Quanterra Environmental Services

BLOOD FEUD

Opponents of the Times Beach incinerator question the results of a newly released study measuring dioxin levels in nearby residents’ blood

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Nov. 13, 1996

The Missouri Department of Health (DoH) refused on Friday to make public any scientific data relating to its blood study of residents who live near the Times Beach dioxin incinerator.

The Riverfront Times had asked for the data so it could be independently analyzed. The newspaper’s request follows the premature announcement by the DoH last week that indicates dioxin levels in the vicinity of the Superfund site are among lowest ever recorded in the nation.

Daryl Roberts, chief epidemiologist for the state, rejected the possibility of releasing the raw numbers on the grounds of protecting the confidentiality of the subjects involved in the study. “I can’t provide it,” Roberts told the RFT. “The best I can give you is what’s in the news release.”

Pat Costner, a chemist for the environmental group Greenpeace, took exception to Roberts reasoning. “When those samples go into the lab, they’re numbered — they don’t have people’s names on them,” says Costner. “As long as there are no names on the data, it’s not a violation of confidence.”
Environmentalists opposed to the incinerator contend that the DoH’s selective analysis is seriously flawed and that publication of partial results is a violation of scientific standards that require such studies be peer reviewed before release.

“This isn’t science this is bullshit,” says Steve Taylor of the Times Beach Action Group (TBAG). “The methods for testing dioxin blood levels can be complicated or even deceptive. Due to the sensitivity of tests like these and their impact on our community, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) recognizes the importance of having results peer reviewed before publication.” Taylor says the DoH released the limited data in advance of the completion of the study in order to support the position that the incinerator is not a threat to public health.

In order to bolster the purported safety of the incinerator, the DoH restricted its published analysis to 2,3,7,8 TCDD — only one of many types of dioxins and other hazardous materials being burned at Times Beach. “TCDD represents about 10 percent of the total dioxin equivalents in a human body,” says Costner. “Nobody even talks about TCDD anymore because it’s such a minor contributor.”

The agency first tested dioxin levels of nearby residents in September 1995 and then again in July, four months after the incinerator began operating. Based on its analysis, the DoH now claims dioxin blood levels of nearby residents and a comparison group are far below the national average of 3.2 to 10.1 parts per trillion (ppt). Among nearby Times Beach residents, dioxin blood levels allegedly declined from 1.81 ppt to 1.24 ppt, according to the DoH.

Taylor of TBAG debates whether the national average for dioxin blood levels is valid because it is based on discredited or obsolete studies. He also brands the current analysis inconclusive in that it measures only dioxin levels in lipids or fats. In addition, the DoH study excludes those most likely to be effected: children, the elderly and anyone exposed to excessive dioxin levels in the past.

Besides these drawbacks, the DoH estimates are based on only four months of exposure to incineration. That short period, says Taylor, allows for little more than an inhalation study and ignores the long-term potential for ingesting dioxins through the food chain, which experts consider the primary path of exposure.

On this point, DoH and TBAG are in rare agreement. “Yeah, we’re looking at the inhalation exposure at this time,” says Roberts. “However, as another part of the protocol, we have collected vegetable and soil samples … and they are currently in storage.” But the state epidemiologist would not hazard a guess when those samples would be analyzed. “I don’t even have a laboratory that’s going to do the work (yet),” Roberts says. In regard to other chemical contaminants, the DoH press release last week stated that “a cursory look found no increased levels to cause concern.” None of the other data will be released until after the completion of the third blood draw expected within a month of the completion of incineration, according to Roberts. At that late stage, it will be too late to protect public health, if the incinerator is indeed dangerous.

Roberts sees nothing sinister in the timing of the latest announcement, and says it was part of the plan. “We talked to ATSDR and discussed the need to release the first two values publicly to provide information so the community can at least determine whether it believes its had an excessive exposure or not,” says Roberts. “TCDD is the congener of concern in Missouri. Other contaminants of concern have toxic equivalence factors magnitudes lower than TCDD. The best I can say is that we reported out the information as it was provided to us from Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and CDC is the best laboratory in the nation.”

Costner of Greenpeace considers the DoH findings absurd. “If magically all the people around Times Beach were able to buy food with no dioxin in it, and breath air with no dioxin, it would then still take more than two years from September 95 for their TCDD levels to be expected to drop to the levels that they (DoH) are claiming for the second set of samples,” she says. “Are they saying the incinerator is sucking the dioxin out those people’s bodies? That’s what their data suggests. Does that make sense?”

Results of a separate ATSDR study released in September found abnormally high cancer rates among former residents of Times Beach and other Missouri dioxin sites. Interestingly, the DoH blood study, tentatively scheduled for release around the same time, was held up due to delays at the CDC laboratory, according to Roberts. The DoH finally released its optimistic findings in the aftermath of last week’s state and national elections. One day later, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had more good news. A DNR investigation absolved International Technologies (IT) of any possible wrongdoing or conflict of interest regarding its partial ownership of Quanterra Environmental Services (“Twice Burned,” RFT, Aug. 28). The month-long state inquiry found IT and Quanterra guilty of nothing more than poor paperwork.

Meanwhile, the incineration forges ahead with no end in sight. Approximately, 228,000 tons of dioxin-contaminated soil and other materials from 27 sites in Eastern Missouri are expected to be burned before the cleanup is completed. This is more than twice as much waste as originally estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

TWICE BURNED

The lab involved in testing emissions at Times Beach is partly owned by the company that operates the dioxin incinerator

BY C.D. STELZER
first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Aug. 28, 1996

When IT Analytical Services merged with another company and became Quanterra Environmental Services in 1994, the nascent laboratory didn’t even bother to change the phone number. The newly formed company also remained at the same location, 13715 Rider Trail North, in a strip of innocuous one-story offices known as the Business Center in Earth City. The doors to the lab were locked last Saturday, and mirror windows made it impossible to see the interior. Corporation records at the Missouri secretary of state’s office in Jefferson City show that Quanterra was officially dissolved as a business in the state in late 1994.

Nevertheless, the lab took part in important tests of stack emissions conducted in November 1995 at the Times Beach dioxin incinerator, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund cleanup near Eureka (see sidebar). The test results assured the EPA, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the public that the incinerator would operate safely. Based on these test results and other criteria, the DNR issued a requisite permit for the incinerator to operate earlier this year.

Despite the mirror windows at the lab and the smoke now flowing from the incinerator stacks, this much is clear: IT Analytical was owned by International Technology Corp. (IT), and Quanterra, its successor, is still partially controlled by IT–the builder and operator of the Times Beach dioxin incinerator. IT, in turn, has a contract with Syntex, the corporation held liable for disposing of dioxin-contaminated soil at Times Beach
and more than two dozen other sites in Eastern Missouri.

In short, the lab involved in testing incinerator emissions is partly owned by the company that operates the incinerator.

Steve Taylor, an organizer for the Times Beach Action Group (TBAG), objected to the Quanterra-IT relationship in a meeting with high-level EPA officials last Wednesday night at the Hilton Hotel in Frontenac. Robert Martin, the ombudsman from the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, chaired the meeting, which was attended by 15 citizens, an aide to U.S. Rep. Jim Talent (R-2nd) and two other EPA officals.

“We have always had problems with how the trial burn was conducted. Now we have found that IT — the owner of the incinerator — was solely responsible forthe physical custody of the stack samples,” Taylor says. “There has always been a serious problem with credibility with (EPA) Region VII and the information that we’ve received pertaining to this incinerator (see sidebar). To date, this is probably the most blatant example of allowing those who have a financial interest in this cleanup to proceed without any oversight.”

That a laboratory with ties to the incinerator operator would be allowed to handle test samples from a Superfund site is enough to raise concerns, but there is another nettlesome detail that casts doubt on the credibility of the lab work.

In 1990, IT purchased the assets of metaTRACE, a laboratory located at the same address in Earth City and having the same phone number as the two previously cited labs. In the year preceding the acquisition, metaTRACE came under scrutiny for conducting fraudulent tests for the EPA, including faulty soil analysis at Times Beach and other dioxin sites in Eastern Missouri. Ultimately, the EPA canceled metaTRACE’s contracts and two company officials pled guilty to fraud charges. The rescinded contracts had a value of more than $8.7 million.Most of that money was earmarked for EPA Region VII, which includes the St. Louis
area.

After purchasing metaTRACE, IT moved its own analytical operation into the defunct lab’s Earth City office. MetaTRACE didn’t dissolve until 1992, according to Martha Steincamp, head counsel for Region VII. So it appears IT Analytical in some manner shared the facility. IT even hired some of metaTRACE’s employees, Steincamp concedes. When the sign on the front door changed to Quanterra in 1994, IT Engineering conveniently moved in next door. Again, if this is not disturbing enough, state records show that Quanterra was dissolved in December 1994 for failure to file an annual report. Quanterra,in other words, doesn’t even exist as a corporate fiction in the state.

IT created Quanterra in May 1994, when it merged IT Analytical with Enseco, an environmental test lab owned by Corning Inc. Originally, each company held a 50 percent stake in the joint subsidiary. IT’s share of the lab has since decreased to 19 percent, following a $20 million buyout by Corning in January. The change in the percentage of ownership, however, did not take place until after criticalstack-emissions tests were conducted in November. The results of those tests were published in January. Quanterra’s name appears on the title page of that report. Despite the lab’s obvious role in the stack tests and its connections to IT, Bob Feild — the EPA project manager at Times Beach — denied knowledge of Quanterra’s participation at last week’s meeting in Frontenac. Under questioning by Mick Harrison, an attorney for the Citizens Against Dioxin Incineration (CADI), Feild stated: “I’m not aware of any involvement that they (Quanterra) had in the chain of custody.”

Feild’s denial contradicts documents provided to the RFT by the Region VII office last Friday. The documents show a representative of Quanterra signed over stack-emissions samples to an employee of Triangle Laboratories of Durham, N.C. Triangle was charged with analyzing the samples. Nevertheless, a lapse of seven to eight days existed between the time the samples were collected and the point when Quanterra handed them over to the other lab. Environmentalists familiar with the case say the time lapse could invalidate the tests results, if the samples were not stored and handled properly.

In a phone interview on Monday, Feild dismissed all of these issues as inconsequential. Feild argued that it is standard procedure for the incinerator operator to collect test samples. He claimed all aspects of the tests were overseen properly by the EPA and that safeguards prohibited any kind of manipulation of the findings.

“We haven’t done any research as to the current status of a company called Quanterra,” Feild says. “It doesn’t really matter if IT themselves did the work or if they paid a partially owned subsidiary to do the work. The contractual relationship between the operator and Syntex is really not pertinent here. It’s not our concern, and we certainly don’t have that information. We don’t know who Quanterra is under direct contract with.”

The RFT filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the EPA on this matter last Friday. In a letter to EPA regional administrator Dennis Grams last week, Rep. Talent, whose district includes Times Beach, requested “all chain of custody documents for all stack samples collected during the dioxin stack test, which took place in November of 1995.” A spokesperson for Talent could not be reached for comment. Spokespersons for IT, Quanterra and Corning did not return calls placed to them. An official at the EPA’s Criminal Investigations Division in Kansas City would not confirm or deny whether an inquiry had been initiated into the matter. This latest controversy follows an announcement in July that the completion date for the incineration has been pushed back to early next year because an estimated 70 tons of additional
contaminated dirt will need to be burned. Since initiating operations in March, the incinerator has been plagued by a series of emergency releases that have spewed unknown quantities of untreated dioxin-contaminated particulate matter into the atmosphere. The EPA’s own dioxin draft reassessment concludes that dioxin is a likely human carcinogen and is responsible for reproductive and immunological problems. EPA research further indicates that everyone is already overexposed to the toxin, and incineration is one of the sources of the pollution.