The Bronx New School (P.S. 51) had seen its share of typical childhood illnesses during its 23-year history. But ever since the city told parents in early August that their northwest Bronx building was contaminated with dangerous levels of an industrial toxin, each memory of a headache or nosebleed—plus one story of a former student who died of kidney failure—has caused added anxieties.
The news meant that for the last two decades, kindergartners through fifth graders at the school located in a former lamp factory at 3200 Jerome Avenue may have unwittingly inhaled daily doses of trichloroethylene (TCE), a metal degreaser that was recently declared to be a carcinogen to humans by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Department of Education officials knew as early as January, 2011 that the level of TCE contaminants found in its hallways were nearly 10 times above the current safe exposure standards set by New York State. Another test in March found TCE nearly 10,000 times above the safe level in the soil vapor below the first floor cafeteria. However, parents were not informed of the toxins for several more months, after the decision to transfer all P.S. 51's children three miles away to a Catholic school in Crotona had already been made.
Parents have only recently been privy to city records showing that the 3200 Jerome Avenue site had a nearly 60-year history of producing environmental toxins. In the years immediately before the site was renovated into a school, the property was placed into a monitoring database by the EPA for producing hazardous chemicals and waste.
Despite this, a “leasing loophole” made it possible for P.S. 51 as well as 31 other public schools located in leased sites around the city to remain untested for toxins for decades. State lawmakers are currently pushing for legislation that would close this gap and toughen air quality standards for TCE throughout New York. In the meantime, scientists are still uncertain about the real long-term hazards of TCE exposure.
“That’s the million dollar question,” says Dr. Geoffrey Collins, a pediatrician specializing in environmental health at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. “What are the health effects? I can see if it was my child in the school, I would have concerns.”
Parents fear long-term consequences
For most parents of the 200-plus students at The Bronx New School, a racially integrated learning center with a history of strong parental involvement, the hope is that their children’s lives will not be permanently harmed by their exposure to TCE.
Many were angered at being kept in the dark long after the city knew the TCE levels were dangerously high. “How dare you make us beg for information,” a former student's parent, Nicole Forbes, shouted at Chancellor Dennis Walcott during a public information session held at the Bronx Business School last October.
Her sister, Natasha Forbes, believes the toxins might have caused her son’s five-year-long struggle with unexplained migraines. “Doctors couldn’t give a concise diagnosis of what was wrong with him,” says Natasha, mother of 11-year-old Rodney. “Things made sense when we heard about the test results.”
Records of visits to the nurse since 2005 showed that student visits seeking medical care numbered upwards of 2,000 a school year. Nearly 3,000 visits were made in 2007 to 2008. Along with the routine cuts and bruises, students complained of coughs, wheezes, itchy eyes, headaches, vomiting and nausea. A memo written by school nurse Lynn Hendricks to supervisors in 2009 obtained by the New York Daily News revealed her concerns about “immunity issues” among students, as well as problems with the air conditioning and heating system in the building.
