmentionable: vents and radiators. I have been harping on vents and radiators since 1992 and I get no respect, man! Except for today. And like wow. I just realized the supreme irony of the title. Don't sweat it, PCBs are good for you. Okay I'll calm down now.     e PS, here is another "latest round of test results" -- mine, from spring 2004. http://www.planetwaves.net/mediakit/newsrlse040301.html --------------- College: PCBs not health concern By Dan Shapley Poughkeepsie Journal Thursday, December 29, 2005 NEW PALTZ — A recent round of testing at the State University of New York at New Paltz showed PCB contamination remained at minute levels in the isolated vaults that once held PCB-laden transformers, according to the college. Fourteen years ago today, a car crash triggered a power surge that damaged electrical transformers in five buildings on campus — the Bills, Gage and Scudder residence halls, Parker Theatre and Coykendall Science Building. Polychlorinated biphenyl oils in the transformers spilled, contaminating the buildings. A $50 million cleanup followed that included tests in 29 buildings. Buildings were eventually reopened for regular use, culminating with the reopening of the John Kirk Planetarium in 2004. Areas that could not be thoroughly cleaned were coated with a substance designed to prevent humans from coming into contact with PCBs. Exposure to PCBs has been linked to cancer, developmental and reproductive problems, and other health concerns. The state Department of Health's most recent monitoring tests were completed July 21. The tests were restricted to the vaults that once held transformers, according to Brian McCabe, the environmental health and safety officer at SUNY New Paltz. The vaults are no longer used and students and staff can't enter them. Results were first made available to the college on Nov. 2, according to the Department of Health. The college publicized the results seven weeks later on Dec. 22, the day the campus emptied for winter break. McCabe denied the college had waited to publicize the results until students had left campus in order to downplay the PCB contamination. He said it took time to plan and approve a remedy to re-encapsulate the Parker Theatre transformer vault, where slightly elevated PCB levels were detected. With the exception of the Parker Theatre vault, no tests revealed PCBs at levels above a cleanup standard of 1 microgram per 100 square centimeters. That amount is 10 times more stringent than the Environmental Protection Agency's cleanup guideline, according to the college. The Parker Theatre vault tests revealed concentrations of PCBs between 10 percent and 30 percent higher than the cleanup standard, but still below the EPA's standard. The vault will be recoated with an encapsulant during the winter break, McCabe said. Dorm rooms, classrooms and theater spaces were not tested. McCabe said he was confident, based on previous tests, there were not PCBs at unsafe levels inside the buildings. "You can find PCBs in background samples in any old building, but they are not over excessive limits," he said. "They are not a harmful exposure to the students." A longtime critic of the college's testing regime, Eric Francis Coppolino, last year publicized tests he did with students that he said showed elevated levels of PCBs in Gage and Capen halls. Coppolino, a writer and astrologer, doesn't have scientific credentials, and the college has attempted to discredit him. He said the college should test dust in air vents and radiators, because PCBs there could become airborne and then people could breathe them in. "They look where they're not going to find the toxins," Coppolino said. Dan Shapley can be reached at dshapley@poughkeepsiejournal.com