As part of the ongoing Superfund cleanup at BNL, the U.S. Department of Energy asked the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, described in story below) to conduct a health consultation for the site and area surrounding BNL.
After receiving an additional request from a community work group exploring site contamination, the agency is now looking at both air and groundwater quality to determine if exposure pathways do exist.
Expected to be released for public review and comment this summer, the groundwater quality consultation will include an examination of residential well monitoring results and a determination of potential impacts on local residents if they were to use private well water for potable (drinking) and non-potable purposes.
The air quality consultation, currently under way, will look at historic and current air emissions from BNL facilities and determine whether they present a potential health risk to the public and BNL employees.
A health consultation is a way for ATSDR to quickly respond to requests for information on toxic substances and to recommend actions to protect the public health. ATSDR staff evaluate information available about toxic substances and materials at the site, determine whether people might be or have been exposed to them, and report what harm exposure might cause.
The information ATSDR may consider includes: What the levels or concentrations of hazardous substances are; whether people might be exposed to contamination and how (through "exposure pathways" such as breathing air, drinking or contacting water, contacting or ingesting soil, or eating food); what harm the substances might cause to people (toxicity); and, whether working or living nearby might affect people's health and other physical dangers including unsafe buildings.
After a draft version of the consultation is prepared, it will be released for public review and comment. Once complete, the consultation could lead to other actions, including a public health assessment, public health advisory or public health study.