[CPEO-BIF] Metachem Products, Delaware City

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Rising pollution puts water source at risk

Taxpayers' cleanup tab at $100 million -- and it could be rising

By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Wilmington News Journal (DE)
March 16, 2010


New tests show that toxic pollution from an abandoned chemical plant 
near Delaware City is far worse than previously believed, posing even 
greater future risks to drinking water in the region.

Concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in a 150-foot-deep groundwater 
layer near the former Metachem Products plant has spread far deeper and 
at higher concentrations than the last round of testing in 2005, and 
thousands of times higher than the federal government's drinking water 
safety limit.

The highest benzene reading -- 26,000 parts per billion -- was 5,200 
times higher than the federal government's 5 parts-per-billion drinking 
water limit. Although no drinking water wells are close by, the 
concentrations of benzene alone would pose immediate and long-term 
health threats if consumed by people and are high enough to kill some 
living things outright.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20103160335

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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