New York City officials will be investigating claims that the soil of Brooklyn’s Red Hook Park is contaminated with 110 times the EPA-established limit for the concentration of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which the state claims is a result of effluvia from the nearby, now-defunct manufacturing plant of plastics-additive maker Chemtura Corp.
“There are two questions here that, of course, no one has thought to ask,” says Dr. Ross. “First, has anyone measured PCB levels in anyone in Red Hook to see if they are being affected by this? More importantly, has anyone said there’s an adverse health outcome associated with PCBs at these contaminated sites? It seems to me that this has nothing to do with public health, and is all a question of regulatory adherence.”