This is from The Guardian and so needs to be verified.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2021 at 11:18 and is filed under News You Can Use..
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One Response to “Rates of Parkinson’s Disease Are Exploding. A Common Chemical May Be to Blame”
Did some work for a national beer company in NY. The plant made cans for the brewery next door. On my first trip there, I immediately recognized a field of recovery wells and an air stripper (used to remove chemicals from groundwater pumped from the wells.) Long story, but they had a bunch of TCE that went into the ground from a couple of sources. (It leaked because they were incredibly stupid.) After working for years to try to remove the stuff, they finally did some checking on the property they bought to build the plant and discovered that it used to be a trolley car repair facility 100 years ago, back when they rinsed grease off parts with solvent and dumped it on the ground. Also, the farmer who owned the property before they bought it had tried to supplement his income by blending pesticides. Due diligence is such a simple idea and it can save you from buying into a nightmare.
Across the 2 lane road from the plant was the site of the water wells for the nearby city (~11,000 people). The company line was that the contamination had not reached the wells before they set up their remediation apparatus. I asked, “Do you get the water for your beer from those wells?” No, we built a pipeline for a number of miles so we could buy water from the county. It was really, really hard not to laugh at that response. Wouldn’t you love to be the prosecuting attorney who elicited that response? Since then, the both plants have been closed and the company connected the city to that pipeline so they could close their wells, for no specified reason.
At another NY location, a manufacturing plant shut down years ago. When the workers were told, they destroyed as much equipment as possible to prevent them from shipping it overseas. Among the things destroyed were the stopcocks on tanks of TCE. Move forward a few decades, the company is long gone and the state did some Superfund testing and found TCE in the groundwater. So they set up recovery wells and an air stripper. Some emissions testing on the stripper revealed levels of TCE above those considered safe, so the state decided to install a package incinerator to burn the fumes. The local area erupted over the plan. “How dare you build an incinerator in my neighborhood to give my babies cancer!” (Actual quote, BTW.) It was all over the TV news. People threatened – on camera – to respond with shotguns. Watching the poor NYDEC officials being harassed brought back memories of how often they stood by in public hearings and let the public rage at us poor industry or consulting folks.
TCE is one of the best solvents around, especially for degreasing. It dries without leaving any residue. Years ago, it was very widely used, but in 1990 it was put on the Hazardous Air Pollutant list in Title III of the Clean Air Act, and it’s use was greatly diminished.
April 9th, 2021 at 20:42
Did some work for a national beer company in NY. The plant made cans for the brewery next door. On my first trip there, I immediately recognized a field of recovery wells and an air stripper (used to remove chemicals from groundwater pumped from the wells.) Long story, but they had a bunch of TCE that went into the ground from a couple of sources. (It leaked because they were incredibly stupid.) After working for years to try to remove the stuff, they finally did some checking on the property they bought to build the plant and discovered that it used to be a trolley car repair facility 100 years ago, back when they rinsed grease off parts with solvent and dumped it on the ground. Also, the farmer who owned the property before they bought it had tried to supplement his income by blending pesticides. Due diligence is such a simple idea and it can save you from buying into a nightmare.
Across the 2 lane road from the plant was the site of the water wells for the nearby city (~11,000 people). The company line was that the contamination had not reached the wells before they set up their remediation apparatus. I asked, “Do you get the water for your beer from those wells?” No, we built a pipeline for a number of miles so we could buy water from the county. It was really, really hard not to laugh at that response. Wouldn’t you love to be the prosecuting attorney who elicited that response? Since then, the both plants have been closed and the company connected the city to that pipeline so they could close their wells, for no specified reason.
At another NY location, a manufacturing plant shut down years ago. When the workers were told, they destroyed as much equipment as possible to prevent them from shipping it overseas. Among the things destroyed were the stopcocks on tanks of TCE. Move forward a few decades, the company is long gone and the state did some Superfund testing and found TCE in the groundwater. So they set up recovery wells and an air stripper. Some emissions testing on the stripper revealed levels of TCE above those considered safe, so the state decided to install a package incinerator to burn the fumes. The local area erupted over the plan. “How dare you build an incinerator in my neighborhood to give my babies cancer!” (Actual quote, BTW.) It was all over the TV news. People threatened – on camera – to respond with shotguns. Watching the poor NYDEC officials being harassed brought back memories of how often they stood by in public hearings and let the public rage at us poor industry or consulting folks.
TCE is one of the best solvents around, especially for degreasing. It dries without leaving any residue. Years ago, it was very widely used, but in 1990 it was put on the Hazardous Air Pollutant list in Title III of the Clean Air Act, and it’s use was greatly diminished.