By Thomas Morrisey
Capital News Service
Federal and state officials are scrutinizing 21 Great Lakes-area schools as part of a nationwide check on whether bad air threatens the health of elementary students.
There are 62 schools nationwide that will be monitored for 60 days as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiative.
An EPA scientist said the program will help determine if the pupils are at risk and guide future testing for potential dangers.
“It’s really hard for us to know. We couldn’t make a list of the worst 60 schools if we wanted to because we just don’t have that information,” said Jaime Wagner, an environmental scientist with the EPA’s regional office in Chicago.
Some areas will be receiving more monitoring than others. In the Great Lakes region, Ohio has the most at six. Pennsylvania has five, Indiana has four, Michigan and New York have two, and Minnesota and Illinois have one. Wisconsin schools will not receive any monitoring.
“It’s partly because Ohio is known for having a lot of industry and big companies,” Wagner said. “But we didn’t make these choices for our region, they were made at the federal headquarters.”
The EPA and state governments lack the resources to do extensive testing at every school, Wagner said. Here is the list of schools to be monitored
The results from the initial group of schools will determine what kinds of areas are most at risk and where future testing should be done, Wagner said. If those results show that poor air quality has a strong potential health impact, the EPA will investigate the sources of the pollution and try to reduce them.
For that reason, a variety of schools were chosen, varying from urban to rural, and in the kinds of pollutants monitored for.
“We took into account some of our regional knowledge” and consulted with the EPA’s equivalent state agencies, she said.
In Michigan, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will install and operate air quality monitors at the two schools. The EPA will provide the equipment and laboratory processing.
The monitors will be delivered in early to mid-May to the EPA and then sent to the DEQ, which should be able to install them within a day or two, Wagner said.
“The monitors are being given to the state,” Wagner said. The equipment and lab work is worth about $73,000 for Michigan.
A DEQ expert said the new equipment is appreciated, but the department doesn’t expect any unforeseen results from the study.
“It may be a good idea to take a look at this a little bit more, but we like to think we’re already evaluating air quality well,” said Laura DeGuire, an environmental quality specialist with the department’s air quality division.
“It’s nice to get more information, but I don’t think we’re going to have any ‘eureka’ moments,” she said.
Based on existing knowledge of each school’s neighborhood, the EPA has decided which toxins to focus on. For example, at Spain Elementary School in Detroit, Mich., the agency selected volatile organic compounds, like benzene and vinyl chloride. At Lincoln Park Elementary School in Norton Shores, Mich. it’s chromium and toxic metal particles.
“Each of these pollutants we’re monitoring for was chosen for a reason,” Wagner said. The compounds can come from a variety of sources, ranging from vehicle emissions to industrial sources.
Spain Elementary is only 1,000 feet from Interstate 75, 2 miles from General Motor Corp.’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant and about a mile from the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Facility, one of the largest incinerators in the world.
If readings at a school show a problem, narrowing down the source of the pollution can be tough, depending on the location, Wagner said.
“It can be difficult, especially in an area like Detroit” because there are many possible sources, Wagner said.
In addition to pollution readings, the monitors will function as weather stations and gather meteorological data like wind directions and speeds that could narrow down where toxins are coming from.
Spain Elementary’s principal said he’s glad that testing is coming.
“We have a lot of asthmatics in the neighborhood, even in the building,” said Ronald Alexander, who said that he suspects the incinerator as a cause for those health problems.
However, Alexander said that he’s disappointed that the EPA hadn’t communicated better with his office.
“This is crazy. One day, I came in and there were some trucks out there,” he said. “I’ve been waiting on one of them to call.”
Alexander said that he tried to initiate contact but hasn’t gotten a call back from the EPA.
But the EPA’s Wagner said, “All the schools were called. It may not have been the principal — it may have been the superintendent. I think in almost all cases we were instructed to contact the superintendent.”
Wagner said the EPA received some calls from concerned parents — mostly in other districts who want their children’s schools monitored.
Those calls and comments will be considered when EPA decides where to do future monitoring.
The program follows a December report of air toxins near schools by USA Today.
Great Lakes Echo reporter Allison Bush contributed to this report.