Mercury: An element of danger here?

Some homeowners sue PGW to have tests.

Daily News
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
By Ramona Smith

DONALD Brophy paid little attention as the PGW service guy replaced the natural- gas pipe under his laundry-room sink.

Brophy says he was just a few yards away in his Northeast Philadelphia recreation room, engrossed in a TV program.

"The one guy was in there in the laundry room on the floor, hollering out to the other guy, ‘Get me some rags. It's spilled.'"

"I had no idea what he spilled - water or whatever," Brophy said recently, more than seven years later. "I had no concern what he spilled."

Now, however - after learning that the gas equipment in his basement laundry room may have contained highly toxic mercury - Brophy is definitely concerned.

Brophy, 68, a retired truck driver, is among 80 or more Philadelphia property owners who may have mercury contamination in their homes as a result of spills during work by the city-owned Philadelphia Gas Works, his lawyers say.

Unfortunately, nobody knows which homes might have levels of poisonous mercury vapors that would demand a cleanup, say his lawyers in a lawsuit against PGW now working its way through Common Pleas Court. Nobody knows whether Brophy's two-story brick rowhouse on Colman Road, near Academy and Woodhaven roads, in the Northeast, has a real problem.

That's because neither PGW nor anyone else has tested for mercury in the 11,381 homes in the Northeast and in North and Northwest Philadelphia where the mercury-containing PGW equipment was removed.

Testing by utilities elsewhere has shown that removal of that equipment, a type of gas-pressure regulator, poses the possibility of an undetected and health-threatening spill.

PGW refuses to test. It's fighting the lawsuit's attempt to make it pick up the tab for testing and remediation - a process that could cost millions of dollars. The lawsuit seeks an order requiring PGW to test all buildings where mercury regulators have been removed and to pay for any needed cleanup and relocation, and medical monitoring of anyone found to have been exposed to mercury contamination.

"Our customers have nothing to worry about and are in no danger," PGW spokesman Doug Oliver said.

Brophy, whose grandchildren, aged 8 and 11, hang out daily in his basement rec room, worries about mercury anyway. Breathing vapor from the silvery-white metallic liquid over long periods can cause tremors, mood swings, nervousness, weakness, twitching, headaches and reduced cognitive function, the Environmental Protection Agency says.

"Now, I still don't know what was spilled," said Brophy, looking back to the day when PGW workers replaced his gas connection after an outdoor gas leak. "That's what we want to find out."

A PGW official has said in a deposition that mercury-containing equipment was probably removed from Brophy's house in 1997.

The piece of equipment involved, a gas "regulator," is used only on parts of PGW's natural- gas-distribution system. Most homes in Philadelphia stand along low-pressure PGW gas lines and require no reduction in pressure for the gas to come into the house. That means more than 500,000 PGW customers don't have regulators.

In some areas, however, gas moves under the streets through high-pressure lines, primarily in parts of North, Northeast and Northwest Philadelphia. There, regulators installed indoors near the gas meter step down the pressure.

The outdated mercury regulators, installed by PGW until the mid-1970s, contain about two teaspoons of liquid metallic mercury that acts as a seal. Up to 5,000 of the old regulators remain in homes.

Since at least the early-1980s, PGW has been replacing the old regulators with a spring-loaded device that contains no mercury. In all, PGW says it has removed 11,381 mercury regulators.

Based on the percentage of homes found with dangerous mercury levels in a major test in the Midwest, PGW workers may have spilled mercury in as many as 84 Philadelphia homes, according to two experts who testified for PGW in lawsuit depositions.

"There are at least 80 homes in the city of Philadelphia with toxic levels of mercury ... that have not been discovered and never will be discovered, unless they're tested," said Alan M. Feldman, a lawyer seeking to have Brophy's case ruled a class-action lawsuit.

"It's like Russian roulette," said Thomas More Marrone, one of Brophy's lawyers in the case pending before Common Pleas Judge Mark Bernstein. The suit, filed more than a year ago, alleges that releases of mercury violate the state Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act.

Lawyers on both sides have been moving the case through depositions and motions. It is not yet in the trial stage.

An expert with the Clean Air Council, which is not involved in the lawsuit, said mercury testing makes sense if there's a suspicion of spills.

At least some homes where spills might have occurred should be tested as a sample, said Arthur Stamoulis, an environmental-policy analyst with the Clean Air Council.

"I would think PGW and the state would want to do some sort of sampling to determine the size and scope of this potential problem," Stamoulis said. "Without real air samples, there's really no way of knowing if people are at risk."

There's no dispute that 30 or more other, PGW-acknowledged mercury spills have occurred during the removal of regulators, with cleanup and air testing generally provided by the PGW chemistry lab.

But the plaintiffs and PGW disagree over whether workers were careful or sloppy during some removal jobs - and over the likelihood of contamination of homes from unreported spills.

Mercury, the only heavy metal that remains liquid at room temperature, is extremely toxic - and extremely difficult to clean up once it splits into tiny beads or vaporizes into the air of a home. It can persist in cracks or wall spaces of a building for many years.

Young children, and fetuses with developing nervous systems, are considered most vulnerable to its long-term effects including brain damage, twitching and nervousness, and altered moods. Even worse effects can happen with high-level exposures, including kidney problems, respiratory failure and death.

Just a teaspoon of mercury - half an ounce - was enough to destroy a house in Abington Township eight years ago. Peco Energy, which sells natural gas to the Philadelphia suburbs, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to clean up the contaminated home on Garfield Avenue, in Ardsley, after a contractor spilled mercury while removing a gas regulator there.

"We ripped out all the fabrics, took out furniture with fabric, took out curtains and draperies and removed carpets, anything that the mercury could have contaminated, even bed sheets and comforters," said Peco spokesman Michael Wood. "Even after all of that, the presence of mercury remained."

As the cost of cleanup soared past the value of the house, Peco bought out the family and tore down the house, which was carted away as hazardous waste.

More widespread mercury contamination was discovered - and cleaned up - by at least four Midwestern utilities, which tested more than 200,000 homes after suburban Chicago families began finding silvery beads of mercury in their basements in summer 2000. More than 1,100 homes were found in the Chicago and Detroit areas with airborne mercury levels beyond the point considered safe for residential occupancy by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

More than 170 suburban Chicago families had to evacuate their homes during cleanups that, in some cases, took months.

And the Midwestern utilities shelled out big bucks. In the largest case, a suburban utility in northern Illinois, Nicor Gas, says it spent $110 million on testing, cleanup and settlement of lawsuits, in which customers involved in cleanups were paid $400 to several thousand dollars apiece.

PGW remains unimpressed.

When people from the affected homes took medical tests, PGW spokesman Oliver said, "not in one single instance was there ever found to be higher levels of mercury in a person."

At the outset, Illinois officials said they didn't expect to find severe health effects, but rather wanted to alleviate the risks of long-term exposure.

To PGW, however, "what it all boiled down to was that there was a tremendous expense ... when you know that there is no possibility that customers could be harmed," said Oliver.

As for testing homes in Philly, "knowing in general terms what the outcome would be, it's just not something we think is reasonable," he said.

It could cost $500 to test each home, Oliver said, and cleanups could run into the thousands. He maintained that people here "have nothing to worry about and are in no danger."

"We're not balancing their safety against costs or anything like that," he said.

Marrone, one of Brophy's attorneys, responded that even if no one in Illinois showed signs of physical harm, "I am sure that every person who was tested is very pleased that their local utility actually cared enough to get them tested to find out they were OK. And I think the citizens of Philadelphia deserve the same care as the citizens of Illinois."

Brophy says testing is exactly what he wants.

"I think they should come out and do whatever inspection is necessary to see what it is, and if it is [mercury], to clean it up," said Brophy, who has lived in the house with his wife, Joan, for about nine years.

"I think it would eliminate the problem. Either it's there or it's not there. Either they did it right or they did it wrong."

Mercury Facts

Name: Mercury, aka "quicksilver"

What it is: Shiny, silver-white metal, heavy liquid at room temperature. An element, one of the heavy metals.

Named for: Speedy Roman messenger god, who doubled as god of commerce and travelers.

Properties: Gives off vapors easily. If dropped, forms into beads that can scatter widely.Highly toxic breathed or ingested.

Where you've seen it: Ever break a home medical thermometer? If a silver bead escaped, that's about as much mercury as the Environmental Protection Agency says can safely be cleaned up by an ordinary person, using plastic bags. Never vacuum becausemercury splits into smaller beads. More than a thermometer’s worth? Call the Health Department.

Where else it's used: Thermostats, blood-pressure gauges, some lamps, older natural-gas pressure regulators. PGW’s old regulators contained about 2 teaspoons.

What's the harm: Vapors from this form of mercury (called metallic mercury or elemental mercury) can cause tremors, mood swings, nervousness, weakness, twitching, headaches and reduced cognitive function if breathed for long periods. Especially damaging to developing fetuses and children. Exposure to extremely high levels can cause kidney problems, respiratory failure and death.

Other forms: Methylmercury, a highly toxic form that can be consumed in fish. Mercury occurs naturally in coal and is released from coal-burning power plants, among other sources, then lands on water, where microorganisms change it into methylmercury. Methylmercury in fish is a special risk to developing fetuses. The Bush administration last month backed off on proposed limits on mercury pollution from power plants, the major source in theUnited States.

Mad as a hatter: Tradition says the phrase "mad as a hatter" — hence the Mad Hatter in "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" — came from mercury that was in soaking materials used in hat-making centuries ago.

Who you gonna call?

Concerned about possible mercury contamination from past removal of a natural-gas regulator inside your home? PGW customers in Philadelphia can call the gas company’s information line at 215-684-6624. Or, says Thomas More Marrone, one of the lawyers suing PGW over alleged spills, you can call him at 215-567-8300 at Feldman, Shepherd, Wohlgelernter, Tanner and Weinstock. Peco Energy gas customers in the suburbs can call Peco customer service at 800-494-4000.