PCBs in New York School Ballasts

February 22, 2011, 1:52 pm — Updated: 2:28 pm -->
Striking PCB Levels Found at a New York School
By MIREYA NAVARRO

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has found the highest levels of leaking PCBs to date in its inspections of New York City schools, at Public School 45 in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Agency officials said that an inspection of lighting ballasts at the school on Feb. 12 revealed PCB levels of up to 660,000 parts per million, far beyond the regulatory limit of 50 parts per million.
Environmental Protection Agency A burnt lighting ballast.
Previous inspections at five other school buildings since January had found levels of up to 260,000 parts per million.
The likely cause was that capacitors in many of the lighting fixtures had “burned out and completely failed,” officials said. “This allowed the PCB-containing oil to seep through the potting material in almost pure form,” the agency said in a statement. “In most of the fixtures tested in this school the actual casing around the ballasts had also broken, allowing the high concentration of PCBs to contaminate the surface of the ballasts, the fixture housings, the wires and the diffusers that cover the lighting fixture.”The agency said that the higher the concentration in bulk material, the greater the potential for the PCBs’ entering the air, depending on variables like the amount spilled or released and the size of the room. E.P.A. inspectors found that in some cases that old leaking ballasts had been replaced but the new ones were installed in contaminated fixtures that had not been cleaned to remove the leaked material.
“The results give us a new sense of urgency — and certainly they, along with all of the results so far, point to a widespread problem that should and must be addressed by New York City in order to lower any potential risk of long-term exposure,” said Mary Mears, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. in New York.
The E.P.A.. and community and elected leaders have been pressing the city to come up with a plan to assess and replace older fluorescent lighting fixtures in all schools because of the danger of leaks. But with about 800 school buildings involved, city officials have balked at the cost of such a wholesale approach to the problem.
The city, however, by law must remove any light fixtures found to be leaking PCBs at above a regulatory level of 50 parts per million. City officials say they have been doing so.
Health experts agree with the city that the health risks of PCB contamination are not immediate but say that the longer that such leaks persist, the higher the risk of illness. PCBs have been linked to cancer, impairment of immune and reproductive function, lower I.Q. and other problems.
A group of elected officials and schools advocates are calling on the New York City Department of Education to replace all toxic lighting ballasts within two to five years. A bill pending in the New York State Assembly would require the same in school buildings constructed between 1950 and 1978, before the use of PCBs was banned by the federal government.
The E.P.A.’s national recommendations on lighting ballasts are available here.