Tag: lead

  • Painting Contractors

    What is a Pollutant? 

    Any material, substance, liquid, product, etc… which is introduced into an environment for other than its intended use / purpose. Fresh water, cheese, and milk have all been classified as pollutants by Insurance Carriers under various circumstances. 

    Many non-environmental contractors assume that claims arising from operations are covered by the general liability policy. However, claims resulting from a “pollution incident” are excluded from most general liability policies, which leaves many of these contractors exposed to potentially uncovered claims. What pollutants are impacting your business?

    Environmental Exposures Impacting Painting Contractors 

    May include, but are not limited to: Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Federal Law of 2010;  Disturbing / impacting / exacerbating asbestos, lead, mold;  PFOA’s;  Overspray of paints and other pollutants used;  Spill of materials used during transit;  Spill of materials while at a job site;  Spills from mobile storage tanks; Sick building syndrome created from drying of paint / off-gas;  Lead abatement services;  Storm water runoff;  Ground water contamination; Underground utilities;  No auditing of waste handling and disposal companies; Natural resource damages;  Vapor intrusion;  Waste waters generated from cleaning equipment;  Release of oils/fuels from equipment;  Vandalism; Spills during loading, unloading and transportation of paint;  Warehousing raw materials and finished paint;  Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) chemicals; Products pollution;  Damaging fuel tanks, hydraulic fluid lines, boilers, utilities, etc. while power washing at a customer’s location;  Faulty hose hook-up and/or pump failures;  Accidentally using contaminated water while prepping;  Odor drifting;  Containment system failures;  3rd party nuisance claims;  and more…

    Painting Claim Scenarios

    1. While painting the interior of a nursing home, the contractor was sued by over a dozen residents alleging that they were overcome by fumes as a result of inadequate venting. Total claim was over $200,000.
    2. While working at a jobsite, a painting contractor accidentally punctured a small water pipe which was located behind the wall. The contractor did not notice the water leak, which lead to a substantial amount of mold grew between the walls. The contractor was held responsible for clean-up of the mold as well as third party bodily injury claims, which totaled over $150,000. 
    3. A child who lived in an apartment building constructed in the 1970s was diagnosed with lead poisoning. The renovation of the building by a painting contractor allegedly caused unsafe conditions for the child, and the child’s parents filed a bodily injury claim against the painting contractor. As part of the claim investigation, an expert was hired and other potential causes for the lead poisoning were discovered. As a result, the painting contractor wasn’t held liable. However, the contractor still accumulated over $50,000 in legal fees fighting the claim. 
    4. After applying a coat of paint to a new commercial structure, a sudden rainstorm that wasn’t forecasted washed paint from the exterior of the building into the surrounding ground. Cost to remediate the paint from the soil was roughly $40,000. 
    5. A painting contractor stored drums of spent solvents at a jobsite.  While employees were moving the drums, the fork lift operator accidentally knocked the drums over.  Before the spill was contained, solvent ran across the property and onto neighboring properties and into a small creek.  Claims for cleanup costs, third party bodily injury and property damage, legal fees, natural resource damages along with third party business interruption costs exceeded $500,000.
    6.  A painting contractor was hired to perform work at a property that had just been restored from flooding / file. Several months after the job had been completed, mold was discovered between the walls where the painting contractor had worked, and a suit was filed.  After further investigation, it was found that the mold was due to a failure made by the restoration contractor. The painting contractor was removed from the suit. However, they had already expensed over $25,000 in legal defense fighting the claim. 
    7. A painting contractor hired a waste hauler to transport its left-over paints and solvents to a 3rd party disposal site. The waste hauler got into an accident which caused the contents of the tanker to be released directly into a creek.  Under Federal law (CERCLA) you own your waste from cradle-to-grave, so the painting contractor had to pay their apportionment of the remediation costs, which totaled $300,000.     

    Pressure washing Claim Scenarios

    1. A painting contractor was sued when mold was discovered at a commercial building a year after they had completed a painting job. While cleaning the area with high pressure hoses, the painter unknowingly punctured a water line. Lover time the water built up insured the building walls, which caused mold to develop. The contractor was responsible for remediation, 3rd party bodily injury and property damage, as well as 3rd party business interruption, as the customer had to suspend operations while the mold was being remediated. Total cost of the claim exceeded $600,000. 
    2. A contractor used high pressure cleaning equipment to clean insured an industrial building prior to painting. It was later found that the HVAC system was home to a dangerous fungus, which spread throughout the building during the cleaning. A number of employees in the building became infected with the fungus. Some of which were critically infected. The contractor was found liable for the spread of the fungus and faced bodily injury and property damage claims in excess of $1 million.
    3. While cleaning a commercial production area prior to painting, the contractor unknowingly sprayed areas coated with lead based paint. Lucky for the contractor, the exacerbation of the lead based paint was discovered shortly thereafter, preventing any claims for 3rd party bodily injury. The total cost to survey and remediate the lead paint was $50,000.  
    4. 6-months after completing a job, the customer discovered mold in their building. The customer sued the painting contractor for the cost of remediation. After further investigation, it was determined that the painting contractor was not responsible for the mold, and was removed from the suit. However, they had already expensed over $20,000 in legal fees. 

    Overlooked Benefits of Environmental Liability Insurance

    • Defense Costs:  Environmental liabilities are relatively new and very litigious.  Even if you do nothing wrong you can still get named in a suit and have to expense defense costs i.e. legal fees, environmental investigations, etc.  
    •  Claim Management:  All policies come with specialists to assist you in handling a claim.  Who is in charge of communications, public relations, emergency response, government compliance, financial management, third party claims for bodily injury, property damage, natural resource damages….?
    • Third Party Liability:  The majority of the time the cost to clean up the environmental problem/s is far less than the associated claims that come in from third parties for bodily injury, property damage and business interruption.  You need to look at your client’s and neighbors that can be impacted if you or a sub-contractor/vendor cause an environmental loss.          

    Environmental Liability Insurance Coverages

    Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL)

    Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL) insurance protects the insured should they cause or exacerbate an environmental condition while performing their contractor services.  CPL protects the insured for covered operations performed by or on behalf of the insured, while operating away from any premises they own, rent, lease or occupy.

    CPL can be offered on a claims made or occurrence basis.  Coverage can be written on a job specific basis, or on a blanket basis to cover all the work performed by the insured.  Most policies can be endorsed to cover transportation pollution liability, mold, lead, and asbestos, defense outside the limits, off-site disposal coverage, and more. Contractors incorporating CPL coverage as part of their risk transfer strategy, drive their growth and profits by marketing the benefits CPL coverage affords in reducing job interruption due to environmental issues.  A major environmental liability exposure faced by all contactors lies in who they are doing business with.  If there is an environmental loss at a job site, innocent contractors can and do get named in lawsuits.  Do your subs/vendors have CPL insurance if they cause an environmental loss?

    Environmental Impairment Liability (EIL) 

    EIL is for contractors that own, rent, lease, operate or have any other insurable interest in real property (a fixed site facility such as a shop, batch plants, cement manufacturing/mixing plant….) that can be susceptible to pollution liabilities that actually or allegedly originated from the insured property. 

    Coverage can include: Pre-existing unknown pollution, new pollution conditions, first party on-site clean up, third party bodily injury, property damage, business interruption and extra expense, off site cleanup costs, legal defense expenses, transportation pollution liability, offsite disposal coverage….  Multi year term policies can be negotiated. 

    Transportation Pollution Liability

    Generally, Business Auto or Truckers policies will exclude pollution losses arising from spills or other releases of transported cargo. Transportation pollution liability affords coverage during the loading, unloading and transportation, for a spill, release or sudden upset and overturn of transported cargo.    

    Incidental Professional Liability 

    Professional exposures are generally excluded from General Liability and monoline Contractors Pollution Liability policies. In the course of their normal operations, contractors face all types of professional exposures. They may make slight adjustments on the provided plans to get the job done properly, they may supervise subcontractors, or provide other recommendations which could potentially be questioned in the event of a claim. In the event of a professional claim, will your insurance provide coverage? 

     

  • Lead Contamination And An Aging Infrastructure

    environmental Strategist, between the lines:  The fallout from the Flint, Mi. lead contaminated water crisis is putting the spot light on businesses / municipalities that deliver potable (drinking) water.  Flint estimates it would take $55,000,000 to replace their lead pipes.

    The potable water industry is what some would classify as highly regulated.  However, back when lead pipes were used to supply potable water it was not so regulated because for the most part we did not understand the dangers of lead.

    As the article links below highlight there are many ways environmental problems can flow into potable water and lead is not a Flint environmental exposure but a nationwide environmental exposure.

    A well-known fact is, as our infrastructure (water, sewer, storm water, roads, bridges, dams…) continues to deteriorate, it creates huge environmental exposures for business and municipalities that use / maintain them.  The environmental exposure created by infrastructure deterioration grows with each passing day.

    eS Risk Transfer Strategy:  Businesses and municipalities as part of “Best Practices” must have a financial assurance strategy to address potential liabilities created by deteriorating infrastructure.  A financial strategy to address legal fees, investigation & clean up costs, third party bodily injury, third party property damage, third party business income, disposal costs….  While pollution insurance won’t cover the cost to replace the lead pipes it can cover a lot of associated costs that come from environmental exposures created by deteriorating infrastructure.  Since environmental liabilities are generally a severity versus frequency issue, you must assess the economies of scale afforded by transferring your risk to a third party insurer versus self-insurance.

    Ohio village issued 2nd state EPA violation for lead problems

    CLEVELAND | BY KIM PALMER

    Ohio environmental officials gave a northeast Ohio village another violation for failure to submit two weekly water reports and not communicating test results to homeowners after elevated levels of lead were found in some of the drinking water in January.

    The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s Tuesday notice is the latest complaint levied by the state against Sebring, 60 miles (97 km) southeast of Cleveland, after the agency found village officials failed to properly warn residents about water chemistry that caused corrosion in piping leading to 28 homes and one school building in January.

    An Ohio EPA spokeswoman said if Sebring does not fix the problem, the state agency could fine the village or involve the Ohio Attorney General on the criminal side. However, the spokeswoman does not expect either to occur.

    Sebring’s manager, Richard Giroux, said the village believes it was meeting all the state EPA’s deadlines and the discrepancy may have arisen from the initial use of an incorrect address by state officials. The Ohio EPA spokeswoman said miscommunication was not the issue.

    The Ohio EPA first reported elevated lead levels to Sebring officials on Dec. 3. The notice in Ohio follows the controversy over dangerously high lead levels in the water of Flint, Michigan, which has led to calls for the resignation of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

    Schools in the Sebring district were closed for three days in January after two samples from Sebring’s McKinley Junior/Senior High School tested with lead levels above federal standards.

    Sebring officials must submit weekly pH and alkalinity monitoring results reports, offer free water quality testing to all residents upon request and provide bottled water or filtration systems to homes where results are over the federal allowable level.

    “When EPA staff followed up this weekend to conduct cautionary testing on a few homes that tested above the federal allowable level, it became evident that the village had not notified these residents of their recent test results as quickly and thoroughly as they should have,” Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler said.

    Water testing results submitted Tuesday found that 664 of 698 samples have tested below the federal allowable level and test results confirm that the village’s water plant is lead free.

    A report by the EPA said that follow-up tests confirm the water coming into the homes is under federal allowable limits and that running water for several minutes successfully eliminates any detectable lead in the water.

    Lead water pipes still a concern in Boston area

    A piece of an old lead water pipe sat next to a new copper pipe on a Lansing, Mich., street.
    DAVE WASINGER/LANSING STATE JOURNAL – A piece of an old lead water pipe sat next to a new copper pipe on a Lansing, Mich., street.

    By GLOBE STAFF 

    Despite drastic improvements in the quality of drinking water over the last few decades, lead is still a concern in thousands of Boston-area homes where water is running through older pipes, officials said.

    More than 20,000 buildings in the area — many built before 1940, when the older service lines were phased out — are fed by lead service lines that run from the main municipal water line into a house.

    Malden is the community with the highest percentage of service lines made of lead; 47 percent of the city’s 11,682 service lines are lead, according to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s best estimates. The next highest rates are in Medford (28 percent), Somerville (22 percent), Marlborough (19 percent), and Winthrop (11 percent).

    Concerns over the amount of lead in water have been reignited in the wake of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., where dangerous lead levels were recently discovered in the water.

    “We’ve been working at this problem as a society for many years, and we’ve actually made a great deal of progress. But there’s certainly more work to be done, which is why we take this so seriously,” said Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, planning and sustainability director at the MWRA.

    The MWRA sends water to 51 cities and towns, including Boston, reaching about 2.2 million people and 5,500 industrial users primarily in Eastern Massachusetts.

    The MWRA says that its water is virtually lead-free when it leaves reservoirs on its way into communities. Water mains, the large pipes that carry water through each town and city, also do not add lead to the water, the authority said. Those mains are made of concrete, iron, or steel.

    In Massachusetts, the installation of lead service lines — narrower pipes that connect mains to individual properties — stopped largely by the 1940s, officials believe.

    It is also possible that homes built before 1986 may have lead solder in their interior plumbing and that faucets made through 2013 may contain enough lead to contribute to elevated lead levels in water.

    The MWRA estimates only about 5 percent of service lines it sends water to are made of lead.

    However, MWRA officials said their records may not be accurate. For example, their records show only about 100 lead service connections in Boston. But the Boston Water and Sewer Commission says there are about 3,500.

    Steps have been taken in recent years to replace lead service lines. But there are obstacles. Replacing them can be expensive for homeowners.

    Joseph Wood, owner of Boston Standard Plumbing, said he does about one lead service line replacement every other month, compared with about two per month 15 years ago.

    He said that the average project costs between $3,500 and $5,000, but the city of Boston offers subsidies and financing that can make such project more affordable for homeowners.

    Lynn Thorp, national campaigns director at Clean Water Action, said more should be done to replace the lines.

    She said that water utilities have not made replacement a priority because there are no regulations requiring them to.

    “We need water systems to do an inventory of lead service lines and come up with a comprehensive plan for how to get lead service lines out of their systems,” Thorp said.

    She advised all residents to have their water tested.

    Philippe Grandjean, a Harvard environmental health professor who has studied lead toxicity, said that while progress has been made to reduce lead levels in water nationwide, residents should remain cautious.

    “It doesn’t mean that we’re safe and that we’ve done enough,” he said. “Every community in this country should be aware that there is a very strong likelihood that there is lead somewhere in the water system.”

    Inside buildings, lead pipes are rare, but pipes made of other materials may be held together with lead solder (which was commonly used before 1986). Brass pipes, fittings, and faucets can contain lead, too.

    One simple but effective measure to reduce the risk: Run cold water for 15 to 30 seconds if the pipes have been unused for a while to clear lead buildup. Experts also advise avoiding the use of more-corrosive hot water from the tap.

    The MWRA, for its part, alters the chemistry of its water, a practice that began in 1996, to make it less corrosive and less likely to cause lead to leach into the water.

    Lead poisoning can cause serious damage to the brain, kidneys, nervous system, and red blood cells, potentially affecting physical development and the ability to learn.

    Small amounts of lead in adults are not thought to be harmful, but even low levels of lead can be dangerous to infants and children.

    “If the lead causes brain damage, that is going to stay for the rest of the child’s life,” Grandjean said. “You only get one chance to develop the brain.”

    Lead poisoning can also be caused by exposure to lead in soil, paint, household dust, food, and certain types of pottery, porcelain, and pewter.

    While standards exist for what is considered a safe level of lead in the blood as well as in drinking water, experts in recent years have stressed that no level is truly safe.

    To monitor lead levels in water, the MWRA conducts tests in about 450 homes across its system annually. Each must meet criteria that makes them likely to have high levels of lead.

    The US Environmental Protection Agency requires that no more than 10 percent of the samples contain levels of lead above 15 parts per billion or corrective measures will be mandated. In 2015, only 2.3 percent of MWRA samples were above the threshold.

    That’s a dramatic reduction from when testing began in 1992. At that time, more than 40 percent of samples had lead levels above the threshold.

    Communities with at least one home that tested above the standard in 2015 were: Boston, Malden, Melrose, Milton, Newton, Somerville, Stoneham, and Winthrop.

    One Malden home had lead levels of 584 parts per billion, by far the worst found.

    “While system-wide results have shown remarkable reductions, MWRA continues to stress that elevated lead levels in any home deserve attention,” the authority wrote in a letter sent last month to local officials to allay fears about the Flint crisis.

    Experts say that a scenario as dire as what unfolded in Flint is unlikely to occur elsewhere because Flint’s problems were caused by a long list of unusual and avoidable failures.

    Thorp said she hoped the Flint case would spur greater awareness of how water systems around the country still need improvement.

    “We do tend to get complacent around many drinking water issues because we’ve made so much progress in this country,” she said.

    “We tend to only react when there’s a crisis revealed. We need to be much more proactive . . . and not just react when there’s a crisis.”

  • Toxic lead removal could be California’s biggest yet

    environmental Strategist, between the lines:  Some of the products you may be using today that contain lead are chocolate, cosmetics, computers and other electronics, construction trade materials, batteries, keels of boats, car and truck tires….

    • Production and use of lead is growing worldwide.
    • Roughly 10 million tons are produced annually with half of that coming from recycling.
    • Lead is usually found in ore with zinc, silver and most abundantly in copper.
    • The United States is one of the world’s top producers of lead.
    • At the current rate of use it’s predicted that lead will run out in just under forty years.

    After reading about a lead issue California is dealing with it should become pretty clear that lead is a huge environmental exposure most people do not think about.

    Workers remove topsoil from homes in the 1200 block of South Indiana Street in Boyle Heights that may have been contaminated by lead from an Exide Technologies plant in Vernon. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

    By: Tony Barboza, LA Times 

    The task of removing lead-contaminated soil from thousands of homes near a closed Vernon battery recycling plant would be the largest cleanup of its kind in California and rank among the biggest conducted nationwide, say environmental officials and experts in toxic remediation.

    The California Department of Toxic Substances Control announced last week that soil testing shows decades of air pollution from the Exide Technologies facility deposited toxic dust across a wider area of southeast L.A. County than previously estimated, possibly fouling as many as 10,000 homes.

    “It is safe to say that no lead cleanup of neighborhoods in California involving DTSC has approached the number of potential properties that could be involved in this case,” department spokesman Sandy Nax wrote in an email.

    Community groups that rallied for the plant’s closure are now urging state officials to dedicate additional funds quickly to expand soil testing and clean more homes. Over the last year, contaminated soil has been removed and replaced at 146 of the homes closest to the facility in Maywood and Boyle Heights, with Exide footing the bill.

    “Every day, week or month that goes by, our children are being exposed to the poison that is lead,” said Mark Lopez, who lives a few miles from the Exide plant in East Los Angeles and heads the group East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. “We hope the next battle is not having to fight DTSC for the cleanup.”

    Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that has no safe level of exposure. It can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems and diminished IQs in children. Because of its use throughout the years in gasoline, paint and batteries, the metal is one of the most common contaminants at cleanup sites across the nation.

    Exide issued a statement Monday standing by the findings of a report it filed last week with state regulators “that establish the limits of lead impacts from the Vernon facility.”

    The Georgia-based company has said its contributions to lead in the soil are small relative to other sources, such as lead-based paint in older homes, leaded gasoline phased out decades ago and other businesses in the heavily industrial city of Vernon. The report said contamination from the plant was limited to nearby industrial zones and do not extend into residential areas.

    The preliminary results released by the state last week were based on soil samples from 146 additional homes spread over a two-square mile area stretching out from the plant and into Boyle Heights, Maywood, Huntington Park and East Los Angeles. The sampling data were used to predict where similarly elevated levels of lead should be expected.

    Officials with the toxic substances department have not determined how many of potentially thousands of properties will ultimately require soil cleanup, but acknowledged last week that it would be considerably more extensive and costly than anticipated.

    In a deal reached in March with the U.S. attorney’s office, Exide agreed to close and demolish the 15-acre facility to avoid criminal charges stemming from years of environmental law violations. As part of the settlement, the company is required to pay $50 million for a state-supervised pollution cleanup, including $9 million to remove lead contamination from homes.

    Now, the cleanup cost could balloon to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

    State and federal officials say the agreement with Exide requires the company to pay the full cost of cleanup, even if it exceeds $50 million. But the toxic substances department said last week it was looking for funds to pay for the work while the agency seeks additional money from Exide and other responsible parties.

    Lead emissions from smelters, mines and battery processing facilities have resulted in extensive cleanups before, many of them through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program to deal with the nation’s most hazardous sites.

    Many of those were the result of pollution from secondary lead smelters, which like Exide melted down used car batteries into raw materials for new ones.

    One of the largest is an EPA cleanup in Omaha, Neb., that has removed soil from the yards of more than 12,000 homes contaminated by an old smelter’s lead emissions. The cleanup has been going on for more than a decade, at a cost of more than $300 million.

    A moderate-sized cleanup is a few hundred homes, said Ian H. von Lindern, who worked for decades as a consultant on environmental cleanups, including the Bunker Hill Superfund Site in northern Idaho, where more than 6,000 properties were cleaned of lead-tainted soil.

    “Ten thousand would be large,” he said.

    Determining the extent of the contamination from a facility like Exide will be challenging and expensive, environmental cleanup experts said.

    Removing the lead could take many years — but would significantly reduce health risks to young children. Those age 6 and under are most vulnerable to lead poisoning because they often play outside and ingest soil and dust.

    The county health department has tested the blood of hundreds of people who live near Exide as part of a free screening program funded by the company. The tests have not revealed any lead poisoning requiring medical intervention, but the program has faced criticism for screening few young children

    Cleaning up a yard takes about a week and costs about $45,000, the toxic substances department said. Contractors dig up and haul away contaminated topsoil and replace it with new dirt.

    Department officials said last week they are studying other major cleanups and believe the lead could be removed from soil in L.A. County at a lower cost.

  • Lead tests close downtown Helena DEQ building

    environmental Strategist™ (eS), between the lines:   Caught the fox in the hen house!

    I had an accountant many years ago and the first time I went into pick up my paper work for filing my taxes we spent some time getting to know each other.  During the conversation he told he never balanced his own check book.  I thought to myself do I want to depend upon someone with my finances who did not even perform the most basic of accounting functions, balancing your own check book?  Needless to say I switched accounts.

    When it comes to managing the environmental exposures impacting businesses, we need to be on the same page that in today’s business environment, government environmental regulation is just a bump in the road.  Private business understands to compete in today’s business environment, managing the environmental exposures impacting your operations has become part of “Best Practices”.

    Besides do you want to put your company’s future in the hands of someone that can’t follow the most basic of environmental principals, or what government regulation calls environmental due diligence.  Environmental site assessments (Phase I, Phase II…) are performed so you can determine if you are buying an asset or a liability.  Try getting a commercial property loan from a bank without evidence of environmental due diligence.    Not everyone is as fortunate as the Montana DEQ with access to the tax payers pocket book to take care of their lack of following their own environmental regulations.

    For more on managing your environmental exposures to drive growth and profits go to www.estrategist.com.

    eS Risk Management Strategy:  As this article points out the cost to investigate and test for environmental liabilities can get to be very expensive.  Just a few of the benefits of environmental insurance versus self insuring is environmental insurance can pay for claims investigations such a lead testing, medical screenings, along with third party bodily injury, first and third party business income, remediation costs, legal fees….  When it comes to managing and transferring a business’s environmental exposures there is just one question a business needs to answer.  Question:  Based upon our business model, are we better off transferring our environmental exposures for fractions of a cent on the dollar or self insure and wait until an environmental loss occurs and pay 100 cents on the dollar out of our pocket for claims management, legal fees, investigation costs, third party bodily injury, third party property damage, first party clean up….

    October 28, 2013 3:30 pm  •  By MATT VOLZ Associated Press

    HELENA – The state Department of Environmental Quality closed its downtown Helena building on Monday after finding lead levels up to 40 times higher than federal standards in ceilings throughout the former National Guard armory.

    The results have prompted testing of the air and surfaces in the building’s work areas to find out whether employees have been exposed to lead, DEQ director Tracy Stone-Manning said. The results are due Wednesday.

    “Out of an abundance of caution, we chose to close the building,” Stone-Manning said.

    The employees are on paid leave through Wednesday. They and former employees who worked at the location are being asked to take free blood tests to determine whether they have been exposed, Department of Administration Director Sheila Hogan said.

    Exposure to high levels of the toxic metal can result in lead poisoning, which can eventually lead to brain and kidney damage and anemia, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Even low levels of exposure can damage an unborn child’s nervous system and affect behavior and intelligence, according to the CDC.

    DEQ officials are asking employees who were pregnant or nursing when they worked in the building to test their children.

    The state took over the building at the intersection of Last Chance Gulch and Euclid Avenue in 2002, and it now houses nearly 100 workers of the DEQ’s remediation division.

    The remediation division, which oversees investigations and cleanup of contaminated sites across the state, now finds itself looking for a temporary home while its own offices are tested for contamination.

    “The irony is not lost on us,” Stone-Manning said. “But the reason we are asking these detailed questions is because we are the DEQ and the remediation division.”

    It is unclear if or when the workers will return to the building. Even if the additional tests turn up acceptable airborne lead levels, the lead found in the initial tests above the ceiling tiles must be cleaned and abated, DEQ officials said in a memo to staff.

    The building was constructed in 1942 and housed a firing range for the Montana National Guard. The range was closed in 1994 and remediated for lead, Hogan said.

    But only the range was tested and cleaned, not the rest of the building.

    Medical screenings of field employees in August 2012 showed higher than average levels of zinc protoporphyrin, an indicator of possible elevated lead levels in the blood, in six to eight workers, DEQ spokeswoman Lisa Peterson said.

    Previous tests had been conducted from 1994 to 2009 in individual rooms after employees there reported health complaints, she said.

    “We have had employees inform us of symptoms, however, we have no evidence at this time that they were related to lead exposure,” Peterson said.

    Rather, DEQ officials identified lead testing as a “data gap” in their information, and this month’s initial tests were conducted as part of a plan to identify any and all environmental hazards in the building.

    The plenum, or the area above the ceiling tiles, was tested in 22 areas of the building on Oct. 16 and 18. On Friday, the results found lead dust levels higher than the federal standard for commercial properties of 40 micrograms per square foot in 14 of those 22 areas, according to a copy of the laboratory results.

    One area above the second-floor men’s bathroom tested for 1,600 micrograms per square foot, which is 40 times the federal standard.

    Stone-Manning said there are many questions still to answer, including why it took more than 10 years to find out about the potential lead hazards. She said officials will put together a scientific and historical analysis to answer those questions.

  • Reputational Risk for Contractors

    environmental Strategist, between the lines:  We often talk about the reputational risk associated with environmental crimes, see the example below and as if it’s not bad enough to get caught, then you have the EPA putting this out on a nationwide notification.

    What about the exposure to a property owner of a pre-1978 structure who hires a contractor like HarenLaughlin Construction Company to work on a rental dwelling?  I can only image there is an ambulance chasing attorney looking to bring suit against the property owner that exposed tenants to lead.

    For more on RRP regulations go to www.estrategist.com.

    HarenLaughlin Construction Company of Lenexa, Kan., to Pay $27,286 Penalty for Failure to Use Lead-Safe Work Practices and Notify Property Owner of Lead RisksRelease Date: 06/05/2013

    Environmental News
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    epa(Lenexa, Kan., June 5, 2013) – HarenLaughlin Construction Company, of Lenexa, Kan., has agreed to pay a $27,286 civil penalty to settle allegations that it failed to use proper lead-safe work practices during the renovation of a multifamily property built in 1922 at 811 E. Armour Boulevard., Kansas City, Mo., in violation of the Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) rule. It also failed to notify the property owner about lead-based paint risks before the company or its subcontractors performed renovation work at the site.

    Under the agreement, HarenLaughlin will complete a supplemental environmental project valued at $24,500 to remove lead-based paint from the nearby Valentine Apartments, at 3560 Broadway Street, Kansas City, Mo. HarenLaughlin will pay the remaining $2,786 in the form of a cash penalty.

    According to an administrative consent agreement and final order filed by EPA Region 7 in Lenexa, Kan., HarenLaughlin was legally required to use proper lead-safe work practices during the renovation of the Armour Boulevard property, including posting signs, notifying the public, and placing plastic sheeting to minimize the spread of lead-based paint chips. HarenLaughlin also failed to provide owners of the property with an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet, known as the Renovate Right pamphlet, before starting renovations. The Renovate Right pamphlet helps homeowners and tenants understand the risks of lead-based paint, and how best to minimize these risks to protect themselves and their families.

    The RRP rule requires that general contractors and subcontractors that work on pre-1978 dwellings and child-occupied facilities are trained and certified to use lead-safe work practices. This ensures that common renovation and repair activities like sanding, cutting and replacing windows minimize the creation and dispersion of dangerous lead dust. EPA finalized the RRP rule in 2008 and the rule took effect on April 22, 2010.

    This enforcement action addresses RRP rule violations that could result in harm to human health. Lead exposure can cause a range of adverse health effects, from behavioral disorders and learning disabilities to seizures and death, putting young children at the greatest risk because their nervous systems are still developing.

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