Indoor Air Contamination from Hazardous Waste Sites: Improving the Evidence Base for Decision-Making

Most hazardous-waste sites are located in urban areas populated by disproportionate numbers of children, minorities, and poor people who, as a result, face more severe pollution threats and environmental-health inequalities. Partly to address this harm, in 2017 the United Nations unanimously endorsed the New Urban Agenda, which includes redeveloping urban-infill-toxic-waste sites. However, no systematic, independent analyses assess the public-health adequacy of such hazardous-facility redevelopments. Our objective is to provide a preliminary data-quality assessment (PDQA) of urban-infill-toxic-site testing, conducted by private redevelopers, including whether it adequately addresses pollution threats. To this end, we used two qualitative, weight-of-evidence methods. Method 1 employs nine criteria to select assessments for PDQA and help control for confounders. To conduct PDQA, Method 2 uses three US Environmental Protection Agency standards—the temporal, geographical, and technological representativeness of sampling. Our Method 1 results reveal four current toxic-site assessments (by CBRE/Trammell Crow, the world’s largest commercial developer); at all of these sites the main risk drivers are solvents, volatile organic compounds, including trichloroethylene. Our Method 2 results indicate that all four assessments violate most PDQA standards and systematically underestimate health risk. These results reveal environmental injustice, disproportionate health threats to children/minorities/poor people at all four sites. Although preliminary, our conclusion is that alleviating harm and environmental-health inequalities posed by urban-infill-toxic-site pollution may require improving both the testing/cleanup/redevelopment requirements of the New Urban Agenda and the regulatory oversight of assessment and remediation performed by private redevelopers.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data-Quality Assessment Signals Toxic-Site Safety Threats and Environmental Injustices

Shrader‐Frechette

Biondo

2021

“…While information about airshed VOCs may provide insights into some public health issues, most people in the U.S. spend at least 90% of their time indoors [ 18 ]; thus, we suggest that VOC concentrations arising from contaminated soil or groundwater could be equally or even more relevant to public health issues due to vapor intrusion [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. This is even more relevant considering the new lifestyles during the COVID-19 pandemic, with time inside homes greatly increased [ 24 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Volatile Organic Compound Contamination in Post-Industrial Urban Centers: Reproductive Health Implications Using a Detroit Lens

Miller

Runge‐Morris

Cassidy‐Bushrow

et al. 2020

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a group of aromatic or chlorinated organic chemicals commonly found in manufactured products that have high vapor pressure, and thus vaporize readily at room temperature. While airshed VOCs are well studied and have provided insights into public health issues, we suggest that belowground VOCs and the related vapor intrusion process could be equally or even more relevant to public health. The persistence, movement, remediation, and human health implications of subsurface VOCs in urban landscapes remain relatively understudied despite evidence of widespread contamination. This review explores the state of the science of subsurface movement and remediation of VOCs through groundwater and soils, the linkages between these poorly understood contaminant exposure pathways and health outcomes based on research in various animal models, and describes the role of these contaminants in human health, focusing on birth outcomes, notably low birth weight and preterm birth. Finally, this review provides recommendations for future research to address knowledge gaps that are essential for not only tackling health disparities and environmental injustice in post-industrial cities, but also protecting and preserving critical freshwater resources.

“…Our hypothesis also is important because at least 200 million people face risks from thousands of hazardous-waste sites in poor- and middle-income nations [ 13 ]. In the United States, more than 120,000 toxic sites have not been adequately remediated, and thousands of “remediated” locations are being re-evaluated because of recently discovered health threats or flawed testing/cleanup [ 14 ]. The health of millions of people depends both on reliable assessment/cleanup and on accurate information about resulting toxic-site health and safety risks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health Misinformation about Toxic-Site Harm: The Case for Independent-Party Testing to Confirm Safety

Shrader‐Frechette

Biondo

2021

Health misinformation can cause harm if regulators or private remediators falsely claim that a hazardous facility is safe. This misinformation especially threatens the health of children, minorities, and poor people, disproportionate numbers of whom live near toxic facilities. Yet, perhaps because of financial incentives, private remediators may use safety misinformation to justify reduced cleanup. Such incentives exist in nations like the United States, where most toxic-site testing/remediation is semi-privatized or voluntary, conducted by private parties, commercial redevelopers, who can increase profits by underestimating health harm, thus decreasing required testing/remediation. Our objective is to begin to determine whether or not interested parties misrepresent health harm (at hazardous facilities that they test/remediate/redevelop) when they use traditional and social media to claim that these sites are safe. Our hypothesis is that, contrary to the safety claims of the world’s largest commercial developer, Coldwell Banker Real Estate/Trammell Crow (CBRE/TCC), the authors’ screening assessment, especially its lab-certified, toxic-site, indoor-air tests, show violations of all three prominent government, cancer-safety benchmarks. If so, these facilities require additional testing/remediation, likely put site renters at risk, and may reveal problems with privatized hazardous cleanup. To our knowledge, we provide the first independent tests of privatized, toxic-site assessments before cancer reports occur. Our screening assessment of this hypothesis tests indoor air in rental units on a prominent former weapons-testing site (the US Naval Ordnance Testing Station, Pasadena, California (NOTSPA) that is subject to carcinogenic vapor intrusion by volatile organic compounds, VOCs), then compares test results to the redeveloper’s site-safety claims, made to government officials and citizens through traditional and social media. Although NOTSPA toxic soil-gas concentrations are up to nearly a million times above allowed levels, and indoor air was never tested until now, both the regulator and the remediator (CBRE/TCC) have repeatedly claimed on social media that “the site is safe at this time.” We used mainly Method TO-17 and two-week sampling with passive, sorbent tubes to assess indoor-air VOCs. Our results show that VOC levels at every location sampled—all in occupied site-rental units—violate all three government-mandated safety benchmarks: environmental screening levels (ESLs), No Significant Risk Levels (NSRLs), and inhalation risks based on the Inhalation Unit Risk (IUR); some violations are two orders of magnitude above multiple safety benchmarks. These results support our hypothesis and suggest a need for independent assessment of privatized cleanups and media-enhanced safety claims about them. If our results can be replicated at other sites, then preventing health misinformation and toxic-facility safety threats may require new strategies, one of which we outline.