Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008

Questions remain on toxin's effects near AVX facility

Groundwater contamination from the potentially dangerous chemical trichloroethylene has spread through at least a 10-block area of Myrtle Beach, environmental tests show, leading some experts to question whether the public's health might be at risk.

The extent of the contamination is far greater than outlined in initial reports obtained by The Sun News earlier this month.

In addition to the spreading contamination, newly obtained documents show workers at Myrtle Beach-based AVX Corp. might have been exposed to very high levels of trichloroethylene in the 1980s and 1990s.

Exposure to trichloroethylene, or TCE, has been linked with liver cancer, kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other health problems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

AVX used TCE for decades as a degreaser in its manufacturing plant. It makes electronics components, often used in gaming systems.

AVX now is a suspected source of TCE contamination in a 10-block area stretching northeast of the manufacturing facility, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Environmental tests near homes and businesses from 17th Avenue South, where AVX is located, to Seventh Avenue South show TCE levels up to hundreds of times greater than what the EPA considers safe for humans.

One test near the Sterling Village neighborhood on 13th Avenue South, for example, showed TCE levels of 2,080 parts per billion. The EPA says five parts per billion is the maximum safe level.

DHEC last week began overseeing a new round of tests in that area to learn more about the extent of the contamination.

Those tests also will look for TCE in surface water and show whether vapors from the soil are contaminating the air, said Carol Minsk, a DHEC geologist who is helping to oversee cleanup at AVX.

The tests are being conducted at AVX's expense, and it isn't clear when they will be completed.

Testing so far has been limited to groundwater. Minsk said that contamination probably does not pose a health risk because the city does not get its drinking supply from groundwater.

Myrtle Beach spokesman Mark Kruea has said the city's drinking water supply, which comes from the Intracoastal Waterway, has tested within the safe range for TCE.

Lois Weatherford, coordinator of a neighborhood group at Bent Oak Estates, said some residents there are upset that the contamination was not made public until news reports earlier this month.

"We're concerned that no one told us anything about it," said Weatherford, whose neighborhood is near the AVX facility.

Minsk said no one was contacted because DHEC does not yet perceive any health risk to residents.

"With the information we have, if we felt there was a risk to the neighborhood, we would have communicated that," she said.

Lenny Siegel, an environmental consultant and TCE expert, said most human exposure comes from breathing the chemical's vapors, which can seep through the soil from contaminated groundwater.

That is especially true, Siegel said, if TCE contamination is located in the shallowest aquifer, as it is in Myrtle Beach.

"There is a good chance that vapors are rising into the buildings" near contaminated sites, said Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif.

"I believe indoor air should be tested in homes, schools and even businesses above the plume," he said.

TCE, which is much heavier than water, settles in underground pools called plumes. Some plumes, Siegel said, can stretch for miles.

The extent of contamination

TCE contamination near the AVX facility first came to the public's attention through court documents filed last month.

Horry Land Co. claims in a lawsuit that AVX is the source of TCE contamination on 21.5 acres of land it owns across 17th Avenue South from the manufacturer. Horry Land wants AVX to pay $5.4 million for the property, which Horry Land says it can no longer use because of the contamination.

AVX said in court filings that it is not the source of contamination on Horry Land's property. A court date has not been set.

Horry Land said in court documents that its environmental tests showed TCE levels as high as 1,010 parts per billion on its property.

In an Aug. 31, 2006, letter to AVX, Minsk wrote that DHEC "is concerned with the levels" of TCE on Horry Land's property.

"Because of this additional data, it is clear that the complete extent of the [TCE] plume has not been delineated," Minsk wrote.

The possibility that TCE has spread beyond AVX's site was one reason DHEC asked the manufacturer last year to test groundwater in 48 locations between 17th Avenue South and Seventh Avenue South.

Those tests were conducted between January and March in aquifers located between 20 feet and 41 feet below the ground's surface.

Two of those tests showed TCE levels of 3,390 parts per billion and 18,200 parts per billion near the Horry Land property.

The tests also showed high levels of TCE at several other sites between AVX and Withers Swash, including a reading of 824 parts per billion at a stormwater runoff pond along 11th Avenue South.

Minsk said the TCE contamination probably is discharging into Withers Swash, which then washes the contamination to the ocean.

Mary Henry, president of the Sterling Village homeowner's association, said she isn't sure what to make of the high TCE readings near her neighborhood.

"It's a significant concern, but I don't want to be an alarmist," Henry said. "I just don't know enough at this point to determine how much of a health risk there is or how this might affect our property values."

Henry said Sterling Village uses well water for landscape irrigation.

"We'd like DHEC to let us know what potential risk there is and what we can do to mitigate it," she said.

Minsk said there is no indication of an immediate health risk, but DHEC is still trying to determine "the full extent of what we're dealing with."

Minsk said it could be months before any cleanup begins.

"We're still in the process of of seeing how much farther we need to go," Minsk said. "If we feel we have the full extent after this next phase of tests, we can start to consider what to do to rectify the situation.

"But if we get this data back and feel we still have gaps, we might have to do another phase [of tests]."

AVX officials say they are not sure how long testing will take or to what extent cleanup will be needed.

"At this stage of the environmental assessment, we have not been able to determine what measures may have to be undertaken or the likely costs of any such measures," the company said in a financial report issued earlier this month.

Lorenz Rhomberg, a biologist and environmental risk assessment specialist, said he "would want to make sure there was some testing of indoor air" if he lived in a neighborhood near the contaminated sites.

Rhomberg cautioned, however, that there still are too many questions about TCE's health risks to say whether residents should worry.

"I know people in that situation want answers, so it's sort of disappointing to say we're still working on it," said Rhomberg, principal of Gradient Corp., an environmental consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass.

"After 20 years of studying TCE, we still don't have the final answers," he said.

Threat to workers

In addition to potential health risks from current TCE contamination, experts say exposure to the chemical as long as decades ago might make AVX employees more susceptible to health problems.

"Workers exposed to TCE on the job, over a period of time, are at a greater risk of disease," Siegel said. "The experts disagree over the level of risk, and which diseases are most likely."

The health risks from TCE were thought to be minimal throughout the 1980s and '90s, but the EPA issued a new risk assessment in 2001 that found the chemical to be up to 40 times more toxic than previously thought.

A study last year by the National Research Council upheld the EPA's findings, and scientists now say there is growing evidence that thousands of birth defects and cancers each year are due in part to TCE exposure.

"The evidence on TCE is overwhelming," Gina Solomon, an environmental medicine expert, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview last year.

It can take decades before health problems begin to develop, making it difficult to draw direct correlations with TCE exposure.

However, Solomon said evidence for such a correlation is mounting.

"We have 80 epidemiological studies and hundreds of toxicology studies," she said. "They are fairly consistent in finding cancer risks that cover a range of tumors. It is hard to make all that human health risk go away."

AVX officials knew about TCE contamination on the company's property as early as 1981, but they did not report that contamination to DHEC until 14 years later, state documents show.

AVX officials signed a consent order in 1996 in which DHEC said the manufacturer violated state laws regarding cleanup and storage of potentially dangerous chemicals. AVX paid a $7,000 fine but did not admit any wrongdoing.

Part of that consent order called for AVX to test for and clean up TCE on its property.

Tests in 1998 showed levels of TCE and similar chemicals at 711,000 parts per billion in groundwater on the AVX property, according to a report the company submitted to DHEC.

Another test that year at a nearby location showed levels of TCE and similar chemicals at 452,000 parts per billion, according to the report.

Both results are thousands of times greater than what the EPA considers safe for humans.

"Those are very large concentrations; there's no way of getting around that fact," Rhomberg said. "But it's hard to say how much exposure workers would have had."

AVX might have had the proper safety policies in place to protect workers who handled TCE and the manufacturer's buildings might have been airtight enough to resist vapor intrusion from groundwater contamination, Rhomberg said.

"What all of this means for the workers there sort of depends on the situation" that existed at the time, he said.