In a heated two-hour meeting last week at Malibu High School, an environmental consultant hired by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) fielded questions from irate parents and said tests for contaminants on the campus should be finished by Nov. 22.
At the meeting, hosted by the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), concerned parents and teachers pressed for a timetable on the testing.
“How long is it going to take to know we are safe?” asked one mother.
The consultant, Mark Katchen of the Los Angeles-based Phylmar Group, told parents preliminary testing should be completed by Nov. 22.
On Monday, Katchen said in a telephone interview that the district plans to go beyond what parents are asking for.
Katchen said it plans to test air in each classroom of the main middle school building (Building E) for polychlorinated bythenals (PCBs), which the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists as “probable human carcinogens.” Katchen added that “each of the 209” known unique PCB compounds would be included in the testing.
Building materials such as caulk and interior paint will also be tested. The district will also focus, he said, on other potential hazards such as carbon dioxide, radon (the Malibu area has high naturally occurring levels of radon), ventilation and potential impacts of electromagnetic fields due to potential exposure to Wi-Fi units and power panels.
The testing plan was being reviewed as of Tuesday by the L.A. County Department of Public Health, Katchen said, and he hoped for approval by Wednesday, Oct. 30.
One question neither Katchen nor district officials present at the meeting answered was why parents were not informed in 2011, when 48 truckloads of contaminated soil were removed from the middle school quad area.
Parents also questioned why tests were not taken this summer, when construction workers dug trenches two to five feet deep in two middle school classrooms to install a conduit.
District officials said they could not answer those questions at this time.
Bridget Leonard, a theater teacher who first complained of a musty smell in classroom 1 of the Middle School Building in 2010, reported that the problem worsened after the digging this summer. That was according to a 24-page “Industrial Hygiene Survey” commissioned by the district and prepared on Oct. 18 of this year by hygienist Vicki Uchida of environmental firm Executive Environmental. Leonard told Uchida she developed a continuous cough and she was having more symptoms than she reported to the district in 2010.
Uchida suggested all classrooms in the main middle school building (building E) be deep-cleaned and more “housekeeping” be done to avoid dust accumulation and poor room ventilation.
Dr. Paul Rosenfeld is an environmental consultant with the Santa Monica firm Soil Water Air Protection Enterprise (SWAPE) who has been hired by a group of Malibu parents to recommend testing protocols and precautionary measures.
“The district acted incredibly irresponsible in 2011 when they removed 1,179 yards of contaminated soil without identifying the source of contamination,” Rosenfeld said Monday.
In a letter to the school district on Oct. 21, Rosenfeld urged that tests be performed on multiple other buildings adjacent to the middle school quad, including the Mako Building, the Thresher Building, the school library and the school office. He said no one from the district had responded to his letter.
“If the district doesn’t follow my recommendations as outlined in the letter I sent on October 21, 2013, I will say that the district is acting irresponsibly again,” he said.
Katchen, in a telephone conversation Tuesday, said he had spoken weeks ago with Rosenfeld and planned to respond to his letter in an email Tuesday evening.
Katchen said he wanted to stress that first tests constituted an “initial sampling plan.”
“It depends on what we find,” he said. “This is not the end of the evaluation process.”
Katchen also reiterated a comment he made at the Thursday meeting, when he told parents he would feel comfortable sending his four grandchildren to Malibu High School currently.
“In PCBs, you’re looking at chronic long-term exposure issues,” he said. “For the next few weeks or so it’s a short time.
“So again, we’ll have more information [but] I’m expressing my opinion at this point that it’s not clearly a problem.”