Pupils sent back to toxic school; parents of students at a high school near Ground Zero claim they were duped into returning their children to a building contaminated with lead and asbestos pollution

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 23, 2002 | by Sheila R. Cherry

Under more aggressive tests, the horizontal ductwork surfaces yielded lead particles at 30 times the normal limit even for floors, only to be dwarfed by what was found on the floors. Parents tell INSIGHT that when the auditorium carpet was subjected to ultrasonic tests, analysts found 250 times the normal background levels of asbestos expected in an urban environment such as New York City. David Ross, the SPA's health and safety committee chairman, indicated that the elected parent association is negotiating with the BOE for tests beyond those federal officials are advising as sufficient.

Passions ran hot, leading to a breakdown in communication between the BOE and some of the parents. It also caused the splitting off from the the SPA of a more vocal breakaway group that constituted itseff as the Concerned Stuyvesant Community (CSC).

The CSC parents released a statement expressing outrage that their children had been duped into returning to a toxic building. The parents denounced the BOE after "the finding of significant asbestos levels, considering that the school underwent an asbestos abatement following the September 11th collapse of the World Trade Center and before students returned to class on October 9th."

This summer the CSC parents were planning a boycott and protest for the first day of school, despite the fact that one CSC parent already was being threatened with truancy charges.

Alarmed parents say they are sick of BOE denials. One CSC officer, Paul Edwards, especially was angered by an e-mail he claims to have received from BOE Deputy Chancellor David Klasfeld last November. In the e-mail, Klasfeld stated: "I regret that you have read or received any information that would lead you to believe that the Board of Education has not done everything possible to make sure that Stuyvesant is a safe environment." Edwards wasn't buying that, especially since the e-mail, which preceded the more stringent testing results, stated: "There is no building in that area which has been more carefully cleaned, more carefully monitored or more carefully cared for than Stuyvesant."

The e-mail informed the skeptical Edwards that, "We conduct tests of 100 air samples every day in the building and immediately make the results of those tests available to each of the experts. The results of those tests, while not perfect, uniformly demonstrate that, as the Commissioner of Health has said, the building is safe."

While sympathetic to the parents' concerns, Moline advises that the likelihood of adverse health effects from the lead exposure is "quite small." She adds that the BOE's approved vacuum/blower testing, if conducted properly, should have been aggressive enough to yield accurate readings for asbestos exposure. Particles trapped in the carpet are not as harmful as those that can escape back out, she explains. But to alleviate parental fears she suggests a second "real-life" testing, after the carpet has been trampled during a school assembly, for example.

Silent during what has become a rising level of outrage at how the WTC cleanup is being conducted is the owner of the buildings: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which also owns the land.