KILAUEA — A Kilauea teacher fears vegetables she grows with her homeschool group could be laden with arsenic and dioxin left over from pesticides mixed at the former Kilauea Sugar Mill. “I have anxiety that I’m poisoning a bunch of
KILAUEA — A Kilauea teacher fears vegetables she grows with her homeschool group could be laden with arsenic and dioxin left over from pesticides mixed at the former Kilauea Sugar Mill.
“I have anxiety that I’m poisoning a bunch of kids,” said Felicia Cowden, who operates Akamai Learning about a block away from where the state Department of Health found the toxins.
At a meeting held Wednesday at the Kilauea School, nearly 50 residents came to learn about the soil contamination and what it will mean to them and their families.
In late 2010 and earlier this year, researchers from the DOH discovered high levels of arsenic and lesser levels of dioxin on one residential property on A’alona Place — where the sugar mill’s old pesticide mixing and storage operations sat — and an adjacent ditch. Slightly lower levels were found on another homeowner’s yard in the A’alona cul-de-sac.
While DOH officials attempted to allay the public’s fears, they seemed to fall short, as community members peppered them with health questions that they weren’t ready to answer. Several shared concerns that the contaminated soil is more widespread than department researchers realize, or may have moved to their own properties via rain, erosion or construction.
Members of the department’s Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response Office will return to the area this month to conduct additional testing of the soil, said DOH Deputy Director Gary Gill.
“We need to go deeper,” in case dirt was moved or washed off the site, Gill said. They’ll also check to see if water from the ditch is flowing into the ocean.
But, he later added, “I don’t know that we can chase every possibility. The bottom line: Don’t eat the dirt.”
Arsenic and dioxin bind with soil and can only harm people via ingestion, said toxicologist Barbara Brooks. Children are particularly susceptible, as they are more likely to play in dirt and get it in their mouths.
In similar cases, unusual levels of the poisons were not identified in vegetables, Brooks said. To protect Cowden and her students, the toxicologist explained she would simply need to wash her produce properly. But Cowden also worried that chickens on her land could be ingesting chemicals with the worms they pick from the soil, which is then passed to herself and her children via eggs.
“I want to make sure that I’m not causing anyone to be sick when our whole objective is to be really healthy,” she said.
On Thursday, she added that the property of her home and school were once owned by a machinist for the sugar mill, who kept chemicals at the house.
“I don’t have confidence that the situation is as simple as they stated,” Cowden said. “I remember there were a lot of chemicals here.”
While arsenic clears out of the body over several days once exposure stops, dioxin remains in the fat, Brooks told her.
“Unless you did the testing, you just won’t know,” added Dr. Al Bronstein of the Rocky Mountain Control Center.
On the positive side, Bronstein, Gill and Brooks said meetings with local doctors have revealed no known health impacts associated with arsenic and dioxin, which is a known carcinogen.
“They have not seen any kind of impact on the public health or children that would indicate exposure,” Gill told the crowd.
One resident on A’alona Place did get tested for the chemicals but her doctor found nothing out of the ordinary.
Bronstein said that within the last 11 years at the Rocky Mountain Control Center, which handles Hawai‘i’s poison calls, it has received 125 calls concerning people who might have been exposed to arsenic.
“We got no calls from this zip code,” Bronstein said.
Following additional testing, Gill said members of the department will return to speak with the community about options to keep the community safe. Those could include capping the ditch with concrete. It sits behind the Old Mill Co. building. Dirt could also be removed from the properties, dumped into a landfill and then capped to prevent exposure.
“We’re not talking about anything that would be disruptive to your neighborhood,” Gill said, adding that no one will be evacuated, no homes will be torn down.
DOH has a special fund for such cleanups, known as the Emergency Response Revolving Fund, but a responsible party may eventually have to foot the bill.
“It’s something for the lawyers to figure out,” Gill said.
The department discovered the contamination after one researcher began looking at maps of the old sugar mill. The neighborhood represents the only place in Hawai‘i where a residential community was built on an old sugar mill site.
“This was a site no one reported to us,” Gill said. “This is a site that we discovered.”
Following the meeting, John Constantino, the president of the Kilauea Neighborhood Association, said he remains concerned by the department’s find but is grateful that it provided a remediation plan.
He said he once lived on A’alona Street near the contamination site. When the mill closed, he and other young people would play in the area until it was developed. Now, he wonders why anyone was allowed to build there.
“How could (the county) have allowed this to happen?”
• Jessica Musicar, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or by e-mailing jmusicar@ thegardenisland.com.
