Risky business.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Neighbors have worried for a couple of years that breathing the smelly air around the J.H. Baxter creosoting plant could be hazardous to their health.

But there's also trouble underground: arsenic in the factory soils, and the chemical pentachlorophenol spreading a half-mile in the aquifer under the neighborhood, according to an ongoing evaluation by the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Added up, the pollution gives the neighbors of the West Eugene plant a lot to sweat over, and pollution officials, so far, have few solid answers to allay - or justify - their fears.

Wood treatment chemicals don't usually kill people outright, said Jim Cummings, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's top expert on creosoting factories.

"They do have a health risk, but it's not a body-count kind of risk, at least at the moment," he said. "The effects are more subtle and long term."

The picture at J.H. Baxter in Eugene should be clearer in the next several months.

The DEQ expects to finalize a human health risk assessment of the company's soil and groundwater contamination. And the Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority plans to take at least a few samples of the plant's fumes to test for toxic chemicals.

J.H. Baxter maintains its pollution causes little if any health problems, plant manager Gary Hunt said.

The company has drilled a network of about 40 test wells and, for a decade, it has pumped and filtered pentachlorophenol out of the groundwater. It also has plans for a sophisticated air cleaner to be installed later in the year to reduce fumes from the creosoting operation.

"Certainly we're paying for the sins of the '40s and '50s when there were no regulations," Hunt said.

When all the facts are in, J.H. Baxter neighbors will have to decide for themselves whether it's healthy to continue living next to the plant - and that kind of health risk assessment is difficult, even for the experts.

Calculated risk

Medical and environmental experts go at the question of human risk in two radically different ways - and they arrive at two radically different answers.

One finds little problem for people living next to plants such as J.H. Baxter. The other questions whether people should live next to any wood treatment plant.

Premier Environmental Services of Portland is conducting the DEQ-mandated health risk assessment for J.H. Baxter.

Premier's analysts have studied the plume of pentachlorophenol-contaminated groundwater extending at least 3,000 feet from the factory's perimeter, underneath neighboring homes and streets.

They took readings from the network of monitoring wells the company sank into its property and the surrounding neighborhood in the early 1990s. They analyzed soil samples from on and off the factory site.

The analysts rely on mathematical models to predict whether residents watering their garden, children playing in a ditch and workers on-site would suffer health problems from exposure to the chemicals.

With formulas that consider likely length of exposure and the toxicity of each chemical, the analysts estimated risks.

The preliminary result found that area residents aren't facing an "unacceptable risk" from the pentachlorophenol in the groundwater.

That's because in 1994 the company paid to hook up to the city's water system several households and businesses that were using private wells, so nobody is drinking the groundwater, DEQ cleanup manager Jeff Brown said.

Also, the concentrations of pentachlorophenol in the groundwater are thought to be far lower than those believed to cause cancer.

"No one's being exposed to groundwater that's unsafe to be exposed to," Brown said. "I wouldn't hesitate to water my garden with water from the J.H. Baxter neighborhood."

The DEQ's analysts are still scrutinizing the risk posed by the Roosevelt Channel, which runs along the south side of the neighborhood.

Tests found pentachlorophenol in the water - perhaps from polluted groundwater seeping up into the ditch.

Initial calculations predicted little excess risk of cancer for a child playing in the ditch. "That's an area where we will be looking a little closer," Brown said.

One clear problem the calculations revealed was an "unhealthy" level of arsenic in the soil on the factory grounds.

In 1999, the company paid to excavate toxic dirt from adjacent industrial lands. They trucked a ton of the stuff to a Utah waste depot for disposal.

Still, the risk calculations predict the excess cancer risk for plant workers at six cases per 100,000 workers exposed to the contaminated soil.

That's an unacceptable level, Brown said, and the company eventually will have to clean up the soil.

An unanswered question: Could wind blow arsenic-tainted dust to neighbors' yards? Health officials pointed out the bike path, day care and playground nearby.

It's unclear whether that's a scenario the environmental analysts hired by J.H. Baxter considered. The DEQ's Brown said he'd look into the matter.

The EPA's Cummings points out drawbacks of modeling. "They're simplistic; you have to make simplifying assumptions and you have to have default values when you don't have data," he said.

J.H. Baxter declined to discuss the details of the risk assessment. The company didn't return calls left by a reporter over the course of a week.

Testing vs. estimating

Dr. James Dahlgren, an internal medicine doctor with a specialty in toxicology, comes at the question of cancer risk from a different point of view.

Too often, there's pressure to nudge the assumptions that go into a model formula in a particular direction, he said.

"Most governmental agencies are strongly influenced by the desire not to put a company out of business - and equally important, not to help (a) plaintiff's lawyers in their lawsuit," said Dahlgren, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Dahlgren said the way to gauge health risk is to measure rather than model.

He performed a two-year, $600,000 study on a neighborhood next to a Kerr-McGee wood treating plant in Columbia, Miss.

Oregon toxicologists cited Dahlgren's study as one piece of evidence to consider when looking at the risk potential posed by the J.H. Baxter plant in Eugene.

"It was as close to a similar situation (to Baxter) that I could find in a peer reviewed journal - that is, it's a creosote, (pentachlorophenol)-producing facility zoned right next to a neighborhood," Oregon Health Division toxicologist David Stone said.

Dahlgren studied 214 long-term neighbors of the Mississippi plant.

He compared them with a 139-member control group living in a like neighborhood - except without a polluted plant - in Alabama.

Dahlgren tested the neighbors' blood and found a dioxin associated with exposure to pentachlorophenol. He took dust samples from the residents' attics, kitchens and baseboards and found creosote-related chemicals in 20 of 33 samples.

"These nearby neighbors complained that a strong odor of creosote was associated with the occurrence of symptoms including skin itch, headache, eye burning, sore throat, nausea, cough, and chest tightness," the study said.

The plant's neighbors experienced "remarkably abnormal" rates of health problems compared with the control group, Dahlgren said.

Cancers occurred in 10 percent of the long-term residents, vs. 2.08 percent of the control group. Bronchitis was 17.8 percent vs. 5.8 percent. And asthma was 40.5 percent vs. 11 percent.

"Since the house dust has high levels of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminates, it is probable that the inhabitants of those homes would be inhaling and ingesting carcinogenic and toxic chemicals in significant concentrations," Dahlgren and four co-investigators wrote.

The study's conclusion: "Adverse health effects were significantly more prevalent in long-term residents near a wood treatment plant than in controls. The results of this study suggest that plant emissions from wood treatment facilities should be reduced."

The neighborhood next to J.H. Baxter may face similar problems, Dahlgren said. "Unless they have extremely unusual activity that's preventing pollutants from getting into the neighborhood, they would all have similar risks."

The only way to know, he said, is to test the residents' bodies, homes and yards.

One caveat to Dahlgren's study: The study was paid for by a law firm suing the Mississippi wood treater on behalf of the neighbors, and some of the study participants may have stood to gain in a future legal settlement.

But the study was vetted by Dahlgren's peers and published in a respected journal, Environmental Research.

The researchers included a question asked of study subjects and aimed at screening out people who would exaggerate their symptoms. All cancer cases were confirmed through medical records, Dahlgren said.

"We didn't have any restriction on what we would have been allowed to publish. If we had found a negative result, it wouldn't have helped their lawsuit, but we still would have (published) it," Dahlgren said.

Dahlgren's study was entered into the record of lawsuits that eventually produced $57 million in settlements for the Columbus neighbors and neighbors at two other Kerr-McGee wood treatment plants.

Similar suits and settlements have arisen in cities across the country, Dahlgren said. "The whole industry is in a crisis because they're being sued all over the place," he said.

Cost vs. benefit

The cleanups at most wood treatment plants across the country are pretty superficial, the EPA's Cummings said, because the cost of doing a good job is high.

The Southern California Edison pole yard in Visalia, for instance, has been pumping out the polluted underground water and straining it through carbon filters for 28 years - compared with J.H. Baxter, which has operated a similar pump-and-treat system in Eugene for a decade.

The California utility's cost to treat was $1 million a year, so managers sought an alternative, Cummings said.

Pentachlorophenol is a waxy substance and heavier than water, and it had settled 135 feet deep in the aquifer. The pump-and-treat method was basically skimming off the fumes.

So the utility experimented with ways to heat up the pentachlorophenol underground so it would liquefy and flow into the treatment system, Cummings said.

They got 1 million pounds of contaminant out, at a cost of $10 million per surface acre. They would have had to use the standard pump-and-treat method for 3,000 years to accomplish the same cleanup, he said.

But thermal treatment is a lot to ask of most companies, Cummings said.

"We are currently struggling with what do do about these wood treaters," he said. "The principle is the polluter pays, but many of these wood treaters are small mom and pop operations," he said.

"Often, the solution isn't to clean up the plume. The solution is just to put everybody on city water. And then you say there's no risk," Cummings said.

"That's the palliative. That's the Band-Aid. That's the `OK, we're going to write off the groundwater.' We do that a lot," he said.

From Dahlgren's point of view, it's unhealthy for people to live next to a wood treatment plant but unrealistic to ask neighbors to move.

"What they really need to do is put in a whole scrubbing system, enclose the whole operation and keep all of the fumes inside the building and scrub them through charcoal filters and not discharge them into the neighborhood," he said.

The top official at the plant agrees it would be better if people lived elsewhere.

"Should houses not be built around treatment plants?" Baxter's Gary Hunt said.

If city officials had planned properly, they would have zoned for light industrial uses around the plant, before transitioning to housing, according to Hunt.

"But that's not the situation, and today we have to deal with where it's at," he said.

CANCER RISK

Through 61 years of operation, the J.H. Baxter creosote plant spread suspected cancer-causing pollutants around the neighborhood: in the groundwater, on the soils and in the Roosevelt Channel. State officials say the concentrations are low enough that the risk of living in the neighborhood is "acceptable." Here are their preliminary calculations of cancer risks for neighbors and workers engaged in various activities*:

For a worker at the J.H. Baxter plant: 6 excess cases

in 100,000

For a trench worker digging in the soil: 4 excess cases in 10,000,000

For a neighbor watering lawns and gardens with

a well: 9 in 1,000,000,000

For a neighbor inhaling wind-blown dust in the neighborhood: 1 in 10,000,000

For a neighbor eating homegrown vegetables:

7 in 10,000,000,000

For a child playing in the Roosevelt Channel:

5.1 in 10,000,000

* Preliminary calculations that could change in the final draft.

CAPTION(S):

A housing development lies off Roosevelt Boulevard, just to the north of the J.H. Baxter plant and in reach of polluted air and groundwater.