Mahoning Health

TCI fact sheet

By ED RUNYAN

Staff writer

CANFIELD — Testing for a specific contaminant on Canfield High School property connected to the July Material Sciences Corp. chemical spill took place Feb. 14 to Feb. 17 as planned, and preliminary results are promising, a document supplied by the school district’s environmental consultant states.

Two temporary groundwater wells were drilled and sampled in the high school parking lot near the walking path to the Mill Creek MetroParks Bikeway and one near the weight training / wrestling room on the west side of the high school, a document from the consulting companies Intertek PSI of Cleveland and INCompliance of Columbus state. Sampling also was done at six temporary “soil gas points and to sub-slab soil gas points,” the document, released this week, states.

The document contains a March 4 letter from PSI to Canfield Schools Superintendent Joe Knoll that states PSI conducted “a third-party / peer review” of testing being carried out by August Mack, a company hired by Material Sciences Corp. August Mack is in charge of cleanup activities resulting from a chemical release at MSC, which is just west of the high school.

The purpose of the groundwater and soil-gas testing is to determine the extent of Trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination detected on the MSC property after the spill was discovered.

“The purpose of the sampling on the school’s property is / was to determine if the TCE plume has migrated onto the school’s property; and / or is impacting any of the school’s facilities,” the letter states. “The sampling at the MSC facility was ordered by the (Ohio Environmental Protection Agency) following the confirmed releases of zinc plating process water from the MSC facility.”

MSC is a steel processing plant that has been operating at that location since 2013, but the plant was built in the 1950s and was operated by other companies during the earlier decades, according to August Mack.

In July, MSC carried out a regularly scheduled cleaning of its equipment at the plant, which “appeared to dislodge dark, brown process water … that contained cyanide and metals,” a Dec. 12, August Mack report states. The fluids got into a “previously abandoned drainage pipe” and then into a ditch that runs from the rear corner of the building north along the Mill Creek MetroParks Bikeway, the report states.

The liquid was noticed by a person on the bikeway and reported, resulting in a response by Cardinal Joint Fire District, the Mahoning County HazMat team and Ohio EPA, according to a fire report. Lots of cleanup work has been done in the spill area and testing was performed to determine the extent of the contamination.

The results caused the Ohio EPA to order additional testing in Sawmill Creek and on the high school property.

The Tuesday letter from Intertek PSI and INCompliance states that “TCE is a volatile chlorinated solvent that can represent a significant risk of vaporization to indoor air or any building / structure above the contaminated / impacted groundwater.”

The letter notes that one of the testing locations on MCS property that is close to the bikeway and the walking path to the bikeway “showed a concentration of 13,000 parts per billion, which far exceeds” allowable levels.

On the first day of August Mack’s testing, Feb. 14, PSI “was present on-site to observe and review these activities.” No work was done Feb. 16, a Sunday. “August Mack was observed to collect soil samples continuously in two-foot intervals” into the ground, stopping at 12 feet, the document states.

August Mack’s field testing for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the samples “did not appear to indicate any significantly elevated” VOC reading, the document states. It added, “The activities and methods observed by PSI appeared to conform to industry standards.”

August Mack also installed two sub-slab soil-gas sampling points in the weight room / wrestling building on the west side of the high school near the sports stadium and in a concession stand near the stadium, the document states. Samples were collected. The work appeared to conform to industry standards and Ohio EPA guidelines, the document added.

The following day, soil borings were done near the weight room and another area nearby, and again, no “significantly elevated” VOC readings were detected in the borings, it states. On Feb. 17, two previously installed interior sub-slab gas sampling points were sampled, and an outdoor air sample was collected.

But further indoor air sampling that had been planned for Feb. 17 “was not conducted at this time due to technical difficulties” involving the air-collection canisters available to August Mack at the time, the report states.

Knoll gave a short report on the testing at Tuesday’s Canfield Board of Education meeting and also issued a “Tuesdays with Mr. Knoll” letter to Canfield families on the school district’s website in which he said PSI was on-site for the testing and referred the reader to PSI and INCompliance reports.

During the school board meeting, Knoll said the “sub-slab” testing was done in “our locker room, the weight room area and a concession stand as well.”

He said he did not have the results yet, but August Mack had indicated that it was likely to take about a month to get them, so he expected the results soon, and “hopefully next month at this time I will actually have some results for you that I will be able to share.”

WHY NO MENTION?

Knoll was asked by The Vindicator the reason he did not publicly mention the potentially good news that the school’s consultants gave in the report that the findings in the field were that the results “did not appear to indicate any significant elevated” VOC readings.

He replied in an email, “I plan to comment from the district perspective publicly when the official results and sampling data is given to me after review from the Ohio EPA and August Mack.” He stated that the “did not appear” comment from the school district’s consultant is presumably good news “but not what I need to know before sharing. Hope to have some final data soon.”

In his remarks to the school board Tuesday, he mentioned again that the Ohio EPA asked for the school district’s permission, which was granted at last month’s meeting, to install a fence on the school side of Sawmill Creek, which runs east-west across the northern boundary of the high school property.

Knoll stated that the fence will be “semi-permanent,” and the reason for the fence is “just as a deterrent so nobody finds themself getting in that creek down there.” He said the fence “should be happening soon. They’re also talking to homeowners in that neck of the woods.”

Documents have indicated that August Mack has been talking to homeowners along Briarcliff Drive about further testing in the creek and installing a fence on the residents’ side of Sawmill Creek. One resident of Briarcliff Drive said the creek is on property owned by Briarcliff Drive residents.

August Mack submitted a “Monthly Progress Report” Feb. 10 to the Ohio EPA in which it stated that August Mack contacted residents along the tributary to Sawmill Creek to try to “establish access agreements for additional sampling and fencing.” Signed agreements were reached with the owners of five properties between Jan. 20 and Jan. 29, it stated. Three of them were in the 400 block of Briarcliff, and two were in the 300 block.

DITCH CLEANUP

Over the course of the month preceding the Feb. 10 progress report, about 120,000 gallons of contaminated waste water was picked up and disposed of by Heritage Environmental Services in Indianapolis, the report states.

Eighteen roll-off containers of soil-derived waste were picked up and disposed of at Heritage Environmental Services in Indianapolis, it added.

The Vindicator observed that there were about five workers in the ditch area at the back of the MSC plant on foot and operating heavy equipment near the ditch on Wednesday, but the amount of activity was less than a month ago, when a liner was being installed in the ditch. The ditch is next to the bikeway.

Christine Ricottilli of Poland was among lots of people riding a bicycle or walking on the bikeway Wednesday. She said she believes she smelled the contamination in the ditch in July before she ever heard about the chemical spill in the news.

She said she believes she smelled it shortly after July 4 because that is when she bought a new bicycle. “It smelled almost like fumes to me,” she said. Her father, who she rides with regularly, including on Wednesday, said it smelled like “rotten eggs.”

MAHONING HEALTH DEPARTMENT

Ryan Tekac, Mahoning County Public Health commissioner, said he and others from the county health department attended the Feb. 3 Town Hall at the high school where officials from the city and school district, various agencies, including the Ohio EPA and Mahoning County HazMat, as well as MSC and August Mack, attended to answer questions from the public.

Tekac said Thursday that residents expressed their concerns then and in the days that followed over the potential dangers of chemicals being discussed in connection to the spill, so he wrote and sent a letter containing resources people could use to better understand those chemicals. He provided The Vindicator with a copy.

It provided information on and links to more information on arsenic, cyanide and Trichlorethylene (TCE).

The document states that at the Town Hall, questions about the chemicals were being referred to family physicians or to Mahoning County Public Health.

The county health department “reached out to our state partners, the Ohio Department of Health, who have educational resources for the chemicals that were being questioned,” the letter states.

The health department provided the document to the families who requested more information and sent a copy of the document to Canfield City Manager David D’Apolito and Canfield Mayor Don Dragish Feb. 11.

TCE

The testing being done on and near the high school is focused on Trichloretheylene. One of the web pages Mahoning County Public Health recommended to people concerned about the chemical is www.odh.ohio.gov/know-our-programs/health-assessment-section/media/tce-factsheet.

An ODH fact sheet provided on the website states that TCE is a man-made, colorless liquid with a sweet smell. It is “mainly used by industries to remove grease from metal equipment, but it can also be used in dry cleaning, used to make other chemicals and found in some household products like paint strippers, glues and pesticides (bug sprays).”

It “evaporates (changes from a liquid to a gas) quickly when it meets the air, and it can enter the environment when someone uses it, spills it or disposes of it in an unsafe way.”

It adds that TCE “can be released into the air, water and soil at places where it is made, used or thrown away.” TCE “can enter the air through evaporation or go into the soil or nearby surface water through spills or into the soil or nearby surface water through spills or unsafe disposal.” It states that “TCE that evaporates from soil or groundwater below a home or building can enter the indoor air. This is called vapor intrusion.”

It states that “Inhaling (breathing) TCE vapors” is among the chief ways TCE can enter the body. “TCE turns into a gas in your bloodstream and you breathe most of it out.”

“The international Agency for Research on Cancer has found scientific proof that TCE can cause kidney cancer in people,” the document states. “There has also been some research which shows that TCE may cause liver cancer and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a type of blood cancer),” it adds.

The document recommends that people “who live near a factory or waste area (like a dump or landfill) where TCE may be polluting the environment around your home, limit your exposure to soil and dust. Clean your home often and use air filters to keep soil out. Do not let your children put soil into their mouths and make sure they wash their hands after playing outside. If your yard has exposed soil, cover it with thick grass or mulch.”

DUMP

In addition, Tekac said his staff looked into questions raised by a family regarding a “dump” the family was told existed in an area north of Canfield High School prior to the mid-1970s. The family had concerns as to whether such a facility, if it existed, could have contributed to contaminants that were detected in the area around the high school.

Tekac said Thursday the health department found no record of any type of dump having existed there. The family lived on Millbrook Street starting in the 1970s when they built their home there. The family later moved from that neighborhood, but both of their children were diagnosed with cancer, and one of them died. The couple contacted The Vindicator last week to discuss it.