Toxic School Sites

Information for this section provided by the Child Proofing Our Communities Campaign: Creating Safe Learning Zones

Factors that Influence Where New Schools are Located

School districts chronically lack resources required to meet renovation and construction needs. Often pressure to reduce expenses and expedite the process encourages shortcuts. As a result, far too many schools are located on cheap land near or on contaminated property. This is not only a problem of the past, but one of our present and future.

The push to build new schools is complicated by the dearth of appropriate sites. In urban school districts, the need for schools is often greatest in densely populated neighborhoods that lack vacant land. Building new schools in these communities can mean condemning and clearing existing homes and businesses or siting schools on previously industrial property. In other instances, schools are built on cheap land in industrial or agricultural areas, far from the community served. Wealthy residential communities often deny sites for schools that would serve students of color or low income.

School siting is complex, involving many factors:
Communities of color and low income are often forced to send their kids to schools that are old and rundown. These parents eagerly await new, technologically advanced schools and often face an unfair decision: accept siting on inexpensive contaminated land so that funds remain to procure needed technology, or build on expensive environmentally safer property, depleting funds for teaching resources. Teachers and administrators also prefer new schools, especially with fewer students per classroom, new computers, and more resources for children and staff. They face the same dilemma: either cheap contaminated land with more resources or safer property with fewer resources. Urban areas face choices still more complex. Fairly clean areas are often green space for public parks or recreation. Citizens must ask whether using these areas for safely housing school children is more important. Often no investigation of past land use precedes construction, leaving discovery of chemical contamination until after resources are committed.

Neighborhoods near industrial complexes and contaminated sites are hard pressed to site a “neighborhood” school out of harm’s way. How can school grounds be “cleaner” than neighborhood homes subject to continuing contamination?

Finally, no protective standards exist to guide school officials assessing “risk” to children when considering a site once used for industrial purposes or near an industrial complex.

Failure of the Regulatory System and Science

Most of the public believe that government agencies and regulations adequately protect children’s health at school or that some “authority” surely oversees school safety and takes great care to guard children from exposure to toxic chemicals. This assumption is often incorrect. Only a few very specific and limited laws and regulations are specifically designed to protect children—for example, regulation of asbestos in schools and lead in wall paint. A 1999 survey of New York State Education Department staff found that although the department is mandated to protect student health and safety, it does not require schools to employ school nurses; report student accidents, illness, or injury; or assign staff to help with environmental issues (HSN, 1999). Regulations alone are not the problem. Science has definite limits in determining children’s health risks. In the case of school siting, there is little scientific evidence that can definitively link a child’s exposure to chemicals from industrial contamination of school property to a specific health outcome. That does not mean no link exists but that the scientific tools that assess impact are too crude to provide certainty.

For example, in a small New York rural community, 24 students, 5 teachers, and 3 custodial workers have been diagnosed with cancer. All have attended or work at a public school sited on an old industrial site contaminated with cancer causing chemicals. However, because the population is small and information on how the chemicals affect growing children is lacking, an absolute cause and effect link cannot be proven.

The impact of chemicals on children is difficult to assess because of the lack of information and scientific research. Of an estimated 87,000 chemicals in use today, the majority lack basic toxicity testing (USEPA, 1998a). For those tested, important health effects are overlooked. An EPA review of 2,863 of the most commonly used chemicals found no toxicity information available for 43% and a complete set of toxicity data for only 7 percent (USEPA, 1998b). Toxicity refers to whether a chemical can cause harm. Currently, much attention is given to whether a chemical can cause cancer. Other important health effects, such as impairment of the immune, hormone, reproductive, or nervous systems, generally receive much less research. Finally, almost no research addresses health effects for either children or adults from exposure to low dose chemicals in combination.

Local school board members live, work, and play in or near the community. Whether elected or appointed by local government officials, they should be accountable to the local community. In some cases, school boards have been very responsive to public concern. Some have taken proactive steps to protect students, staff, and the public at schools by limiting pesticide use or choosing not to build on contaminated land. However, many take a “politics as usual” position that blames bureaucracy to avoid accountability when things go wrong.

There are many documented cases of local school board silence about chemical contamination beneath or next to, a school. School administrators fear lawsuits from parents, teachers, and others for placing children and personnel in harm’s way. School boards also dread the cost of cleaning up contamination or replacing a school.

In Marion, Ohio, for example, the school board feared lawsuits once exposure of children to chemicals buried beneath and around school property by an abandoned military depot was uncovered. School students had a higher than normal rate of leukemia and other rare cancers. The school board deferred to experts who denied any serious health risk rather than to experts who judged health risks to be too high and possibly responsible for the leukemia cluster.

Only years of community activism brought the school board to limit access to certain school-ground areas with high concentrations of contaminants (“hot spots”). However, not until the Department of Defense agreed to discuss appropriating funds to help pay for a new school would the board consider construction of a new school. In November 2000, county voters approved a bond that would provide funds to build a new school, but the new building will not be ready until 2003. Meanwhile, students remain exposed to the documented contamination.

Lack of protective guidelines is of significant concern when decisions are made about whether to locate a school on what have come to be called “brownfields.” The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) describes brownfields as “abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination” (USEPA, 1995). Anyone who purchases property officially designated a brownfield is essentially free of liability for any contamination that may be found. In some cases, no environmental testing is required to so designate a site. The Los Angeles Belmont High School disaster (see Examples of Schools Built On or Near Contaminated Land) tragically depicts what can go wrong without protective guidelines and standards to direct the process.

More importantly, when these sites are redeveloped, they need only be cleaned up to standards set for commercial or industrial property. Such standards vary among states, counties, and cities but all provide less protection of human health than those required for residential property. Designation as a brownfield is essentially a promotional real estate tool to encourage businesses to purchase and redevelop areas in order to stop sprawl and bring jobs and revitalization to urban areas. Such property is not intended for siting schools, parks, or playgrounds. Brownfields typically are in densely populated urban areas, but some are also in rural locations (e.g., agricultural land, abandoned mine areas, burn dumps, and abandoned lumber mills).

Brownfields are often selected as sites for new schools in urban areas because of the lack of available unused property and the need for new schools due to growing student enrollment. In many urban areas, brownfields are the only option for keeping schools in close proximity to the community served.

Parents, teachers, and concerned citizens have a right to know about health and safety risks to children in school. Despite current right-to-know laws, parents remain in the dark concerning hazards in the school environment.Nor does the state department of environmental protection provide notice when a nearby industrial facility has been permitted to release chemicals into the environment.

When parents do request information through right-to-know or freedom-of- information laws, school districts often are unable or unwilling to produce basic information about contaminants and hazards on or near school grounds.

Few parents realize they have a right to this type of information from school districts, and few districts apprise them of it or provide information without a formal written request. Schools should offer all safety information including fire safety inspection reports, emergency management plans, asbestos reports, indoor air quality tests and evaluations, records of pesticide applications, and copies of Material Safety Data Sheets, which comprise toxicity, health, and safety information about products used in schools.

Hundreds of schools nationwide have been built on or near contaminated land. Taxpayers provide billions of dollars for cleanup, construction of replacement schools, and medical treatment of disease in exposed children. Either we will learn from the tragedies of past mistakes or repeat them. (Additional examples can be found in Poisoned Schools (CHEJ, 2001)).

Most know of the Love Canal dumpsite in Niagara Falls, New York. Twenty thousand tons of chemicals were buried in the neighborhood’s center and eventually leaked out into the surrounding community. The 99th Street Elementary School was on the perimeter of the dump, and the 93rd Street School just two blocks away. Both closed in 1978 after extensive testing revealed high levels of chemical contamination on and around them. Love Canal was the first community to close schools due to potential health risks to children.

Los Angeles, CA—Former Oilfield and Industrial Site

The Belmont Learning Complex, dubbed America’s most expensive school with its anticipated $200 million price tag, was proposed in 1985 by the Los Angeles Unified School District as a middle school to alleviate overcrowding and serve mostly Latino students from many of LA’s poorest neighborhoods. The project ballooned into a proposed 35-acre, state-of-the-art, internet-connected high school campus, with a shopping mall to jump-start area commercial development, 120 affordable apartments to address housing needs, and classrooms and innovative "academies" for 5,000 students. More than ten years later, the half-built brick building stands abandoned. Parents learned what the school district already knew—explosive methane gas, poisonous hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic compounds such as acetone, the carcinogen benzene, and residual crude oil saturated the earth where the school was being built, a former oilfield and industrial site. When construction halted, over $123 million had already been spent.

Marion, OH—Military Dump

River Valley High School and Middle School stand on the former site of the US Army's Marion Engineering Depot, part of which served as a dumping ground in the 1950s. In 1990, community members formed a group in response to alarming rates of leukemia and rare cancers among former students. Their efforts led to an investigation that revealed widespread campus contamination. Today, no one may exit back doors of the middle school or access several playing fields. Parents want the schools closed and new facilities built in a safe area. Recently a bond issue passed to fund a new school, but students remain on the contaminated site until completion.

Providence, RI—Two New Schools On a Dump, with More Planned

Parents brought an environmental racism lawsuit to challenge construction of an elementary school and a middle school on land used as a garbage dump for at least 25 years. Environmental testing revealed unsafe levels of lead, arsenic, and petroleum products. Eighty percent of city public school students are non-white. After a hearing, the elementary school was allowed to open and middle school construction to continue, with the condition that children remain indoors with windows and doors closed during construction.

The middle school stands completed and both schools are now operating. Parents are determined to press the lawsuit to shut down the schools, even as school officials proceed to build yet another elementary school on contaminated land, the site of a factory that burned down years ago.

Several Southside High School parents concerned about high cancer rates among students and past graduates want the school closed and relocated. Twenty-four students, five teachers, and three custodial workers have contracted cancer. A number of residents living near the school also report high cancer rates among family members. The school property is on land that has been home to several factories since 1887 and now neighbors a long-time manufacturing complex, much of which was dismantled in 1977 to construct the school. Soil testing at the time showed “relatively widespread contamination by a refined petroleum product” topped by “unsuitable” fill. Parents have been unable to confirm that a cleanup ever occurred.

The school district's health and safety hygienist claims “Today red flags would be flying all over the place; it’s a former industrial site.” The neighboring factory spent $900,000 to remove 2,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil. The NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) reports that petroleum tanks buried beneath the school have polluted nearby soil and a pond. Soil and air tests reveal high levels of volatile organic compounds and other carcinogenic chemicals. Nevertheless, the State Department of Health claims children are not exposed to chemical levels of concern. Despite plans to relocate children if testing reveals a problem, the school district has decided to keep the school open with athletic fields off-limits to students and the public.

These schools are only a sampling of far too many built on or near contaminated property, placing students, staff, and the public at serious health risk.

Children are not little adults.
Children are more often exposed to environmental threats than adults and more susceptible to environmental disease. This makes them highly vulnerable to chemical exposure. Of small size and still developing, they take in more food, drink, and air per pound of body weight.

Children are still developing and remain vulnerable through adolescence.

During prenatal development, infancy, and adolescence, children are growing and adding new tissue more rapidly than at any other period of their lives. Because their tissues and organ systems are still developing and mature at different rates, they are susceptible to environmental chemical influences over an extended time.

Children move through several stages of rapid growth and development. From conception to age seven, growth is most rapid. The ensuing years, through adolescence, bring continued growth, as crucial systems-- such as the reproductive system-- mature. Insulation of brain nerve fibers is not complete until adolescence. Similarly, air sacs in the lung, where oxygen enters the blood stream, increase in number until adolescence (Needleman, 1994).

During these critical years, as structures and vital connections develop, body systems are not suited to repair damage caused by toxins. Thus, if neurotoxins assault cells in the brain, immune system, or reproductive organs or if endocrine disruption diverts development, resulting dysfunction will likely be permanent and irreversible. Depending on the organ damaged, consequences can include lowered intelligence, immune dysfunction, or reproductive impairment (Landrigan, 1998).

Children’s immature systems are less able to handle toxins.

Because organ systems are still developing, children absorb, metabolize, detoxify, and excrete poisons differently from adults. In some instances, children are actually better able to deal with environmental toxins. More commonly, they are less able and thus much more vulnerable (Landrigan, 1998). For example, children absorb about 50 percent of the lead to which they are exposed, while adults absorb only 10 to 15 %. Their less developed immune system is also more susceptible to bacteria such as strep, to ear infections, to viruses such as flu, and to chemical toxins (Needleman, 1994).1

Children consume more calories, drink more water, and breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults. Their body tissues more readily absorb many harmful substances and outside play heightens their exposure to environmental threats relative to adults.

US children ages 1 to 5 eat three to four times more per pound of body weight than the average adult. Infants and children drink more water on a body-weight basis and they take in more air. Differences in body proportions between children and adults means children have proportionately more skin exposure (NRC, 1993).

Children behave like children.

Normal activities heighten children’s vulnerability to environmental threats. Their natural curiosity, tendency to explore, and inclination to place their hands in their mouths often opens them to health risks adults readily avoid.

Young children crawl and play on the ground or floor and play outside. These natural proclivities expose them to contaminated dust and soil, pesticide residue, chemicals used to disinfect or clean, garden weed-killers, fertilizers, and other potentially hazardous substances.

Air pollution impacts children more because they are frequently outdoors and physically active. They thus breathe pollutants more directly and deeply into their lungs. Children’s natural curiosity leads them to explore situations that could expose them to environmental hazards. For example, they may enter fenced-off areas or polluted creeks and streams (Bearer, 1995).