Where's Your Data?

“Nobody wants to hear that there’s no way to say it’s safe.”

So said Edward Horn, director of the Division of Environmental Health Assessment for the New York State Department of Health, in an interview last month. Perhaps the most candid comment I’d ever heard from a state official in 16 years of covering the PCB and dioxin disaster at SUNY New Paltz, Horn at least understands one thing: When you live in one of the four dorms affected by 1991 transformer explosions and fires—Bliss, Capen, Gage, and Scudder Halls—you are living in a place where there is contamination.

After more than $50 million spent on testing and cleaning so far, the question is whether students will be exposed to that contamination, and, if so, how it will affect them. This has been debated through the spring and summer by campus leaders, community organizers, and county and state officials from a variety of different agencies, including the SUNY New Paltz administration and its remediation contractor, Clean Harbors.

The result of all these meetings: There will be no additional tests of the dorms before they reopen on August 21. The college may put together a summary of what happened so that it can respond to queries from students and parents, but that is unlikely to include a warning about the safety of the buildings or lack thereof. College officials consistently tell parents that the buildings are safe but do not mention that cleanup plans specifically granted permission not only to leave “acceptable” levels of contamination, but also that these levels could kill a certain number of students.

No scientific study can definitively state that there is a safe level of exposure to the toxins. This is to say, where there is exposure, there will be an effect somewhere in the population. It is difficult, if not impossible, to precisely predict where or when.

Even at barely measurable and ever-tinier levels, these chemicals are known to disrupt the body’s hormones, suppress the immune system, cause birth defects, and in study after study are shown to be potent cancer accelerators. What does “ever-tinier” mean? Fifteen years ago, Greenpeace dioxin expert Fred Munson said that as little as one part per billion of dioxin lodged in the human body was probably dangerous. This is called the body burden. Today it’s known that the current average body burden of about 10 parts per trillion (100 times less than the old estimate) will cause cancer in up to 10 percent of the population.