Letter To The Editor – Lead Hazard At BES

To the Editor:
I write this letter to help inform the public of what I believe to be a serious public health hazard in the Berlin Elementary School. The Berlin School District just released the lead testing results, and I believe that the importance and the dangers are being downplayed. Almost all the window troughs tested in the classrooms were not just a little elevated as portrayed by BOCES but in most cases significantly over the HUD and EPA standards. Our children and the staff are being needlessly exposed to a known toxic heavy metal, lead. Any exposure to lead is considered a poisoning once the lead enters the human body. Even if the government says that 10µmcg/dl that’s (10 micrograms per deciliter of blood) is a safe level for humans it is also true that even in very small amounts it can damage the human body.  We have at least one room (the old Library 2nd floor now a third grade) that had a reading of 33,243.9 µg per sq/ft. That’s almost 33,000 µg’s above the Federal standard and that’s appalling and most disturbing to me.
I have to ask why once the District knew that they had a problem with lead why did they continue to move forward with a plan that was like putting a screen door on a submarine (A Bad Idea). I mean why would they purposely do something that could endanger our children?
I can only come up with one relevant answer to that question; they are putting the staff and children in harm’s way to try to force a multimillion dollar referendum to fix these problems. Our children and school staff are just pawns in this chess match. How despicable if true?
We have many serious problems to deal with in the old Berlin High School building. Lead is only one big problem. We as a society need to do everything that we can to protect these young children and provide a safe working environment for the staff. I know that this is not going to be a popular idea, but we need to get everyone out of that building and put them somewhere else. Maybe we could look at what buildings we currently own and see if they are safer to use than exposing our students and staff to lead!
If you have questions, please contact the School District, but, independently, verify any answers they give you.
Andy Zlotnick
Petersburgh