I am Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, and I represent the Upper West Side and parts of Hell’s Kitchen/Clinton of Manhattan.

According to the EPA’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the Agency’s potential reassessment of its current authorizations for PCB use, the agency is planning to change the level of 50 parts per million in caulk, which “may be widespread and may be an undue burden for schools if the exclusion continues at 50 ppm.” I stand in opposition to raising the current regulatory level of PCBs in caulk, and frankly, am appalled that such an undertaking is being attempted by the EPA, which blithely states that the 50 ppm standard, which has been in use since 1979, is based almost entirely on economic considerations. The dangers of PCBs are well documented, and people gain exposure to them through ingestion of PCB-laced food and also through inhalation and physical touching of PCBs that chip off from caulk present in school and other buildings constructed using the chemical before its ban. PCBs have been observed to cause cardiovascular, endocrine, immune and cognitive damage in addition to other complications. In children, whose developing systems are exposed to PCBs in schools throughout the school year, exposure has been additionally linked with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), increased aggression and many other symptoms that constitute a serious impediment to cognitive development and learning. Because children are of smaller size than adults and have bodies that are still developing, their absorption rate is greater than that of adults and can cause more damage in the future. While it is economic concerns that seem to be the driving force behind this proposed regulation change, we must not put aside the steady-growing and already conclusive body of evidence that PCB-exposure at 50 parts per million levels has a measurably harmful consequence. At a time when the EPA is broadly reassessing PCB standards using updates of our scientific understanding of these toxins to strengthen existing safeguards and eliminate some authorized PCB uses altogether, this specific proposal stands shockingly apart in its intent.

My involvement in the still-emerging crisis of PCB contamination in New York City schools began in 2008 with news that caulk material containing PCBs had been detected at P.S. 199, an elementary school in my district that was constructed in 1968, more than a decade before the EPA banned this substance through the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Of the eight different locations tested for PCBs by the Daily News as part of an investigative story, P.S. 199 had the highest recorded concentration levels. Parents and members of the general public subsequently learned that the Department of Education (DOE) had performed testing immediately after an extensive window replacement project had taken place, which did not follow the protocols promulgated by the New York State Education Department and which used inadequate safety procedures in the cleanup and waste removal and disposal process. This led to a hastily scheduled emergency cleanup in response to an outcry by the parents, elected officials and the public.

This experience, and the growing realization that this PCB issue was truly a citywide phenomenon led me to introduce legislation in April 2009 requiring the testing of PCBs in all schools constructed or rehabilitated within the 1950-1980 time period in which PCBs were used by January 1, 2012 and to have 50% of all testing completed by July 1, 2011. Assembly bill A. 7556-A has now attracted over twenty additional sponsors from all five boroughs and remains the best available option for systemically assessing the risk that New York City’s schoolchildren, as well as faculty and staff have been and continue to be exposed to at least ten months out of the year.

Following the January 19, 2010 announcement that the DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had agreed to a five-school pilot program, I lauded this accomplishment as a positive first step. Since then, I have become increasingly concerned about both the methodology and the standards that will be employed in these pilot tests. I am concerned whether the air testing will be of the passive or active type, the lack of testing of the caulking itself, and the limited number of schools involved in the pilot program. Surely these five schools cannot serve as the last word on the status of contamination in hundreds upon hundreds of school buildings. And if the EPA changes the level of PCB’s allowed to remain in air and caulking in school buildings, then the dilution of standards, based on economic and not scientific concerns, might render this pilot a less-than-helpful exercise.

While I continue to advance this legislation in the New York State Assembly, I am deeply disturbed by the purpose of this hearing, which is to reduce our nation’s environmental and safety standards regarding PCB contamination in caulk from 50 ppm to an undetermined higher concentration, which would preemptively reduce the cleanup and mitigation costs associated with this contamination. It would have been better had the EPA widely publicized today’s hearing rather than solely relying on its publication in the Federal Register. Sadly, similar cost-based arguments, rather than rigorous science-based reasoning, were often employed by the Bush administration in its abdication of environmental responsibility. During the Bush years, scientific analysis was routinely subjugated by industry concerns, both outside and within our nation’s environmental regulatory agency. This proposed change of allowable PCB levels is, however, especially disappointing coming from the EPA’s current leadership, and I believe the EPA should withdraw its proposal to reconsider the use of the 50 ppm level for PCBs in caulk.

Whether we are assessing results for the five-school pilot, or take the eventual step of examining the safety of all locations that underwent construction in this three-decade range, we should maintain the standards currently in place and not predetermine the results before these tests can be conducted. If, as many activists believe, the tests are returned with negative or insufficient PCB levels to warrant remediation efforts, parents, teachers and community members will openly speculate as to whether or not they would have been returned positive under the previous and more stringent criteria.

For the sake of students, parents, teachers, staff and the clearly sincere effort of the EPA to come to a better understanding of the effects of PCBs on our nation, I urge the EPA to resume the path of proper environmental stewardship and ensure the future safety and health of those within our public school ecosystem.