POISON OF POLLUTION: Did feds' IBM study go far enough?
Tom Wilber, twilber@gannett.com | @wilberwrites 6:49 a.m. EDT June 10, 2016
(Photo: ANDREW THAYER / Staff Photo)
Federal officials are facing criticism over a recently released inconclusive study on birth defects of children born to IBM workers exposed to the chemical TCE.
“For people who worked at IBM — in fact, people exposed to TCE across the country — the study was fatally flawed,” said Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, of the long-awaited $3.2 million study released by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in late May.
Siegel serves as liaison with federal and state governments shaping policy for communities polluted with TCE, a toxic industrial solvent found at thousands of former industrial sites across the country.
The NIOSH study, which focused on the once-thriving IBM’s microelectronics plant in Endicott, made no mention of TCE levels measured at 45 buildings in 2005.
NIOSH researcher and lead author Sharon Silver defended the decision because including the data would be “scientifically problematic.”
Despite the lack of a firm conclusion about TCE, Silver said results contributed to the understanding of risks from other exposures during daily operations. The study found that contaminants, lead in particular, on clothes or shoes of male workers presented risks to childbearing women outside the plant, a phenomenon called "take-home exposure." Elevated cases of a rare heart defect also were found in children of male workers potentially exposed to lead and chlorinated hydrocarbons.
Chlorinated hydrocarbons include TCE, PCE, methylene chloride and other solvents historically used in a range of manufacturing applications. Lead was used as soldering material for circuit board manufacture, repair, testing, and research and development. Use of lead at the plant likely peaked between 1986 and 1993, according to the NIOSH report.
The federal study was launched in 2008 in response to community concerns over TCE pollution in a 450-acre area under the IBM plant and surrounding commercial and residential neighborhoods.
In 2002, officials found the pollutant was in soil and water tables in Endicott and drifting into buildings through “vapor intrusion.” The discovery prompted a statewide re-evaluation of TCE sites.
Concerns over residential TCE exposure intensified when a 2005 Department of Health study found a “statistically significant” spike in rare cardiac heart defects, as well as kidney and testicular cancers, in a contaminated area next to the Endicott plant.
The findings of a federal study on birth defects of children of IBM workers were released on May 25, 2016 and a community meeting was held the next day. Andrew Thayer / Staff Video
Gauging vapor intrusion risks in an occupational setting such as IBM is more complicated than in residential settings because many more chemicals and exposure possibilities have to be considered, according to Silver.
For the occupational study, researchers looked at the health of workers' children born between 1983 and 2001. They found the rate for ventricular septal heart defect to be “significantly elevated” in children of some groups of male manufacturing workers potentially exposed to lead and chlorinated hydrocarbons. Other defects fell within the norm.
Because TCE was largely phased out of production by 1986, “no conclusion can be drawn” about the chemical’s impacts on births for workers exposed during daily operations, according to the study.
But the research did not factor in 2005 data showing building-by-building TCE levels from residual pollution at the plant.
“The researchers seemed unaware why the study was requested in the first place,” Siegel said. “They started with a methodology, not a hypothesis. And as far as I can tell, they didn’t let people know in advance that they wouldn’t be studying TCE exposures.”
Silver said it was too difficult to track the locations of workers in relation to each building's TCE levels, which would likely be lower than levels of TCE or other chlorinated hydrocarbons on manufacturing lines. Further, TCE levels may have fluctuated with efforts to clean the pollution, which was first discovered in 1979.
But critics argue vapor intrusion levels would have been even higher during the study period than they were in 2005, after 25 years of cleanup had removed more than 70,000 gallons of solvent from the ground.
Air samples collected by the state Department of Health in 2005 in 42 buildings ranged from 0 to 17 micrograms per cubic meter in some areas that tended to be occupied. Levels were much higher in other areas — for example, often registering between 50 and 300 micrograms per cubic meter in tunnels and tank rooms under Building 18. Concentrations in the soil directly below the buildings often exceeded 10,000 and sometimes were over 100,000.
At the time, the Department of Health determined TCE levels at the plant present a "low" health risk, meaning state health officials "do not expect to be able to associate health effects" from exposure.
Since those tests, the EPA has found risks for non-cancer illnesses, such as birth defects, from short-term TCE exposure in residential settings to increase at levels at or above 2 micrograms per cubic meter.
Frank Roma, head of a citizens group that worked with officials on the scope of the study, said he was disappointed NIOSH did not at least address the vapor intrusion factor for workers.
“They left that part out, and they did not give a lot of information on it,” said Roma, of the Western Broome Environmental Stakeholders Coalition. “We’re still very concerned about the plant.”
Siegel, of the national environmental nonprofit, characterized the study as “inconclusive by design … To me, the problem is that the experts viewed the study as an academic exercise, not information that real people were counting on to resolve their concerns.”
Impacts of TCE vapor intrusion, apart from occupational exposure, is a sensitive topic for the chemical industry and manufacturers. IBM recently settled a lawsuit for claims related to TCE pollution in neighborhoods around its former Endicott plant for $13.4 million.
Silver acknowledged the study’s inability to reconcile TCE vapor intrusion data at the IBM plant as “a limitation” but not a flaw. The spike in the number of rare heart defects in the children of male workers would not change, according to Silver, even if TCE exposure were factored in.
Richard Clapp, an industrial exposure expert at Boston University's School of Public Health, agreed.
Risks from lead and chlorinated hydrocarbons are “important findings and add to the literature" concerning male workers exposed to toxic chemicals, Clapp said. “The fact that the study did not take vapor intrusion inside the plant into account is perhaps a limitation, but it wouldn't change the issue.”
Today, approximately 4,000 people work for various companies at the plant, now owned by Huron Real Estate Associates.
Last year, the Health Department, taking into account studies that showed TCE was a more potent hazard than previously believed, lowered its threshold for TCE vapor intrusion exposure from 5 micrograms per cubic meter to 2.
The new guideline has prompted a new set of tests at the campus, with results expected later this year.