Some one may have go to jail for this.
Bronx Schools Chancellor Dennis Scott just announced the closing of the Bronx New School. Scott said that the soil at the school– and the air that the kids breathe at the school–are soaked with a carcinogen known as trichloroethylene, or TCE. And not just a little bit of TCE. Contamination in the soil was up to 10,000 times so called “safe” levels. [See this 8/19/11 media article].
The revelation that the air and soil at a school is contaminated is always jarring. Last week, I wrote about air contamination (high levels of lead) at a public elementary school in Chiccago’s Pilsen community. That school’s 500 children are threatened, and it was particularly galling to learn that Illinois environmental officials had long-resisted the requests of local families to test the air at the school.