Allendale Elementary School is next to two toxic waste dumps. \u00a0These dumps were created by GE when it\u00a0dredged contaminated sediments from the Housatonic River. Parents, pediatricians, and others were concerned about health risks posed by air-borne contaminants from the dump sites.<\/p>\n
Berkshire Environmental Action Team and Housatonic River Initiative (HRI) suggested to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) that one way to assess the air quality within Allendale Elementary School would be to test the air filters in the school.\u00a0 If there were PCBs in the air in the school, a test of the school\u2019s air filters would indicate that.<\/p>\n
HRI\u00a0had obtained filters from the air circulating machines at the Elementary School and had them tested. The tests showed that PCBs were in the air in the school.<\/p>\n
DPH and the Pittsfield Board of Health had filters from the same machines tested, and those tests showed no PCBs.<\/p>\n
With both groups having different results, something needed to be done to resolve the issue.\u00a0The groups agreed to test the remaining air filters using agree-on\u00a0protocols to assure the public of the results.<\/p>\n
Board of Health Director Philip Adamo said that the state Department of Public Health held a meeting at the school and that the filters would not be changed and would instead be saved so that they could be tested.\u00a0HRI\u00a0and others, including representatives of BEAT, were told in December that the air filters inside the school would be saved to test for levels of PCB-contamination at the\u00a0lab preferred by BEAT, HRI, and the Housatonic Environmental Action League (HEAL).<\/p>\n
Then came the news. According to a\u00a0Berkshire Eagle article,\u00a0Superintendent of Schools Katherine E. Darlington said that the air filters inside the school were supposed to be changed in December, and that school custodians changed them during school vacation last week as part of their regular maintenance. “It was part of the routine maintenance that was going to be done,” Darlington said. Darlington, who did not attend last week’s meeting, was unaware of any agreement to save the filters.<\/p>\n
David Martindale of California Avenue, whose daughter attends Allendale, said he was both “angry” and “incensed” that the air filters had been disposed of. “This is a travesty,” he said. “Everybody talks about data, and now the last piece has been thrown out. It seems very convenient that this happened. It’s not like it was a big secret that we didn’t want the filters changed.” \u00a0Despite the fact that the decision to keep and then test the filters was reported and widely known, the filters were gone, not just from the school, but from the dumpsters as well.<\/p>\n
Allandale School staff members known as the “Allendale Safety Committee” released a written statement yesterday expressing their frustration at the most recent turn of events.<\/p>\n
“We are frustrated and disturbed by the lack of communication between our city officials and state agencies,” the committee’s statement read. “There is no one person overseeing the PCB issue at Allendale school. As a result, different groups are unaware of what others are doing.”<\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Allendale Elementary School is next to two toxic waste dumps. \u00a0These dumps were created by GE when it\u00a0dredged contaminated sediments from the Housatonic River. Parents, pediatricians, and others were concerned about health risks posed by air-borne contaminants from the dump…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19257","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"\n