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Parents Tisha Kirkland (l.) and Doreatha Carson stand in front of IS 204, where they learned on Thursday that a light fixture in their seventh-grade children’s school was discovered leaking fluid laced with hazardous PCBs.
Parents were outraged this week after learning that a light fixture was leaking PCBs on to the floor in their children’s Long Island City middle school.
Even worse, officials told parents that it could take up to nine years to replace the rest of the school’s potentially contaminated lights.
The leak was discovered by a custodian in a counselor’s office on Monday at Intermediate School 204, Department of Education spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said on Thursday.
No one was in the room, she noted, and the light was removed that day.
“It’s not good,” said Doreatha Carson, 49, of Astoria, who didn’t plan to send her seventh-grade child back to IS 204 on Friday. “My daughter’s asthmatic.”
The school sent students home with letters on Thursday that said IS 204’s lighting fixtures were “likely to include PCB-containing materials” and the lights will be retrofitted “at some point during the next nine years.”
School officials did not immediately return calls for comment.
“It’s scary,” said Tisha Kirkland, 38, of Long Island City, whose daughter is an IS 204 seventh-grader.
Polychlorinated biphenyls have been linked to cancer and other health problems. The chemicals were banned in the U.S. more than 30 years ago.
The city plans to spend more than $700 million to replace light fixtures in almost 800 schools over the next nine years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recommended that the entire school system be assessed within five years, with “immediate action whenever there is evidence of leakage,” said agency spokesman John Martin.
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest is suing the city on behalf of New York Communities for Change, trying to force the city to replace school lighting fixtures faster.
The leak at IS 204 was discovered because fluid dripped on the floor, but Christina Giorgio, an attorney for the group, said most leaks aren’t visible to the naked eye. “These light units are failing all over the city and are contaminating classrooms,” Giorgio said. “Every child in these classrooms is breathing contaminated air.”
