Who Will Tell Students About The Dioxin Dorms?

by Eric Francis Coppolino, November 30, 2011

Twenty years ago this month, the Hudson Valley experienced one of its most terrifying days ever: the chain-reaction explosions of PCB transformers that contaminated the SUNY New Paltz campus on December 29, 1991.
Recently I was digging around my old document collection from that story. Among the piles of scientific studies and stacks of notebooks was the recording of a campus news conference from December 31, 1991. On that day, guys dressed like astronauts were spread out over the campus, filling waste drums in the first days of a long, expensive, and controversial cleanup.

The toxins released in the incident are the chemical equivalents of plutonium, measured in concentrations as low as parts-per-trillion. Exposure is associated with immune system damage, hormone disruption, reproductive issues, birth defects, and cancer. Ingesting even trace levels can cause lifelong health problems. Of particular concern were four dormitories: Bliss, Capen, Gage and Scudder halls.

In that news conference, Alice Chandler, then president of the college, took the podium and said that health officials and their contractors were especially concerned about “channels which may have served as conduits for smoke.”

That may have been the last honest assessment Chandler offered the community before the rationalization, posturing, and denials set in. Though I didn’t remember her statement till I heard the tape, I spent many years investigating contamination in the heating and ventilation systems, pipe chases, and the electrical systems in the four dorms. Though the state and its spokespeople would issue many denials of these specific problems, Chandler had admitted the single most serious issue right up front—then she put students back into the dorms without any investigation or cleanup of the “channels which may have served as conduits for smoke.”

The state opened the buildings on the theory that a little poison is okay, but that theory is negated by two decades of new studies that demonstrate how little of these toxins can make a person sick. During the 20 years I’ve been covering this, I’ve heard state officials say many outrageous things. I’ve seen them ignore the wise counsel of people who have been deeply concerned for the safety of students, 30,000 of whom have lived in the four dorms since they were re-opened.