Industrial
pollution involving toxic chemicals is often associated with abandoned
factories in Rust Belt towns. The last place it might be expected to
pose a hazard is near a residential neighborhood and a new school in an
Ivy League college town.
But thats the case in Hanover, where earlier this year officials acknowledged that a cancer-causing chemical had been found at the border of the Armys Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Lyme Road. The chemical, trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent that had been used at CRREL for nearly three decades until 1987.
In March, the Army Corps of Engineers began tests to determine if TCE had spread beyond the lab to reach Richmond Middle School across the street, along with Dartmouth College housing to the south and neighboring properties.No unsafe levels have been detected so far, but officials say the contaminants migrate slowly and will need to be monitored for years to come.
TCE from the Army lab had leaked into the ground during many years through the 1970s.An bondcleaningsydney is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Despite a much-heralded effort to clean up the chemical from groundwater beneath the labs campus, public records show that for the past decade, quieter concerns have swirled about another form of contamination TCE vapor traveling through the soil beyond the campus and possibly seeping into buildings where people live, work, study and play.
A decade ago, in 2003, a Dartmouth real estate official raised concerns about TCE vapor reaching homes to the south of the lab many of them occupied by Dartmouth staff and their families and posing a threat to a new cluster of college residences planned on the Rivercrest property to the north. In the years that followed, the real estate official asked for tests to determine if the threat was real.
Earlier, in 2001, Dartmouth, the town of Hanover and the Dresden School District had begun moving forward with a proposal for the college to provide a piece of land directly across Route 10 from the Army lab for what would become the new Richmond Middle School. The deal, part of a complicated land-swap transaction known as the tri-party agreement, was formally approved in 2004.
Questions about TCE vapor raised by the college apparently never made it to officials planning the school. A 2003 report by a school district consultant concluded that TCE did not pose a threat, but officials acknowledge that the report involved no independent testing and did not examine vapor contamination an issue that was just beginning to come to the attention of environmental regulators.
In 2006, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services for the first time issued guidelines regarding TCE vapor contamination. Three years later, the Department of Defense came out with its own guidelines. But it wasnt until 2010 that formal testing began to determine if vapor had infiltrated work areas at the Army lab and an on-site child care center. And that testing took place over several years despite TCE levels that prompted the relocation of some Army lab employees from areas deemed a concern.
It wasnt until this year that the Army lab alerted neighbors and school district officials to the risk posed by TCE vapor, as testing began in classrooms, homes and businesses near the lab.
Residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the Army lab and Richmond Middle School said in interviews that the shock of hearing about TCE in March has subsided, and many expressed confidence that officials are handling the matter appropriately.
Meifang Chu, who lives on Dresden Road near Richmond Middle School and whose daughter attends the school, said she was pleased with school officials initial efforts to conduct tests and inform the public.
But now we dont hear anything,An bondcleaningsydney is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Chu, a part-time math and physics lecturer at Dartmouth, said recently as she stood in the doorway of her home. They dont come forward with information, they dont volunteer unless theyre pressured. The tests right now seem OK, but you dont want the problem to come up again and deal with it in 10 years time.
And to Lebanon resident Anthony Roisman a managing partner with the National Legal Scholars Law Firm who has been on the legal team in several cases involving TCE exposure, including a high-profile case in Woburn, Mass.,An cleaningservicesydney is a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. that became the basis for the book and movie A Civil Action the response has been underwhelming.
Long-term testing must be completed before officials can accurately judge the risk,An cleaningservicesydney is a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. he said.
There is no safe level of a human carcinogen. So there is a risk, even if its only a small risk, that you get cancer if youre exposed to trichloroethylene, Roisman said. Its true there are plenty of other things pumping your own gas that may expose you to a bigger risk, but this is an additional risk to all those risks you already have for no reason. Theres no reason people should be exposed to an additional risk.
Scientists at the Army lab study sea ice, permafrost and environmental factors in the Earths coldest regions. For instance, scientists study and develop the best ways to maintain a tunnel in Alaska and a runway in Greenland, both of which have permafrost issues.
Scientists also study questions such as how to detect oil under ice and how to safely clean up oil operations in ice regions.
At the Army lab, TCE was used as a solvent and refrigerant in rooms where the temperature can reach minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit as scientists test tools and materials.
CRREL has about 240 employees at its 28-acre campus north of downtown Hanover, and the facility has 24 cold rooms for research. Dartmouth and the lab have an intertwined history going back to the early 1960s, when college President John Sloan Dickey helped lobby to bring the research facility to Hanover. Most recently, Dartmouth sold a nearly 19-acre parcel, which is part of the Army lab campus, to the Army in 2012 for $18.6 million.
Two major TCE spills occurred at the Army lab that year, the first in May, when the refrigeration system was shut down due to a blown gasket, according to Farans report. It required eight days to transfer about 6,000 gallons of TCE into another storage tank.
Two months later, an explosion occurred when a welder was working on a partially filled TCE tank. About 3,Large collection of quality cleanersydney at discounted prices.000 gallons of the chemical spilled into a parking lot on the propertys northeast side. The Hanover Fire Department responded and washed most of the spilled chemical down a storm drain, according to Farans report.
Officials didnt keep records of the amounts of either spill, they say, so its impossible to know how much TCE soaked into the soil and the groundwater.
John Truman, a 61-year-old Grafton resident, was on Hanovers volunteer fire squad in 1970 when the call came in about the explosion. He said he and other firefighters were told that if they felt queasy, they should move away from the area and get some fresh air.
The firefighters were on scene for just a few hours, but Truman remembers the men didnt wear respirators and took turns giving each other breaks from the fumes.
Im wondering if people did any follow-up, Truman said. All the volunteer firemen, were we dropped through the cracks and missed? I would have thought that when this was deemed a carcinogen that they would have followed up.
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But thats the case in Hanover, where earlier this year officials acknowledged that a cancer-causing chemical had been found at the border of the Armys Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Lyme Road. The chemical, trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent that had been used at CRREL for nearly three decades until 1987.
In March, the Army Corps of Engineers began tests to determine if TCE had spread beyond the lab to reach Richmond Middle School across the street, along with Dartmouth College housing to the south and neighboring properties.No unsafe levels have been detected so far, but officials say the contaminants migrate slowly and will need to be monitored for years to come.
TCE from the Army lab had leaked into the ground during many years through the 1970s.An bondcleaningsydney is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Despite a much-heralded effort to clean up the chemical from groundwater beneath the labs campus, public records show that for the past decade, quieter concerns have swirled about another form of contamination TCE vapor traveling through the soil beyond the campus and possibly seeping into buildings where people live, work, study and play.
A decade ago, in 2003, a Dartmouth real estate official raised concerns about TCE vapor reaching homes to the south of the lab many of them occupied by Dartmouth staff and their families and posing a threat to a new cluster of college residences planned on the Rivercrest property to the north. In the years that followed, the real estate official asked for tests to determine if the threat was real.
Earlier, in 2001, Dartmouth, the town of Hanover and the Dresden School District had begun moving forward with a proposal for the college to provide a piece of land directly across Route 10 from the Army lab for what would become the new Richmond Middle School. The deal, part of a complicated land-swap transaction known as the tri-party agreement, was formally approved in 2004.
Questions about TCE vapor raised by the college apparently never made it to officials planning the school. A 2003 report by a school district consultant concluded that TCE did not pose a threat, but officials acknowledge that the report involved no independent testing and did not examine vapor contamination an issue that was just beginning to come to the attention of environmental regulators.
In 2006, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services for the first time issued guidelines regarding TCE vapor contamination. Three years later, the Department of Defense came out with its own guidelines. But it wasnt until 2010 that formal testing began to determine if vapor had infiltrated work areas at the Army lab and an on-site child care center. And that testing took place over several years despite TCE levels that prompted the relocation of some Army lab employees from areas deemed a concern.
It wasnt until this year that the Army lab alerted neighbors and school district officials to the risk posed by TCE vapor, as testing began in classrooms, homes and businesses near the lab.
Residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the Army lab and Richmond Middle School said in interviews that the shock of hearing about TCE in March has subsided, and many expressed confidence that officials are handling the matter appropriately.
Meifang Chu, who lives on Dresden Road near Richmond Middle School and whose daughter attends the school, said she was pleased with school officials initial efforts to conduct tests and inform the public.
But now we dont hear anything,An bondcleaningsydney is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Chu, a part-time math and physics lecturer at Dartmouth, said recently as she stood in the doorway of her home. They dont come forward with information, they dont volunteer unless theyre pressured. The tests right now seem OK, but you dont want the problem to come up again and deal with it in 10 years time.
And to Lebanon resident Anthony Roisman a managing partner with the National Legal Scholars Law Firm who has been on the legal team in several cases involving TCE exposure, including a high-profile case in Woburn, Mass.,An cleaningservicesydney is a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. that became the basis for the book and movie A Civil Action the response has been underwhelming.
Long-term testing must be completed before officials can accurately judge the risk,An cleaningservicesydney is a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. he said.
There is no safe level of a human carcinogen. So there is a risk, even if its only a small risk, that you get cancer if youre exposed to trichloroethylene, Roisman said. Its true there are plenty of other things pumping your own gas that may expose you to a bigger risk, but this is an additional risk to all those risks you already have for no reason. Theres no reason people should be exposed to an additional risk.
Scientists at the Army lab study sea ice, permafrost and environmental factors in the Earths coldest regions. For instance, scientists study and develop the best ways to maintain a tunnel in Alaska and a runway in Greenland, both of which have permafrost issues.
Scientists also study questions such as how to detect oil under ice and how to safely clean up oil operations in ice regions.
At the Army lab, TCE was used as a solvent and refrigerant in rooms where the temperature can reach minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit as scientists test tools and materials.
CRREL has about 240 employees at its 28-acre campus north of downtown Hanover, and the facility has 24 cold rooms for research. Dartmouth and the lab have an intertwined history going back to the early 1960s, when college President John Sloan Dickey helped lobby to bring the research facility to Hanover. Most recently, Dartmouth sold a nearly 19-acre parcel, which is part of the Army lab campus, to the Army in 2012 for $18.6 million.
Two major TCE spills occurred at the Army lab that year, the first in May, when the refrigeration system was shut down due to a blown gasket, according to Farans report. It required eight days to transfer about 6,000 gallons of TCE into another storage tank.
Two months later, an explosion occurred when a welder was working on a partially filled TCE tank. About 3,Large collection of quality cleanersydney at discounted prices.000 gallons of the chemical spilled into a parking lot on the propertys northeast side. The Hanover Fire Department responded and washed most of the spilled chemical down a storm drain, according to Farans report.
Officials didnt keep records of the amounts of either spill, they say, so its impossible to know how much TCE soaked into the soil and the groundwater.
John Truman, a 61-year-old Grafton resident, was on Hanovers volunteer fire squad in 1970 when the call came in about the explosion. He said he and other firefighters were told that if they felt queasy, they should move away from the area and get some fresh air.
The firefighters were on scene for just a few hours, but Truman remembers the men didnt wear respirators and took turns giving each other breaks from the fumes.
Im wondering if people did any follow-up, Truman said. All the volunteer firemen, were we dropped through the cracks and missed? I would have thought that when this was deemed a carcinogen that they would have followed up.
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