DATE/TIME: Friday, February 7, 2025, 2:30 pm PLACE: ENR building, room 223 or this Remote Live option.
Moala Bannavti
MIT
Better Building Remediation by Design: Airborne Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) in US Schools
Inhalation is a dominant indoor exposure route for the carcinogenic, neurotoxic compounds polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The USEPA has non-actionable advisory limits, but Vermont is the only state to enforce actionable limits on airborne PCBs in schools built before 1980. Yet even in Vermont, schools undergoing remediation are responsible for 20% of the costs (~ thousands to millions of USD). Here, we present the perceived implications of legally enforceable airborne PCB limits for US schools based on a comprehensive review, stakeholder interviews and our community engagement.
Children who attend low-income public schools are especially susceptible to indoor airborne PCB exposure. Like their affluent counterparts, this population spends most of their day indoors, and about 33% of it inside school buildings. But low-income public schools have a higher frequency of schoolrooms built before 1977. We found schoolrooms built before 1977 have significantly higher airborne PCB concentrations compared to that built after 1977.
Low-income public schools are also more likely to face fiscal barriers when testing and engineering solutions for indoor airborne PCB remediation. It can cost hundreds to thousands of USD to collect and analyze one room air or material emissions sample. For low-income public schools this cost can be exacerbated due to non-targeted source testing that results from poor record-keeping. It is harder for engineers to conduct targeted source identification, and consequentially targeted removal, when a school is unsure of the manufacturing and installment details for its building materials. Even once testing is complete it can cost millions of USD to hire OSHA-certified personnel to properly dispose of PCB bulk waste and hire contractors to repair the building. An enforceable action limit for indoor airborne PCB remediation, in cases of severe contamination, mandates schools to continue education in alternate locations. This change in learning environment can further disadvantage school district stakeholders, disincentivizing them from participating in airborne PCB remediation.
To protect society’s most vulnerable populations, like school-aged children, environmental standards are crucial. However, the systemic burdens placed on low-income public-school districts to obey current and future standards must be given adequate attention as academic, industrial, and political communities move forward in creating legally actionable limits for airborne PCBs in US schools.
Seminar Host:
Lisa Rodenburg
Department of Environmental Sciences, SEBS, Rutgers University