The furor over the old lighting fixtures and other installations in the city's public schools has boiled over into a page A1 NY Times (NYC edition) article about the potential dangers of PCBs. A parent says, "You don’t send your children to school thinking, ‘My kid is going to be exposed to a chemical that’s toxic enough that they ban it in building materials.'"
Last month, two Staten Island schools were closed because of leaking fixtures and the higher-than-acceptable levels of the chemicals, which the EPA describes as having "a range of toxicity" and point out that "PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals. PCBs have also been shown to cause a number of serious non-cancer health effects in animals, including effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, endocrine system and other health effects." A recent study also found intellectual impairment to children who were exposed to PCBs while in utero. The city has been investigating PCBs in schools for years but has claimed conditions are safe or waited (stalled?) to make decisions.
Parents and the EPA have urged the city to replace all the old, PCB-containing lighting fixtures in schools. The city has begged off—Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott said, "This is about protecting the city’s educational system from an unnecessary loss of its critical resource"—but one group, New York Lawyers for Public Interest, points out that Mayor Bloomberg is all about putting energy-efficient light fixtures in government buildings. NYLPI's Miranda Massie tells the Times, "It’s a completely out-of-date technology... It’s hideous to continue to subject kids to this."
