THE ARREST this month of a reporter, accused of trespassing for taking soil samples at a pesticide-contaminated Paramus, N.J., middle school, is a powerful reminder of our tolerance for official secrecy about environmental health risks at schools.Michael Gartland, of the Bergen Record in Hackensack, first reported an environmental consultant's warning that soil at the school was contaminated at levels 39 times greater than the state's safety guidelines. The school district knew about the pesticides in January but never informed the public or tried to fix the problem until Gartland began asking questions. Officials closed the school and promised to clean it up. But when Gartland removed soil from the school's soccer field — which it is claimed wasn't marked off-limits — for independent testing, the authorities thanked him with handcuffs and seizure of the samples.
The story reflects a cynical paradigm about environmental safeguards in our schools — namely the public's right not to know. The sad truth is that the suppression of environmental health information by government officials is a national scandal. In New Jersey, state law doesn't require that the public be notified of hazardous contamination at schools or how it will be handled. In California, state watchdogs only have the funding to investigate proposed schools, not existing ones.
And even after investigation, worries about declining property values and tax revenues tend to prevail. When federal Environmental Protection Agency investigators found dangerously high levels of asbestos at a school in the Sacramento suburb of El Dorado Hills, the head of the school district successfully lobbied elected officials to pressure the EPA not to declare the area a Superfund site. No cleanup was required, despite the well-documented medical link between asbestos exposure and mesothelioma, a deadly lung cancer. Clearly, limiting legal exposures has taken precedence over limiting toxic ones.
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