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New Orleanians Consider Two Wildly Divergent Reports on Environmental Safety of the City

Posted on: Monday, 13 March 2006, 03:03 CST

By Webster, Richard A

Toxic wasteland or healthy home? New Orleanians are reading two wildly divergent reports on the environmental safety of the city.In December, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality announced there are no unacceptable long-term health risks directly attributable to environmental contamination resulting from the storms.

Two months later, the Natural Resources Defense Council came out with opposing conclusions.

State and federal officials responsible for protecting returning New Orleans residents are continuing to provide misleading and dangerous assurances about the major health risks posed by widespread contamination left by receding flood waters, the NRDC reported.

DEQ spokesman Rodney Mallett said NRDC scare tactics are similar to the furor raised over the supposed toxic soup, a term commonly used to describe the floodwaters that covered 80 percent of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.That didn't prove to be true, Mallett said of claims the floodwater was loaded with disease and chemicals likely to cause health epidemics. People are going through enough and don't need to put up with misinformation. The NRDC turns out to be the boy that cries wolf.

The difference between the toxic soup charge and the pollution claims NRDC reports is the toxic soup was never tested to the extent the sediment has been, said Wilma Subra, president of Subra Co., an environmental consulting firm in New Iberia.

This has been sampled over and over and over again by federal and state agencies and the environmental community and the same levels of chemicals have been consistently found in it, Subra said. This is a grave concern because people are going back to their properties and walking through houses full of it. They're being exposed and the poor people are just sweeping it out and living under those conditions because they don't have the money to have someone come clean up their house.Data interpretationTom Harris, DEQ Environment Technology Division administrator, said the dispute isn't over the data, which is information collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The debate centers on how the data is being interpreted.In its report on arsenic levels, the NRDC found 95 percent of the sediment samples in the greater New Orleans area exceed EPA standards for residential areas and would potentially pose a significant cancer risk.

The NRDC used the EPA's cancer-screening level, which states that anything exceeding 0.39 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of soil has a potential for cancer risk.The EPA, however, said the number is not meant to trigger investigations or cleanups. It is used to discern which areas merit a closer look.Harris said using the 0.39- screening figure to portray New Orleans as contaminated is dishonest.

You'd be hard pressed to find any soil on Earth below that standard, said Harris. What Mother Nature put here is more than that. I take exception to their interpretation and at first I thought it was ignorance. But we've told them repeatedly face to face and in telephone conversations. They choose to misuse these screening standards for their own benefit. I don't know if it's for fund-raising or attention to their cause but they should know better and I know for a fact now that they do know better but they choose to ignore the science.The average arsenic level in Louisiana soil is 12 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram, according to the DEQ, which Harris said is in the middle of acceptable levels. Only areas exceeding 39 mg/kg would be cause for concern and possible cleanup, he said.Gina Solomon, co-author of the NRDC report, said the difference between 0.39 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of soil and 39 mg/kg is the difference between a person having a one-in-1- million chance of contracting cancer and one in 10,000.

Obviously the DEQ thinks that in New Orleans a one-in-10,000 chance of contracting cancer from arsenic is acceptable. We tend to disagree, Solomon said. And personally, if you asked me if I'd be comfortable having my child play in an area where the levels are 12, considering what we know about the health risks of arsenic, I'd be pretty nervous.

One of the arguments I've heard from DEQ staff is that arsenic levels may have been this high before Katrina. That might or might not be true but even if it were true there's an ethical responsibility to do something about it.According to the NRDC report, 30 percent of EPA samples in New Orleans showed arsenic levels above 12 mg/kg and seven locations exceeded 45 mg/kg.

The average levels of arsenic in Mid-City, Bywater, Lakeview, Gentilly and eastern New Orleans all exceeded 12 mg/kg.Part of what we're trying to do here is ramp up the pressure and create a public dialogue so it's not just us sitting in a backroom trying to persuade these guys that they have to take this seriously, said Solomon. We want more general awareness of possible long-term health care issues. I don't want to send a message that people shouldn't come back because the news isn't all bad but I am concerned about the kids playing in this stuff.

Mallett pointed to states such as New Jersey and Texas with standard arsenic levels of 20 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of soil and 24 mg/kg, respectively, to show Louisiana is not so bad at 12 mg/kg.The NRDC is saying don't go back to New Orleans but hell, if you're in one of those places you're better off going back to New Orleans.

(Copyright 2006 Dolan Media Newswires)

Source: New Orleans CityBusiness

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