Fearing health risk in school, parents wage a media war

MALIBU, California

The high school here is ranked among the best in the country, with students each year moving on to Ivy League colleges. The location, on a hill down the block from the beach where Baywatch was filmed, offers a multimillion-dollar view of the Pacific Ocean.

Yet parents here have been yanking their children out of Malibu High School, concerned about PCBs, the highly toxic chemical compounds, that have been found in caulking of the school’s windows.

A battle over how to handle the PCBs, which were discovered three years ago, is convulsing this famously wealthy beach community, with parents, television stars and a supermodel pitted against one of the most elite state school districts in the country.

Chaotic meetings

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District insists that its classrooms are safe; the Environmental Protection Agency agrees.

But not all parents and teachers are convinced: They blame PCBs for an array of maladies, including migraines, thyroid cancer and common colds, and they have sued to compel the district to remove all contaminated caulking. A judge ruled last week that the lawsuit could move forward.

In the meantime, school board meetings have turned chaotic, with parents shouting down district officials and calling them liars.

“The school district is telling us our kids are safe, but that’s what they were telling parents in Flint, Michigan,” said Jennifer deNicola, a mother of an eighth-grader and a 10th-grader who has spearheaded the push to remove PCBs.

“We know there’s a problem, and they refuse to acknowledge it.”

But school and health officials insist that simply because PCBs are in the building materials does not mean the students are at risk of exposure.

The school district tests the air in classrooms — the primary medium through which children could be exposed — and cleans regularly to reduce dust from the caulking, school officials said.

“Just because something is present doesn’t mean it can cause harm,” said Doug Daugherty, a managing principal at Ramboll Environ, the environmental consulting firm the district has hired.

The district has spent millions of dollars on lawyers, environmental consultants and a public-relations campaign.

But, this being Malibu, parents have waged their own media campaign, complete with environmental experts and celebrity advocates. Cindy Crawford, the supermodel, has gone on national television to explain why she pulled her two children from Malibu High, and offered to pay to test caulking for PCBs throughout the campus, which also includes an elementary school and a middle school. (Her offer was declined.)

Linked to cancer

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were widely used in building materials and electronics until they were banned in the late 1970s, and they remain in many older buildings.

Research from the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that the substances could be present in upward of 20,000 schools nationwide. The compounds have been linked to cancer, immune problems and lower IQs among children.

Federal law requires that any building materials found to contain PCBs be removed. But to the chagrin of parents here, there was no requirement to test the caulking in the first place.

The EPA has endorsed the district’s approach to handling the PCBs in its buildings. And scientists who studied PCBs in New York City schools said this method — of testing air quality and cleaning assiduously — was very effective.

Laurie Lieberman, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified school board, said the administration had confidence in the safety of its facilities and has been doing its best to reassure parents.

“We have tremendous empathy for people who are fearful and scared,” Lieberman said. “We’ve really tried to explain why the schools are safe now.”

Only one of the seven school board members represents Malibu. He supports replacing the caulking, but has been voted down by board members who live in Santa Monica.

“I think the board members have convinced themselves that the science is right and the parents are overreacting,” said Craig Foster, Malibu’s representative on the school board, and the father of a seventh-grader at the middle school here.

“But what if in five years it turns out testing the air and dust wasn’t enough? How do you sleep?”

— New York Times News Service