Two different chemicals are causing concern at schools citywide. One comes from inside the schools—it’s a toxin found in the window caulking of older buildings. The other is a chemical brought in by workers to strip the paint from school windows.
Last Tuesday the Department of Education agreed to study exposure risks at five contaminated schools and develop a plan to remove caulking that contains polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). So far 90 schools are known to have the dangerous caulking, which was banned in 1977 but used routinely before then. "This is going to stir up a hornet's nest," David Carpenter, a director at the University of Albany's School of Public Health told the NY Daily News. "I'm nervous about what they're going to find because my feeling is the magnitude of the problem they'll find will be huge." In the past, workers exposed to PCBs have suffered from liver damage.
In a separate incident, school painters have reported use of a banned chemical called Rock Miracle at PS 131 in Queens. "He said we're not allowed to use [it]," one painter told the NY Post. "The next sentence out of his mouth was, 'But I have it here.' . . . He had four five-gallon cans with the hazmat sheet removed so nobody would know what it was." His account was backed up by other painters. Rock Miracle contains dichloromethane, which the US Labor Department says can cause "mental confusion, lightheadedness, nausea, vomiting and headache" when inhaled. The feds say it is a possible carcinogen and that long-term exposure can have "adverse effects on the heart, central nervous system or liver."
