Draft Minutes HMRC May 2002
Present at the meeting were Rita Schenck, May Gerstle, Steve Macdonald, Melissa Lockhart, Jennifer Way, and Lisa Elliott from the community, and Bonnie Meyer from Public Health Seattle King County
The meeting was called to order at 3:30
Minutes were approved and the agenda approved with modification.
Lisa Elliott spoke with us about CCA treated lumber and the experiences with Ober Park playground building. The playground equipment is arsenic and chromium free, but instead is treated with a Copper-Borate-Azole (CBA) material. Lisa described the EPA requirement to remove CCA from the market by 2003. All of the local lumberyards still carry CCA and are trying to sell it out rather than take the hit and send it back. Home Depot will clear out their inventory before the EPA deadline. Lisa provided lots of info, and Rita suggested that we put some of it on our website.
One of the issues that cam up was disposal of CCA through burning. Rita noted that inhaling smoke from CCA lumber can be deadly—people have been known to collapse and die from inhalation of the smoke. We suggested that when they provide burn permits, the fire department should be warning people not to burn CCA lumber. May will invite the fire department to our next meeting.
May attended the Area Wide Committee Meeting on the 9th, and brought extensive handout material to share from that meeting. The meeting lasted from 9 to 5, and public participation was allowed only from 4:30 onwards. May suggested that public participation should be interspersed throughout the day, and that suggestion was approved by the group. May also brought up the issue of the delay between data collection and disclosure and suggested that this should be improved, possibly through obtaining an additional consultant for these studies. The Task force also thought that this was a good idea.
May reported that Bill Tobin agreed to do some pro bono work for the HMRC, but does not have the time to attend meetings. May also reported on the letter she received from Marian Abbett re: the sole use of Greg Glass as a Ecology's consultant. In summary, Marian said that Ecology thought that the learning curve for the projects was too long to bring in a new consultant. May and Steve will converse by email to develop a response to Marian's letter.
Rita shared a first draft of a heavy metals symptoms fact sheet for the medical community. After some discussion it was decided that Melissa, Rita and Steve would meet at IERE's offices at 17917 Vashon Hwy on the 24th at 1 pm to work out a more thorough draft. Rita Reported that Jim Ruttenber, an expert at U. Colorado has agreed to review it when complete. Bonnie reported that Public Health is also looking into a similar fact sheet, and we agreed to try to work together. David Solet and others are invited to attend: Bonnie will pass the word along.
Steve gave us an update on IRPPC. They are still working through contract issues with Ecology. Since Jake Jacobovich is no longer on the Community Council Board, there is only Jim English to make that direct connection. The Committee agreed that this was enough.
We also discussed the difficulty that Public Health had linking to non-governmental websites. This is unfortunate, because IERE's website contains the entire King County soils database, and it would be convenient to link them together. Bonnie will talk with Dr. Plough about allowing this linkage with appropriate language disavowing responsibility. Rita noted that at least 9 people have downloaded the entire dataset so far.
Bonnie shared the design of a poster showing people how to protect themselves from contaminated soils. The poster will go to all classrooms and Dr.'s offices in King County, and the committee agreed that it was a terrific way to get the messages across.
We are attempting to move our meeting earlier in the day. Our next meeting is at 3:00 in the library on June 7.
Respectfully submitted
Rita Schenck