Search This Blog

Showing posts with label General Electric. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Electric. Show all posts

Thursday, June 09, 2011

EPA Announces the Second Phase of Historic Hudson River Cleanup Underway

Lakes Entrance Dredger April HamerImage via Wikipedia (Glens Falls, N.Y. – June 6, 2011) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced that the dredging of sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) has resumed in the Upper Hudson River, marking the start of the second and final phase of the Hudson River cleanup.  The historic dredging project targets approximately 2.4 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from a forty-mile section of the Upper Hudson River between Fort Edward and Troy, NY.  PCBs are potentially cancer-causing in people and build up in the fat of fish and mammals, increasing in concentration as they move up the food chain.  The primary risk to humans is the accumulation of PCBs in the body from eating contaminated fish.  General Electric (GE) is conducting the cleanup work with EPA oversight, under an agreement with the Agency.  This final phase of the cleanup project is expected to take five to seven years to complete.

During the 2011 dredging season, mechanical dredges will collect buckets of PCB-contaminated sediment from a 1.5-mile stretch of river just south of the town of Fort Edward.  Four to six dredges will work 24 hours a day, six days a week through the summer and fall to remove approximately 350,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from 100 acres of river bottom.  Dredging will begin in the western channel of Roger’s Island and move south in the main stem of the river.  Between 1947 and 1977, an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs were discharged into the river from two GE capacitor manufacturing plants located in Fort Edward and Hudson FallsInformation about the Hudson River PCBs Superfund site can be found at http://www.epa.gov/hudson.

People seeking general information about the project are encouraged to contact Larisa Romanowski at (518) 747-4389; romanowski.larisa@epa.gov.   Residents who have questions or concerns related to dredging operations should call GE’s 24-hour dredging information phone line at (518) 792-4087, or, toll-free (888) 596-3655.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

PCBs are Everywhere?

PCB 1Image via Wikipedia
It feels like lately, everywhere I turn I find a new article or seminar discussing polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) issues.  In the Metropolitan New York Chapter of American Industrial Hygiene Association's newsletter I learned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently holding a series of public meetings for the purpose of “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the EPA potential reassessment of PCB use authorizations” (follow link from the title of this article for more information).  Even on this blog I have written several posts on PCBs (see my most recent post on 4/6/10).  Back in April, I attended the joint meeting of the New York Metro Chapter of the AIHA and the Long Island chapter of the American Society of Safety Engineers (see post on 4/20/10). Mr. Kristen Panella of New York Institute of Technology gave a very good presentation on dealing with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding transformers containing PCBs. The main points of the presentation were:

  • EPA does not allow “placard” transformers (meaning the transformer has pyranol on the label or placard) to be registered after 1998.  EPA’s reason for this is that General Electric’s pyranol transformers contain 50% PCBs be weight.
  • These placard transformers are required to be removed. The penalty is $24,000 for not removing them.
  • The removal process is a costly and very delicate process because any spill of the PCB oil makes the project a remediation (spill clean-up) having different requirements.
Then in the April 2010 issue of Indoor Environment Connections, Ronald Smith and Vincent Daliessio of EMSL wrote an article on “PCB in Caulk: A New/Old Indoor Contaminant” (http://www.ieconnections.com/pdfs/newsletter/2010/IEC-04-2010.pdf on page 18).  The main points from this article were:
  • PCB-tainted caulk with concentrations of 50 parts per million (ppm) or more can cause owners of buildings (including schools, etc.) to face EPA fines of $3,000 and $25,000 per day until the material is removed.
  • EPA regulations do not require schools to test for PCBs but EPA is encouraging schools to conduct air testing where PCB use is suspected.  This recommendation is inconsistent with other indoor air quality programs (i.e., asbestos or lead) that would first require identifying or testing to confirm the presence of the material prior to an air sampling regimen.  I suspect the reasoning for this is; unlike with asbestos or lead, if the school finds PCBs in the caulk above 50 ppm they are required to remove it, as per the above point.
  • There are a number of exposure guidelines and standards for chlorodiphenyl (54% chlorine in PCBs) in air:
    • ACGIH – TLV is 500 ug/m3
    • OSHA – PEL is 500 ug/m3
    • NIOSH – REL is 1 ug/m3
    • NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene – Action Level is 0.5 ug/m3
    • EPA – Risk-Based Concentrations (RBCs) is 0.0043 ug/m3
  • Testing of caulk for PCBs is a unique method and should be discussed with your laboratory.  PCB air testing uses two methods, recognized by the EPA, TO-4A (high volume air) and TO-10A(low volume air).  EPA does not recognize NIOSH method 5503.
In addition, two recent EPA Region 2 news releases were also regarding PCBs.  On this blog, we have been following the dredging operations on the Hudson River.  EPA’s news release on April 26, 2010 announced that EPA agreed to pay the additional costs incurred by the towns of Halfmoon and Waterford to draw water from the Troy system until November 2012 because both towns used the Hudson River as their source of drinking water.  Some of the samples taken at the Thompson Island monitoring station were reported to have exceeded EPA’s drinking water standard of 500 parts per trillion (ppt) for PCBs, during dredging operations and off-season high river flows.  The second EPA region 2 news release was on April 30, 2010 and it too, discussed PCBs. PCBs are one of the contaminants they are investigating in the Gowanus Canal Superfund Site in New York City.

Even though Congress and EPA banned and phased out in 1979 all PCBs, we are still working on preventing further damage and cleaning up the old damage done to the environment are these future employment opportunities?
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

EPA Submits Final Report on First Phase of Hudson River Dredging

This image comes from the Swedish encyclopedia...Image via Wikipedia
On March 8, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a detailed technical assessment of the first phase of the dredging operations on the polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-contaminated sediment in the upper Hudson River.  This assessment, along with General Electric's assessment, are being submitted to the panel of independent scientific experts for review.  In addition, to the report being submitted to the scientific panel, EPA is also soliciting comments from the public that will also be submitted to the panel.  The first phase of this project is being used as a test run for the far larger phase 2 of this project, which EPA hopes to start in 2011.  The technical report is 185 pages and covers a number of operations and discusses problems and recommended changes to reduce PCB air emissions and water resuspensions.  Needless to say EPA feels that the operation can be done successfully with a few changes and GE has some major issues with the process because of the PCB resusensions.  It will be interesting to see what the panel has to say.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Wall Street Journal Reports on PCB Dredging Operations

Hudson River watershedImage via Wikipedia
On December 7, 2009 we wrote about the dredging operations on the Hudson River (http://futureenv.blogspot.com/2009/12/hudson-river-pcb-dredging-good-bad-ugly.html).  On January 21, 2010 the Wall Street Journal reported that higher PCB levels were found during the Hudson River dredging operations.  Both General Electric and the EPA released draft evaluations of the project.  Both reports found higher levels of PCBs than originally anticipated, putting into question the performance standards for the project.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

That Time of Year! Conferences, Posting Requirements, and OSHA Violations Increased!

It's that time of year again. We're between conferences.  February 15-16, 2024 was the Professional Abatement Contractors of New Yor...