DIOXIN AND PCB CONTAMINATION IN TANAPAG ‘Our people are sick and dying’

When Castana Dela Cruz, 50, first discovered the rashes on her arms, she dismissed it as having probably caused by too much exposure from the sun because she used to gather clams on the beach for the family.

But the skin irritation got worst, spreading all over her body, forcing her to stay home most of the time.

“The skin would turn red for a while and then later on would dry up. It is a cycle that would not stop,” she said. In search for cure, Dela Cruz tried everything — from magic healing to various types of medicine given to her by the doctors. She even changed her diet, avoiding seafood, hoping that it would give her some relief.

Still, it didn’t work. Her doctor at the Commonwealth Health Center has already told her that there is no cure for the skin problem –– findings that have caused her many sleepless nights for the past 17 years.

Dela Cruz lived just across the Tanapag cemetery where some of the electrical capacitors were located for a long time. “We would even sit on them, move them from one place to another, thinking that they were water pipes,” she said.

Dela Cruz’s brother, Pedro Teigita, 52, remembers how he and his friends played with the capacitors scattered around the village. “Some were even leaking and found open along the road,” said Teigita.

He did not remember anybody raising concern about the health effects of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCB and dioxin contamination, until one day members of the U.S. Army Corps, dressed in protective suit, dug the area and collected the soil where the capacitors were found open. “I got scared because we were not told what it was all about. I just felt that something was wrong,” he said.

Teigita is now suffering from a rare lung disease which his doctor at CHC discovered two years ago. Before that, he lost his right eye due to glaucoma.

When he attended a recent public hearing, Teigita was shocked to learn about the extent of PCB contamination in the village and the possible effects of the toxic waste.

“I am very scared for my family. There are nights when I could not sleep, worrying about their future in case I suddenly die,” he said.

Discovery

Although an unknown quantity of capacitors containing PCBs were shipped to Saipan in the 1960s, the Division of Environmental Quality was only notified about their presence in Tanapag village in 1988.

The electrical capacitors in the village were used as barricades, boundary markers, road blocks for driveways, windbreaks for barbecue sites and headstones. Some capacitors were found open as their inner phenolic linings were used to decorate rooftops and cemeteries in the village.

DEQ had the contents of the capacitors analyzed by the Guam Environmental Protection Agency. EPA said these capacitors contained 100 percent PCB oil.

Ben M. Sablan, 53, former Department of Lands and Natural Resources secretary, expressed concern on the extent of the contamination since the original Headstart Center housed in the community’s social hall was alongside where the capacitors were found to be leaking.

“There was hardly any information given to the people so we continuously exposed ourselves before the cleanup was carried out,” said Sablan. After residents were first informed about the dangers of PCBs found in the village in 1992, Sablan recommended a drastic measure — evacuate all the people in the village.

“The people in the community are sick and dying. It could even wipe out the residents of this village,” said Sablan.

Process

Removing the PCB-and dioxin-contamination in the village did not come easy as the U.S. Army Corps was slow in deciding the best remedy to remove the toxic waste since the Department of Defense first acknowledge responsibility for the capacitors left in Tanapag seven years ago.

Instead of shipping out the contaminated soil immediately, a process that would entail huge expenses, the U.S. Army Corps conducted a pilot study using bioremediation treatment in the early part of 1995.

In mid-1996, they abandoned the plan after realizing it would not work and instead tried an innovative technology otherwise known as thermal desorption in June 1997. Using a thermal distillation equipment, the process involves the heating of soil in a very high temperature to turn PCB into gas which is in turn collected.

Work stopped when Tera Therm, the company which was hired by main contractor Environmental Chemical Corp., went bankrupt. Tera Therm encountered difficulty in heating the soil because it overlooked the high moisture content brought about by the typhoon season. It took the contractor 30 days to heat one area of about 10 ft by 40 ft and about one ft in thickness

In September 1998, the on-site treatment stopped after relations between the two companies turned sour as Environmental Chemical Corp. and Tera Therm could not agree on the terms of the contract renewal. Some 1,181 tons of soil in the Lower Base cemetery was treated through the thermal blanketing process.

“Within that year, the piles of contaminated soil waiting for treatment just got higher and higher. It became worse, when the typhoon season came as the contamination spread further,” said Kimiko Link, environmental specialist of DEQ/EPA.

In September 1999, the U.S. Army Corps ended up shipping to the mainland some 1,094,000 lbs of PCB-and dioxin-contaminated soil for disposal at a hazardous waste facility.

Why an innovative technology was ever considered by the U.S. Army Corps in a residential setting is one question that puzzles DEQ since it is usually applied in an industrial setting in the U.S. mainland.

Subsequent site investigations, however, showed that the cemetery has still high concentration of PCB by as much as 25,000 parts per million.