In what reads like a reversal of previous promises, the State Department of Health has proclaimed that further testing for pollution impacts from last week’s towering inferno at TCI of NY in Ghent “will not be be necessary.”
Last Thursday, officials indicated that test results for other pollutants, such as dioxins, would be issued on Friday. Late Friday, with test data not forthcoming, the story changed: preliminary testing for PCBs was complete, but testing for dioxins would not start until Monday—after a predicted rainstorm over the weekend.
But now, the Columbia County Emergency Management Office has released a statement on Facebook which appears to say that the State may not do either dioxin testing, nor indeed look for any other pollutant, because it feels its initial PCB tests were adequate to rule out other possibilities:
“The NYS Department of Health advises that as a result of these findings, additional testing in the surrounding community will not be necessary. They explain that detectable levels of PCBs form the basis to determine the need to conduct additional tests for other potentially hazardous substances. They advise that there is no reason to believe that there is a threat to the public from any type of hazardous material resulting from the fire.”
Covering the County’s Thursday press conference, The Register-Star had written that Bill Black said “tests were still being done by the Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Conservation for volatile organic compounds and dioxins.” Black was further quoted as saying that “Those results should come back within 24 hours.” (It now appears that such testing for dioxins hadn’t even began.)
Also on Friday, The Albany Times-Union reported that Columbia County Sheriff's Department Lieutenant Thom Lanphear, who is also chair of “the local emergency planning committee,” said “DEC will test for dioxin on Monday.” The paper also quoted Lanphear sa saying that “state health department officials do not think the dioxin testing is necessary, but it is being done because county residents want such checks.”
Apparently what residents want may no longer be quite so important to the State Health Department. Even if officials truly believe they have done their due diligence, cancelling anticipated tests would undermine public trust in these assurances.
Highly-carcinogenic dioxins and furans are known to result from the incomplete combustion of PCBs. Experts have indicated that dioxins and furans are of even greater concern than PCBs, and that proper testing and analysis could take weeks. Knowing that PCBs can change into other substances in a fire, then saying “we found no PCBs,” seems a bit like putting two sugar cubes into a hot cup of tea, letting them dissolve, then saying it looks like there is nothing in the tea.
Meanwhile, this site has received a report of a NYS Department of Environmental Conservation representative visiting highly-impacted homes near the fire, but declining to take samples of visible residues when requested to do so by a homeowner, and is following up on that lead.
