 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Senate Education Wednesday, March 29, 315. We just returned from the floor and we have one agenda item today. It will take us about 45 minutes or so. PCV testing in schools. And we have Dr. Levine with us and Commissioner Belling of the Department of Environmental Conservation. Just a review with us, Dr. Levine, if you would, some PCVs in general, testing protocols. Kind of bring us back to where this committee has had a little bit of this conversation this year. And I know committee members have questions. So, sort of an information gathering afternoon. Super. Perfect. Well done. What I will do in a very brief time is talk a little bit about health because I have to. Yeah. Talk a little bit about the Vermont framework, if you will, for testing and why it's based on air. And why we believe we should not cause that. Okay. That sounds reasonable. Thank you. There we go. So this is just an overview of health. I'll go into these in minimal detail. But the overall line concept is PCVs are bad because serious health problems. And we shouldn't doubt that years after we actually created a legislation to do the testing. We have studies of animals that are very clear. We have reports from humans that show outcomes that are seen in animals happen in humans as well. And they don't call these forever chemicals like the PFOA compounds. They are in your body for a very long time. A very long half life, if you will. So if you're a young person and you get exposed, it can translate into developing baby exposure years down the road. You're infant. Exactly. Okay. And just so everyone knows, this is in our pile. And some of these health effects can be interrelated, as I'll show you. So just, you saw the cancer. Melanoma is the one that has been most conclusively recognized as a causal relationship. Breast and liver and lymphoma of the Hodgkin's typhoon are also concerned. When you think you hear in the media some controversy about on these bad or not, it's because various organizations label them differently. So the EPA calls it as a probable human carcinogen, which is a pretty high level for them. The IARC just comes out and says it is carcinogenic. The National Toxicology Program says that it's reasonable to conclude that these are carcinogens in humans. And the weakest one is NIOSH, which says potential occupational carcinogens. But we also really dwell on the non-cancer effects of these substances. And that's in the immune, reproductive, endocrine, and neurologic systems. So the immune systems, obviously, how do we fight foreign invaders into our body? And there's a bunch of things on the slide. I'm not going to go into detail except to say that these do act as suppressants of your immune system. And if you remember from COVID, anytime you're somewhat suppressed in your immune system, you're at risk. And so we think this is possibly linked to why cancer is also impacted because of the impact on the immune system. Looking at the reproductive system, the take-home messages are that there have been studies showing decrease in birth weight and increase in the amount of premature. The next two are more developmental, meaning they can be in the fetus or the infant. So let's start with the central nervous system. Like other things we've talked about in this committee that you're concerned about at school, like impact on short-term memory, impact on attention, impact on learning, visual recognition. The PCBs have been associated with problems in those arenas. And again, an interrelation from other effects. And then I want to get too heavy into thyroid hormone and endocrinology, but suffice it to say that especially with regards to normal development in the fetus and in the infant, thyroid hormone can be involved. And if this impacts the level of thyroid hormone, it can adversely affect those things. Because the thyroid hormone is sort of metabolic hormone and it involves growth and development. So that's the health part, just to give us some of the same foundation. Does anyone have any questions about the health part, concerns, disagreements? I think we'll just pause here right now and see if Senator, we should get a question. That's weird. Senator, Senator, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. I'm not seeing any questions. Good. Next I want to impress upon you how they impact us. PCVs are throughout our environment, even though they have been banned since 1979. They do last a long time. We get them often through our diet, fanny foods, so fanny fish, meats, and unfortunately, Vermont dairy products. Normally, that creates a background level for everyone so that we have to be careful in looking at levels of exposure and levels of screening to make sure we account for the fact that the background level was not zero throughout the country. But here I want to get you focused on air because the biggest source of exposure for students and staff in buildings that have older construction, which is the majority of our school system unfortunately, meaning before 1980, it's through the air leaching from materials that were used in construction, whether they're caulking materials, whether they're paints, whether they're in the fluorescent ballasts, which hopefully they're not so much in our schools because there was a whole project years back to deal with that. So air is really the thing that is where the biggest exposure is. So like anything else, it's a matter of how often, how much, how long to determine an individual's risk. Sir, if I could just add a curiosity. So can you comment, though, on PCB presence and water and soil? Is it an item of concern? Yes, it is. That's probably where the fish are getting. However, that's not the way humans are getting to the level where these health effects will be seen usually through the air. Thank you. Anything from the waste stream, like the sewage treatment facilities? In terms of PCBs getting into the water. Getting into the water. My colleague here from DC. I'm sure there is some. It's just more of a PFAS concern. I mean PCBs are a pretty ubiquitous environment. So I wouldn't be surprised if I could find out what they're showing up in that type of waste stream. But they're not unusual. You find them in soils throughout the state. Thank you. Senator? Just probably another question for you. So PCBs, are they at all naturally occurring? Or are they ubiquitous in soil and water just because they've been factored in some of the stuff that's been discussed? I should say for the record, John, the only department by the conservation commissioner, they're manufactured. I thought so, but I just wanted to make sure. So this, what I'm going to present to you now doesn't make it into the media very often. Usually it's sort of like, why is Romance so unique? Why are we different than EPA? All of that kind of stuff. But as you can see in the title to the slide, Vermont levels are based on EPA levels and the framework that EPA set out. The difference is it's using current research. The EPA findings were set in 1994. It doesn't mean they haven't looked at them since. It's just they haven't revised their framework since. And that's an important point. The team at my environmental health division and health department that helped work on these along with colleagues across the government also worked with EPA in the development of these and with consultants and very knowledgeable experts around the country. For which there are not very many, I might add, because this is a fairly specialized field in toxicology. So we've got a screening level of 15. That's just sort of that raises our high ground level. It's really the action levels that are where we need to focus. And we have two sets of levels. We have school action levels and media action levels. School action levels, as you might imagine, are higher than the screening level but lower than the immediate action level. The immediate action level is get out of that room. You can't use that room because it's a toxic environment. I would say that, yes, our action levels, as the slide illustrates, are lower than that of EPA. That shouldn't be a cause for concern or alarm. And I'll bring you back to the PFAS set of compounds once again. In 2016, when Bennington learned that they had the misfortune of this problem, the EPA level was 400 parts per trillion. That was all that existed. We took a different approach and said, well, that isn't going to be very health protective. So to be health protective, we went down to a level of 20. And within a few months of us going to 20, EPA went from 400 to 70. And within a few months of that, I don't know how many states, but many other states, adopted levels that were equal to Vermont were actually stricter than Vermont. So we're often pioneers, and I'd like you to look at us as looking at science being driven by the science and not sort of being cowboys and seeing here's what we're doing, because it's a very informed process. EPA regulates a number of chemicals under a program called TASCA, which is the Toxic Substances Control Act. And the partner chemicals, it's not good company to be. It's formaldehyde, it's lead, it's asbestos, it's mercury, and it's the PFAS set of compounds. In many of these, there are easier ways to avoid exposure. We talked about don't drink the water, use bottled water, whatever. It's hard to tell children don't breathe while you're in class. So this made us have to be even more serious about the TASCA hand. We used some of that information that I showed you about developmental neurotoxicity that I just referred to, to really use the current science to develop in our levels, and that is why they are leveled in the EPAs. Most of the time, we set a level of the cancer risk of one in a million. That's kind of a standard in the field. And that was where we came from when we were starting to develop our action levels. Our colleagues in DEC helped us determine that even a level of 22.5 might be something that you might mix up with a background level because of the trashing of the environment and the contributions of food and what have you. And if you regulate down to that level, you're going to be chasing your tail a lot because you're never going to find a source of PCBs in the environment because it may not be the environment and maybe the background level that's actually been a problem. So that's why our action levels are a little bit higher than the level you saw in the slide. The immediate action level is almost by definition three times the lower action level. So that's where that comes from. Keep in mind we're not just using cancer, we're using the non-cancer effects in development. This is a pretty key slide. Thank you for offering this. Just curious, so the 1994 levels established in your professional opinion, do those need to be revisited? By the EPA? By the EPA, yes. For sure. It's not that they're asleep at the wheel. They have a team of scientists, in fact, that we use as consultants who are much up to date. It's just the process of changing the regulatory structures and the policies Okay, given the cost, the potential cost of school renovations and then potentially following on to workplace renovations and home renovations, do you feel that the EPA is motivated enough to... I can tell you they're watching Vermont very closely because they were very involved with the Burlington High School decision and with the work site. They were consulting on the site because of all the findings there. So they're very focused on this. At the same time, some of their setting of levels involved residential and how much time you're asleep in a home. Ours are actually much more focused on school and how much time a staff member or a student is present in a given room or in a given building. Which is where that is going now. Okay, good. And just curious, these thresholds, are these adult thresholds? No, they are age dependent. So 30 would be for preschool, 100 would be for high school or adult. The reason for that has to do with the contribution of the nutritional factors to the underlying baseline in those groups and the amount of weight each has. So I'm a very, very young person. The impact per gram of body weight is going to be different. And as you'll see when we make decisions about who can be in a room, we use the age-specific levels. So this slide doesn't tell you anything. Don't state things or testing. What was Act 74, I believe? That legislature came up with. And in that, we test about a third of the rooms in a school. Because of that, you need to develop grouping strategies because many rooms in the school have the same risk. Same building materials, same essential. One classroom looks like another in many cases, but that may look very different than the auditorium or the gym or the kitchen. So you need to be able to group like with like because that's part of the strategy for what are you going to do if a room is found that exceeds the thresholds and can you still put students in other rooms. So we'll show that in the next couple of slides, which I think will illustrate for you what happens. Keep in mind, because questions always come up, this is the strategy developed and the law developed long after the Burlington High School this year. And it's hard to make comparisons between what happened there and what happens in current testing because there was no grouping strategy, there was no protocol for testing, there wasn't even a percentage of rooms tested. It was not done in that manner because it was done with the interest of getting to a new construction. And just doing the testing that was required to move them to new construction or renovation. Renovations are probably more appropriate. So this picture, just imagine, and it's not imaginary made up, it's consultants developed. All the green rooms are the same. The green rooms are the same. They're all similar building materials, similar sort of like this committee room looking like the one that's stored in it. And there are no extraneous factors that would make one a higher risk one than another. Same for the yellow, the blue, the red. So obviously these triangles that are in there and yellow, those are the rooms that are actually tested. And it's not every green room so that if green rooms all end up looking pretty similar on the testing, it means that the rooms that were tested are probably going to have looked that way too. Whereas obviously there's only two red rooms, they're both tested and you can't extrapolate beyond that for anything. So that's how we sort of set that up. When you do the testing, you get results back. Obviously any result over that immediate action level means that room can't be used. Period. Since that doesn't happen the majority of the time, if there are exceedances, they're in the school action level of 30 to 100 range, we've been able to create a protocol with our colleagues that allows several options. The options basically either provide restricted or unrestricted use of the rooms and they do it for a specific number of hours per week. The goal is, and this is important, especially coming off the pandemic, it allows students and faculty to continue to be housed in the school building knowing that the whole building is not at risk but there are portions of the building that are. And so the goal is keep students in in-person learning, don't close schools and arrive at an accommodation that allows the school and the consultants to figure out the sources, start with the mitigation strategies and move on from there. So I'm not going to go through these in great detail, but basically the lowest risk option restricts the use of the rooms to certain numbers of hours, depending on what age student is in the room and what number of hours they're there, but they have a year to actually fix things without any undue excess exposure to them. Whereas if you go to the higher risk on the right side of the slide, basically the rooms can be used in an unrestricted way, but there's a very limited time frame, usually like six weeks, and you need to basically have mitigation underway and do retesting and all of that in a very rapid fashion. So we try to meet the school where they are and what level that community is willing to accept risk while mitigation will be ongoing. So while we're on that slide, just so we all know, if a test would come back in a certain school, it doesn't mean the school closes tomorrow. It hasn't yet today. And those decisions are being left to home. So one room is tested and it's at a low risk. The school beside the school then, in conjunction with its board, superintendent would make a decision, I'm assuming, to say, this is low risk. We're going to continue to operate, but this classroom, for obvious reasons, will now be used at this point. Okay. Because there's mitigation, I don't know if you're going to get into mitigation versus remediation, but there's mitigation strategies that can be immediately implemented that might really be game changers and then there's ultimate remediation strategies that they come along at a time when the school's not in session, like in the summertime, or what happened that can be implemented. The school sees this report, which basically tells them what the result was in every room and what rooms were tested, what rooms were tested, and then based on those results, here are their options. So you can see that for room 203, there's basically no use of that room because the level was so high in option one. However, it wasn't so high that it caused an immediate action level threshold so that some of the other options can be still used, but there's a six-week timeline on them and there's a strategy that has to be implemented concurrently. So this report is, does this public information once it comes up? Oh, yeah. There's a letter that goes to the school and the community, but then beyond that, there are meetings that are actually held with members of DEC, members of the health department, and the school. I'm not sure we've had them publicly yet because we've offered them that they haven't necessarily been taken advantage of. But there's a clear set of guidelines. Just wanted to bring back in the last two slides the perspective that, number one, everybody knows these are our problem, but not everyone's paying as much attention as we are. And there are countries like Sweden where all public buildings have to remove PCBs. That's sort of on that extreme. On the other extreme are some of the headlines that are in the slide showing that problems are being found but they're not necessarily being addressed and putting communities at risk, if you will. But in that role of being the only state addressing it and being the pioneers, you might imagine we come under a bit of fire now and then, and you might imagine people are like, well, you know, looking very closely at the way we do things, and that's why I've taken some pains to show you that, but it's not been done before. So we hope we're getting it right. Perhaps getting it right means even doing more than we're doing. We'll find that along the way. But certainly we think we have a very well-designed and thoughtful design to addressing the problem, which brings me to my last slide, which basically says, that's again, I want to reinforce PCBs are harmful. We want to keep our schools and our communities healthy and that's a priority. And avoid any of those cancer or non-cancer related risks that we talked about. There are schools that have already been tested. If we did create a pause, as I know is under discussion in the legislature, that would be an equitable thing because the schools that have been tested are already embarked on their path of trying to remediate and improve the situation. And we've identified problems in enough schools that why would we not allow the others to benefit in the same way. I think I've shown you that this is a program that is protective for students and has been thoughtful. And I would hate to see us spend time and resources on re-evaluating the program and redesigning it once again. But the most important point, of course, is bolded, which is if you pause testing, people will still be exposed to harmful chemicals and be at risk for the serious health effects that we've discussed. To further illustrate this, I can tell you that we just informed the school this week of their results. And they had a decent number of rooms that went over the school action level, three particular rooms that went over the immediate action level. So we are today is Wednesday. We are meeting with them tomorrow. They've already gotten letters about that grid that I showed you ways to utilize the rooms they have so that all their students can still learn in their school without vacating the school by any means. But it's happening real time right now that we're protecting students from their work there. So this is not some hypothetical happening as we speak. So I will stop there. I think everybody has a question, so let's go around the room. Senator Gullick, do you want to start? I have a series of questions, so if you can only have one. Senator, I have a comment for your question for you, Chair. Can we find out from the House what their justification is I mean I'll just say I don't want to pause PCV testing but I'd like to understand what background they have. I feel like maybe you might know. Sure, we can have them in. So this is coming from the House to pause. I had a meeting with the Pro Tem's office who is not interested in pausing in terms of sound leadership. I just want that. It doesn't mean that it won't happen but Senate leadership isn't interested in having it paused. He's known what we would benefit out of a sixth month carry. It's a logical question and people would continue to be exposed. Thank you, Dr. Levine and we can go around and take additional questions. This has been very helpful. We would like to know if everybody has questions. Are you sure? Would you mind if I spoke to the question first? I believe the genesis of this idea in House education is that given that we are looking at a more comprehensive school construction program it is worrisome that we might be putting funds, a lot of money and taxpayer money into remediating PCBs, mitigating PCBs potentially renovating a room or a part of the building only to then find when we do this broader project that perhaps a whole wing of a school needs to be renovated or a school needs to be completely demolished and rebuilt and so that could be wasteful. So isn't just part of the school construction study to take into consideration how to also look at PCB remediation at the same time because we don't want to keep them separate because of what you're describing. But I mean they are separate. My response is that this testing protocol informs the schools that want to do renovation. And in fact one thing I didn't mention is we prioritized certain schools to be tested first. A lot of it had to do with if they had renovation in the recent past or if they were planning it for the near future if they had construction in certain years if they had a whole host of different criteria. But the bottom line was renovation was on the list. So I look at it in reverse that this process informs renovation as opposed to why not wait to see what schools are doing and then do the testing. And I don't want to get too much in the house position we'll let them come in. So I would say just represent your question. Same question. This is part of this so based on the lag in the testing roll out that we won't have enough information to inform the construction study. Well if they want to have as many information in two months yes. That's part of the point. The current program is lagging and the expanded program puts it out years out to the future. And there may be schools we weren't aware of that have renovation plans in the near future but we did use that as a criteria so we think they told us what they told us. So I'll just stick with this theme for now but then I have other themes. So and it's nice to see you again Dr. Lee spoke to us and helped me well file back. So to Senator Lee's point if we have a school that urgently needs some work because it's got a sewer system that is not working a roof that is not insulated these are examples that we were given at one point and needs some fairly substantial upgrades but again this program we're looking years out this isn't like instantaneous so what happens to a school that has high levels of PCBs in a gym let's say or an auditorium do their students for the next five six seven years they can't use the gym they don't get the exercise that they need on a regular basis they don't have theater and music in band because they can't access those spaces they don't have the money to remediate so what part of that gets into the next part of the conversation with the EEC because it's really what mitigation can be put into place based on what the findings are what the consultants then come in and say is adequate versus no you need to do this in addition and that's a bit of unknown so it's challenging you're right if a school has a multifunction room and they can't find a substitute room for all of those activities that's a big challenge our hope is that isn't true most of the time and that there are other ways to get around that I have to also mention though it's not plausible in every community that part of the strategy is also to look within the community so that if there's something that could be done in another building that's not the actual school building the community know that that's available to them it's safe for that use okay just to follow up we I think we mentioned in here we touch upon the various crises that our school system our public school system and probably some of our independent schools as well are facing a round of variety of issues funding staffing mental health vaping one that near and dear my heart at this moment but all of these are huge issues I am so I am concerned when we have this discussion that you know dealing with this problem is going to require staffing it's going to require money it's going to require tax payer participation and jumping on board and so these are all things you know when you when you mentioned that that we have a clear set of guidelines okay fair enough but in terms of like the program itself how robust is it and how helpful is it going to be to our communities because as of right now the testimony that I've heard from Cabot School what I've lived in Burlington which I know is pre-program but Cabot School etc is that this program it's not robust and folks are really struggling so I can we can leave that on the table for now I did have some other questions I was hoping to No I would just say that I think everything was not problems often more than communication and communication may have been an issue at the time with Cabot in a bi-directional way and an orderly progression of things didn't occur there which caused I think significant anxiety problematic not to minimize Cabot's problems but that's what I'm looking for is the results in Cabot were actually things that can be done here it is they did not have any immediate action level findings they were all SAO school action level findings and they were in classrooms so that's obviously a concern making sure you can still put students into classrooms that are safe and the last I knew they're still working on mitigation kind of strategies but I look at that as maybe something earlier in the whole process that we just needed to get the order of communications set better and the way the public gets informed so that's great so you feel those approving thank you for that around PCBs and this might be something that will be answered after your testimony so we've been told that PCBs are ubiquitous we all have them in our bodies we in health and welfare have been taking a lot of testimony from various chemicals that are put in our bodies female products for one on our faces makeup clothing on our lawns you mentioned food they're everywhere the healthcare issues that you bring up in here are so incredibly triggering cancer endocrine reproduction etc etc we immediately sort of jump into this fight or flight for sure what I didn't see in this packet was a slide that shows the amount of time one has to spend in the exposure and again maybe that's coming in an exposed space to get to have the effects what science tells us about this air quality the testing is going in and it's getting a test moment in time tell me about air quality fluctuation in the course of an hour a day a week when kids are coming in and out of the classroom windows might be going open and closed doors are opening and shutting we might have a ventilation system that's working those are my two questions for now so cancer effects generally have a fair delay in the pregnancy period that goes on perhaps for decades with the substances within you but the cancer is not but it can develop over time the non-cancer effects we specifically use a one year period for calculating what's called reasonable exposure and that's different than what the EPA did which was used more of an average exposure level we usually factor in the age the amount of time spent in the setting time per day time over a month, time over a year so these non-cancer effects are really a one year kind of issue much more so than it could take forever to develop this the air quality business it's well known that at least at the levels closer to detection so the lower levels things are being absorbed and emitted all the time in terms of the source of the PCBs within a room so those may fluctuate which is why we have to give a fair amount of cushion to that detection level at the bottom but as you get into these higher levels while they probably will fluctuate and change they're starting out as higher levels and so I think that unless a new ventilation system occurred the day after the testing was done and it would perhaps radically alter the results it's probably not going to be a difference in saying this is a bad level even though the magnitude of it may have changed okay thank you I just want to make sure we get Senator Williams we can always come back do you want to follow up directly on this? it would if you could send us the exposure times that are scientifically based around cancer and all the other issues that you brought up that would be great but my understanding for example is at least for the cancer it's something like I think I'm in the ballpark you know seven hours a day six days a week 235 days a year for 30 years gives you a six in one million possibility and some of our a lot of our spaces at least that I've been seeing that have high levels of PCBs or spaces like gyms auditoriums I know that the there's a kitchen at the Charlotte Elementary School that's closed right now but the kids aren't in the kitchen and even the folks who work in there are not in there preparing long so I just really think we need to start talking more about the exposure I think it's really really important because my ultimate question is and I know you this is you keep your mind exposed to time to the age of the kid too so the preschool kid is going to be very different than the 12th grade and my last question which is kind of a big one and it's hard to quantify and I understand this but I do have to ask it and to Senator Campion's point I know that the chances of us closing down a school at this point is probably very slim but I did I did live it it caused many deleterious effects in my community and I'm wondering if you can at all speak to you know the potential deleterious effects that closing schools closing parts of schools requiring more taxpayer funding staffing in a school district that's already strapped what kind of effects can this have on our children because in an extreme case given our current mental health crisis we could be talking about suicide we could be talking about dropping out of school in Burlington it was kids not getting food but they get a school so big picture this is a complicated system what's that about I agree with what you're saying there are obviously in the category of unanticipated consequences fall out from anything the fact that I think it's very very very unlikely that school would close really helps that a lot because then you're dealing with shuffling rooms or at worst finding another location in the community for certain school activities that would be disruptive but wouldn't be as disruptive as stay home, stay safe or anything like that so I think most of this what year was the act passed it was about two years ago for PCB testing 2021 yeah so I mean we were still reeling with things but we hadn't had the whole fall out from what was going on with COVID and we've seen what that's done so we have to be considerate of those things for sure I don't think that's a deal breaker in this case because I do think the whole thesis of this protocol I presented is meeting schools and communities where they are and try to be as accommodating as possible as opposed to as restrictive as possible it's really airing on the side of being accommodating as long as we don't get into the duration of exposure that would be hard to do Senator Lewis it goes right in with what Senator Lewis said you've established a point in time you have the protocol and we're looking at what we know right now that school was built in 1970 and do we have any way that we can gauge when construction was done for a particular if they find it in the gym you know when was the last construction done in the gym that could have caused that probably don't have those records well I think the schools do and consultants that are involved in the prioritization of schools are aware of that and I was the town health officer in my town and I got a call from a VEPR that wanted to know why there are so many cancer cases and you might be able to use some of this data like particularly if it was all the basketball team they all had got cancer and they were all playing in that same gymnasium it might be good data to try break it down a little bit and keep it separate any other questions before we sort of shift to our commissioner anything for our commissioner of health let's talk about being sort of you remaining so I do have a question but I'd like to hear the next question commissioner stop sharing I'll do that I really do think that Dr. Levine's last slide it says just not stop exposure to harmful chemicals that kind of is our position we share that view with them one thing I would also tell you another reason not to pause it's working there were definitely some pickups the first time anyone has ever done this as far as I know in the country and I'm not sure elsewhere where but this is the first time anyone ever tried so we definitely had some fits and starts we're doing really well we're on target to meet the July 2025 deadline to test all schools over 320 schools so I feel like we're doing a good job the results, I don't want to say alarming but they're informing we're finding PCBs and number of schools we've done we've been doing testing since June 2022 we've got test results available and that means a lot it means you haven't just collected and you've gone through the whole process of getting the lab to validate et cetera so out of 31 samples 10 have exceeded the school action that's not insignificant as Dr. Levine just mentioned we just had one last week we're continuing to test we're continuing to find so from what we said we're doing what we were told to do and I think we're doing a good job of it we're working very hard in schools to try to keep them open that was always part of the mission here I want to recognize that coming out of COVID reflects the thing you can say it's in a school shut it down right I don't think even Preco wouldn't have gone over great now with the impacts of school closings we don't want to do that it's going to take something very extreme which we haven't even come close to seeing to get us there we can do this and we can keep kids safe and not just kids there's lots of people working in schools for a long long time so we have to worry about that granted the levels are higher for adults but they also work there a lot longer they're there a lot longer so we need to be protective we do feel like we're making the progress that we've been asked to make one thing I'll mention you mentioned the school of Charlotte where the kitchen had to close well they installed a carbon filtration system and they were able to get the levels down to non-detect so they were able to reopen that kitchen so that's an example so Dr. Lee mentioned mitigation versus remediation there's a lot of things you can do to mitigate this problem you don't have to get the source out right away eventually we always want to get the source out but you can prevent these exposures and allow for time frames that make sense for schools to work within that time frame we're not sitting there saying I've got to do this next week so get all the kids out of here so there's time you can move them to different places you can use either filtration systems there's certain types of paint that are effective so there's a lot of methodologies that can be used to keep people in the building safe until we get to the point where we get out that's always our goal our goal is to get these things out of the environment but in the interim we recognize this is a sensitive population and a sensitive issue and we plan we built this thing with the health department and with the education to come up with a way that we can try to balance all these challenges and there's always people who are going to be unhappy and frustrated and I understand that no one likes to hear that there's poison at their school that's not a good news so we try to work with them and help them understand what it means, what the risks are so we get health helps us understand the effects we manage the risk, that's our job and so we eventually our job is eventually to eliminate the risk but in the interim we're very willing and able to work with schools to make these things work Questions for the commissioner? Yes, senator So just out of curiosity to address senator Gulick's question so I just completed a radon test in my home which I think came from one of your departments that was a year long test and to your point it just sat there and you know come and go and what have you but for the PCB test is it a one hour test like a sniffer or is it a long term test just to kind of give us a sense of the roll out and how long this roll out takes so I'm just the commissioner I don't do the testing but I have my expert who actually knows all these things on teams chat right now so I'm hoping to see a little typing simple but I will be able to tell you that Thank you Can I also say to you that there was I think WCAX did a little expose on the testing they actually showed some of the folks who do the testing in the rooms with their machine that they use and I can try to find that and send it to you that's really actually kind of interesting So you know what I'm talking about I remember because I used to help the janitor that's kind of my detention help oh yeah they used to put down a compound on the floors you go and spread it around then you use the big dust mop that kind of cleaned the floor that might be something that had PCBs there and it smelled good yeah that's poison it's 24 hours 24 hours they use a pump attached to a PUF filter don't ask me what a PUF filter but the sample is collected for 24 hours that's okay thank you thank you so much Dr. Levine both of you for your work and we all want to keep our kids safe that is so incredibly important but again I can't say enough how much our schools are already struggling and I just hate to make things harder for them we have fewer teachers going into the profession than ever before and I feel like every time we make their job harder it is it is harmful I can't believe that I want to get back to the action levels and the immediate action levels I'm so happy to hear about Charlotte by the way thank you for letting me know that's fantastic yeah that's great so I I assume when you make come up with these levels 30 to 100 excuse me for action level 90 for 300 for the immediate action level taking in to account the space and how much it's being used or accessed is that correct that's really more for so immediate action level if a school has a 95 in their gym for example and the gym is only used by kids maybe three times a week for an hour for 180 days a year is that part of the equation when you came up with this 90 it's not part of the equation it's part of the grid which option do you take so I can see that school taking the option that gives them a whole year and lets the gym be occupied as long as the students are at the right age because I would think a preschool student would not be able to imagine they would be anyways but sure it was for the right age population but it didn't determine how the level it's not in reverse okay great thanks that actually brings to mind a real life example we have a school where it was an elementary school classroom red levels where they couldn't be in the classroom but they were long enough their older kids could be and so we basically just had them switch classrooms they were still able to keep the kids safe keep them in school I'll be in little different rooms but hopefully definitely not as disruptive as having them have to do with some place in a completely different classroom okay thank you so do you advise Charlotte for example on that air filtration system who was the entity that did that who most likely was their consultant I'm sure we were involved with the consulting firm to help them with that we worked very closely my staff worked very closely with the school's consultants and they kind of problem solved wonderful because it does seem as though with the air levels there can be mitigation can be probably fairly simple and also very on target it really depends but that's a good example that's relatively easy but some spaces are bigger it's harder to identify it also sounds like I forgot to mention they found a capacitor in that room and they took it out so they're going to go back and do some sampling everyone is a little different every scenario a little bit different there are potential scenarios where the mitigation is pretty straightforward and we can keep everybody safe and not have to do anything too disruptive great can I ask either of you two to comment on the amount that is currently set aside for funding is it adequate and the second question is how do you how do you feel about the 80-20 split on the funding all I can really tell you is I'm not aware of anyone seeking additional funds at this time I will tell you I would be very surprised that 30 million ends up being sufficient based upon what we've seen today but I'm not aware of any specific asks at this point in time in terms of the 80-20 split it's really based upon our approach to brown fields if you're familiar with brown fields so when we have brown fields projects that's the typical split between not the schools in private for non-state entities paid 20% and the state fees 80 so that's that was really where it originated so that's where we're at yes so certainly drawbacks and benefits to being the first in the nation to pursue any kind of program certainly a program that's affecting students and the staff and the schools but given the cost of remediation of the problem I'm just still trying I'm still struggling to justify to constituents the difference between Vermont's levels of acceptable exclosures and EPA's levels how can we bring the two together so what we do here is essentially it can be mirrored by other states but not to drain the treasury of the state at a time when it's difficult to afford and I'll let Dr. Levine talk to the more technical aspects I can type from a regulatory perspective so I did work with EPA for over a year so I have a sense of how their system works it's much slower than ours probably not surprised I'll just give an example Dr. Levine mentioned in 2016 when we found PFAS in Bennington the EPA was at 400ppt we did a lot of work we got the emergency rule passed just this month two primary PFAS compounds and we found in our state PFOA and PFAS is four parts of the trip just to give you a sense of the dynamic in 70 years 100 for a month now so I think they're a little bit behind us is my sense we're just on top of this this has been known since 2013 is the first publication I could find from EPA indicating that PCBs or emissions from PCBs are dangerous the state set its first levels in 2014 so I just feel like I want and if you look at Dr. Levine has a slide indicating various lawsuits there's a lot going on out there and I feel like it's a good reflection on us we're getting on ahead of it there's people getting sick and so I'm comfortable with these folks setting levels that I believe are protected so Dr. Levine you did a wonderful job thanks for that question if you just look at the PFAS compounds you look at the lead I mean it's good to be ahead of the game when you're science based again when our cowboys just really really doing things these are very science based decisions these are well accepted in the toxicology community but it takes a lot of effort to move policy at the national level and regulations at the national level and I think we're a little more facile than we do now but again I hate to give the answer to you to tell you constituents just have faith but look at experience and look at the track record and look at the fact that we actually can justify every decision we've made why we included the number of hours number of days, number of years all of those factors going into the formulas to decide where a level should be and again what level of risk is a constituent willing to assume you know most people would look at one in a million or six in a million and go well I don't want to be that one or that six but that doesn't sound so bad but that's really where the field of toxicology is in looking at things and we don't want to make a departure from that and say we'll go in order of magnitude of difference so 60 people per million is acceptable in the month that would not be acceptable so we have to really be data and science driven are there any levers that our federal delegation can pull to get the EPA to you know to have them have a conversation I mean it just seems like there's a very expensive discount every state is watching closely what happens here we want us to share our findings with them so just the findings alone never mind what's done with the findings just the findings alone I think we're going to have an impact so your question may be a little premature we need to let our data accumulate and then show into the world and get them to see what they think and they can critically appraise it just like anything else that's scientific to accomplish can we just give you a little more regulatory context as opposed to more science based context if you call the EPA they have some common removals program which deals with kind of imminent hazards like bad stuff right you call them in if they went to a school in Vermont and found levels at 5 5 they would consider that imminent hazard and they would take immediate action that would give you a sense they're not saying that we're too high it's just they have a different cost from what we do I think ours is probably more thought out than theirs thank you and this committee frankly we have the chief health officer and environmental officer and the governor saying don't pause so this committee has to decide whether or not it wants to fight that get a possible veto and say six months again to me at least from what I've heard six months isn't just going to pick back up again so what I would hate to see happen just as the chair is testimony testimony testimony testimony and we all end up still having a majority of the committee saying hey we're not going to pause so I just want us to keep that in mind given that April 1st is soon and we have got a lot of work to do I would just like to end with I'm not necessarily in favor of pausing I would like to hear more from the folks in the know how this program is going to play with our school construction bill because that's a really, really critical conversation so any advice you have thoughts and if I may, I think one of the things I was rightfully focused on also is the funding piece how is there something that we did write to our federal delegation we're kind of hammering it home as much as we can with them we know Vermont's starting this but everybody's going to do it how can we do it and then I also center I mean my personal life I defer to my doctor when he gives me medical advice when it comes to psychology most of the time I want to defer to the commissioner here but then there's also the piece of just trying to put myself while I am a dad thinking about the other parents who are sending their kids to school and then seeing that this testing is going to be potentially paused that makes me uncomfortable and I imagine it would also make other parents uncomfortable but also the piece that was mentioned earlier this PCD testing can inform the school construction process and my opinion is that these aren't two separate things and lastly, oh, the 80-20 situation the funding for this I mean when I talked to my superintendent in William County that was one of his concerns as well and it's and I think that's going to be the challenge at least in my opinion the funding part is going to be the challenge for this I do have a slide that I'll just send it to the committee assistant just to talk you through it one of the key factors here is when I talk about mitigation if we can prevent these exposures there's a fair amount of flexibility within that timeframe as long as the kids and the staff are not being exposed the actual remediation which is one of the construction piece comes in you can do mitigation measures like air filters or just paint and stuff that's not going to disrupt the construction schedule there are ways to try to make things more aligned you may not be perfect if they're talking 10 years from now but I would never be comfortable waiting 10 years to fix the problem but if it's within reason there's something called the corrective action plan that can kind of set things up if the exposure is under control there should be ways to mitigate some of that effort I get this, well it doesn't want to go out and renovate a wing because of PCBs they come back a year later and the same thing so there is some flexibility within reason built in here as long as we make sure that the people want to build the intersection but I'll shoot that over to the staff any other questions or comments for either witnesses it's been very helpful thank you both for everything you're doing great, thank you okay any other final one a little over looks like tomorrow the floor is kind of also running another couple hours so yeah, 1 to 3 so we'll be in here from 3 about 4.30 I know you've got to build the floor I can do that thank you both, I really appreciate it 5 pages tough questions okay I think we will close it thanks everybody he's taking notes thank you