In a lengthy conversation today, Kenneth Bogdan, Ph.D of the New York State Department of Health’s Bureau of Toxic Substance Assessment discussed why the agency has concluded that further testing for dioxin and furan impacts from last week’s TCI fire would be pointless.
Last night, the Columbia County Emergency Management Office released a statement that “The NYS Department of Health advises that as a result of these findings, additional testing in the surrounding community will not be necessary.” Since such testing had been promised by officials on both Thursday and Friday, the announcement came as more than a surprise. To many it felt as if the State were rushing to judgement, or at least denying residents the peace of mind they might achieve through more thorough testing.
Regarding several dozen pages of PCB testing data released to the public on Monday afternoon, Bogdan was asked whether the State has produced a summary or other analysis of that data which might allow citizens to better understand that highly-technical data. “We’re still working on that,” Bogdan said, saying that they hoped to complete such a summary “in the next couple of days.”
Bogdan indicated that the State deemed the size and nature of what TCI had stored onsite several magnitudes smaller than other well-known emergency fires. As a point of comparison, he cited the notorious 1981 Binghamton State Office building fire, considered a major environmental disaster due to the spread of high concentrations of PCBs, dioxins, furans and other pollutants dispersed via the building’s ventilation system.
Asked whether the agency had a firm idea of what was stored, by contrast, at TCI’s facility in order to arrive at such conclusions, Bogdan indicated that they believed there was only one drum of PCBs onsite, but that most of the massive fire sprung from oils on-site. Considering that company manifests stopped appearing in the DEC’s database back in March, and that any records store on-site surely went up “into the cloud” in the building, Bogdan deferred questions to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) which has not returned a call from earlier today. Bogdan also urged residents to press TCI itself for answers, stating that “they just, like, disappeared for three days.”
A request was sent earlier today to TCI seeking an interview.
The bottom line for Bogdan was that after seeing the initial PCB readings, the agency felt that any similar testing for dioxins and other pollutants would not be likely to show elevated levels, either—both because of the wide potential dispersal area and their belief that any dioxin fallout would mirror that of the PCBs.
Asked whether it was possible that the PCB levels were low precisely because they had been changed into dioxins and furans by the intense fire, Bogdan initially said that it would be “unheard of ” for “100% of the PCBs” to be completely transformed. But he acknowledged that it was possible that enough of the PCBs were altered to lower those readings while also resulting to a concomitant release of dioxins. Nevertheless, Bogdan stood by the agency’s position that further testing would be fruitless to undertake.
The agency’s phone number, if others want to discuss concerns with the DOH, is (518) 402-7800.
