Backbone > Panet Waves

Notes from Downwind
By Eric Francis . Illustration by Jim Campbell

There is an old expression that we all live downwind. That is, no matter who or where you are, it’s not “someone else” who gets the brunt of environmental toxins, it’s all of us. But then, sometimes you find out you’re a little more downwind than everyone else, and you get to make a choice. At this time of year in 1992, the suny New Paltz campus was a disaster area, reeling in both contamination and chaos from the explosions of six electrical transformers in dormitories and academic buildings. pcbs at the college remain a serious issue for our community, and Chronogram remains the only publication committed to reminding people about the campus issue, which we do annually to warn each incoming group of students of the dangers they face.

But New Paltz is also a case study of what happens when a contamination incident occurs, and its history and psychological patterns can inform people everywhere about what to expect when disaster strikes. Where there is serious contamination, you can count on two other factors: lies and ignorance. Most people cannot comprehend either a) the concept of a supertoxin and b) that public officials will open their mouths and spout bald lies, just to cover their asses and save their budgets while students live in jeopardy and danger. If I had to decide which was more frightening, seeing guys walking around Bliss, Capen, Gage, and Scudder halls with moon suits and air tanks on, and the way students and parents responded at the time (and have ever since), it would be a tough call. How did they respond? Most people, when told what I’m going to tell you now, simply didn’t care. I don’t mean they didn’t shake their head and say wow, that sucks. That’s not caring. Caring is realizing the problem is serious enough to leave those buildings, as in leave and not come back except maybe to move your stuff out.

Because those people who saw the moon suit men, the waste drums, and the plastic-wrapped buildings did not care (when it was so obvious), students today live in and attend classes in buildings with serious problems when it’s not so obvious. But if a guy looking like an astronaut standing in the doorway to Capen Hall (the allegedly least contaminated building) two hours before students were allowed back into the building was not convincing, I don’t rightly know what would be today.

Let’s take it from the top. At 6:28am on the icy morning of December 29, 1991, when we were all much younger, a car skidded off South Putt Corners Road and slammed into a power pole. The wires crossed and messed up the electrical current that was flowing into the campus power grid. First, all the fire alarms went off from the power problem, but that was determined to be a malfunction. Then at about 7:15am, smoke was seen pouring from a little room on the ground floor of Gage Hall. Soon that billowing smoke would fill the building and be visible for half a mile. A transformer insulated with polychlorinated biphenyl (pcb) liquid was burning up—words that would put chills into the spine of anyone who knows their meaning. pcb fluids were used inside transformers to diffuse heat and prevent fires, but they turned out to be time bombs. The fluids break down, and the units become explosive.

Over the next half hour, transformers in all four of the quad dorms would burn or explode violently, spreading toxic plumes through the heat and ventilation systems, into electrical conduits, through corridors and into the land and ground water. Every square inch of Coykendall Science Building, the largest building on campus, was badly contaminated. Eventually, after many half-baked cleanup efforts there, engineers threw in the towel and the building was totally gutted. Parker Theater experienced a transformer fire and a river of toxins flowing through the place. The whole cleanup would stretch out for more than six years and cost well over $50 million; I have not seen a cost accounting recently, but it’s substantially more than that. And think of this: the college originally thought the cleanup might take the weekend.

You may be wondering, how did this happen? Well, it goes back to about 1937, when Monsanto, which manufactured all the American-made pcbs, commissioned a study about the dangers of the chemicals and found out they were very seriously toxic. They killed liver cells and caused systemic poisoning in rats, which helped explain diseases in workers. That is, the rashes workers got were not a localized effect but rather a symptom of the whole body being sick. That’s when the cover-up began; for the next 40 years, pcb manufacture went on unchecked, and as the dangers became known to industry, they were hidden from the public, the government, and the press. By 1979, new pcb equipment was banned, but certain existing equipment could stay in place; the transformers in New Paltz, installed in the sixties, were left in campus buildings, waiting for that car to skid off South Putt Corners Road.

The health dangers of pcbs and their chemical cousins include immune system breakdown, hormonal dysfunctions, genetic damage, cancer (as a result of the first three issues) and acceleration of existing cancer, birth defects, endometriosis, and many other problems. They are passed down seven generations from the person who originally contacts them. How potent are they? When pcbs burn, they create other chemicals called dioxins. Dioxins and pcbs are measured as small as parts-per-trillion and trillionths of a gram. A gram is about the weight of a paper clip. Divide that by a thousand. Then divide that by a thousand. You then have a millionth of a gram (microgram). Divide that by a thousand, and divide one of those bits by a thousand, and you’ve got yourself a trillionth of a gram (picogram).

A few picograms are now (by some of the more honest scientists) considered a concern. Hence, the moon suits, the respirators, the waste drums, and the stunning price tag. The problem is that you can’t ever get pcbs and dioxins out of a place once they’re there—particularly if you don’t look for them in the first place, or clean properly when you find them.

The college wasted no time going into denial mode about the dangers. But the real smokescreen was put up by the Ulster County Health Department and the New York State Health Department, which shared oversight of the disaster site known as suny New Paltz. It should not be surprising that denial mode works so well. Most people just want to be told it’s safe, and the more bold among us want to see a piece of paper saying it’s safe. The problem is that any level of exposure has an effect, and according to the cleanup plan and the test results, chemicals were left behind in all buildings—but at the allegedly “safe” level. In the 12 years since the disaster, it’s now known that ever less exposure is ever more dangerous.

I have space for the story of the Bliss Hall heat system, one of about 10 in its genre (the Gage Hall vents, the Scudder electrical conduits, and others are just as interesting). In January 1992, as various agencies were deciding what to do with four very similar dorms that had been flooded with pcb smoke, they waffled around a bit; Gage Hall, for example, was going to be closed for a major cleanup until approxamitely the last week, when officials decided to open the place up anyway. Those 370 beds were tempting, and finding off-campus housing would have been very difficult and expensive. But Bliss Hall presented a more obvious problem; the physical damage was worse, the dioxin levels being considerably higher. But they are all the same basic age, design, and construction.

A few months into the Bliss cleanup, engineers became curious about how the smoke moved through Bliss (this was a rare eruption of authentic curiosity about the project). So they lit a big smoke bomb in the transformer vault and watched what happened. What happened was that smoke started coming out in student rooms through the radiators. It did not get into the steam pipes but rather followed the pipes through what are called conduits—little holes in the wall through which the building’s services are run.

Cleanup contractors then tested the radiators in student rooms and got several pcb hits. So what did they do? They scrubbed off the radiators. And that’s it. Problem one is that the smoke followed the heating pipes and (we can presume) contaminated everything along the way and elsewhere. But no tests were taken and the pipes were never cleaned or removed. Problem two is that you can’t just wash away dioxin (often, Tide detergent was used). Problem three is that Capen, Gage, and Scudder halls were already open by the time the implications of the smoke test were understood. Smoke flooded those buildings too, but once it was documented that the heat conduits had been a path of contamination spread in Bliss, it was “too late” because those other buildings were already occupied.

What do you say to campus administrators who say it’s safe, and who point to tests that say it’s safe? Well, you can say anything you want. But with the documented history of poor judgment, incomplete testing, lying, incompetence, illegal handling of pcb wastes, contamination found in the Gage vents long after the building was opened, and many other problems that fill many other articles, the most important thing you can say is “Get me out of there today.”

To learn more about this issue, visit PlanetWaves.net/NewPaltz or call Eric Francis’ office at (877) 453-8265.