By John Henderer, The Chronicle, 1/30/99
Joanie Linder gave up drinking the water long ago. Now she won't let her children bathe in the contaminated supply.
The 24-year-old mother gives her two young children sponge baths with bottled water because she believes chemicals in their home water supply cause skin rashes.
For two years, Linder and her children, 17 months and 5 years, have lived near the worst-known groundwater contamination in the state involving perchloro-ethylene, a powerful solvent or dry-cleaning agent also known as PCE.
A University of Washington toxicologist, however, said contamination levels in the water are "extremely unlikely" to cause skin lesions.
Direct contact with PCE can cause dizziness, nerve damage and liver damage. Federal environmental officials consider it a probable cancer-causing agent in humans based on animal tests.
Last week, the state Department of Ecology issued notice it suspects S.C. Breen Construction Inc. of being liable for the contamination.
Ecology said interviews and water tests indicate surplus chemicals stored at Breen's former business property at 151 LaBree Road, "disappeared" one weekend in the early 1980s, the same time someone excavated a pit and filled it. Ecology officials believe the pit may lie under a Bulldog Trailer Manufacturing building on the site today.
Three soil borings around the building revealed "daughter products" of PCE, including more dangerous vinyl chloride, according to an Ecology report released this month.
Health officials first learned of the contamination after a business tested for a new well in the area in 1993.
Linder's husband, Octavio Nuñez, who has lived at the dairy more than 10 years, drank and showered from a well with contamination levels many times higher than is considered safe by federal guidelines, Linder said. The contamination was not nearly as bad as a neighbor's, however.
Linder's landlord, David Veenhouwer, reportedly has switched the family to a less-contaminated well, although she believes it still is not safe.
Nuñez, who works as a milker at Veenhouwer Dairy across the street from their home, has developed small white spots on his back and arms like bumps on a plucked chicken, Linder said.
"It would make you puke," she said. "He's had this skin problem for years, and it's been since he's been bathing in this water."
The small spots are visible up close but difficult to observe from a distance.
Linder's 17-month-old son, Lisandro, suffers from severe respiratory problems and had difficulty gaining weight. He also experienced "unexplainable diarrhea" that smelled like dead animals and quickly caused welts or open sores on his skin, she said.
Linder said she was seven months pregnant with Lisandro when she learned of the water problems coincidentally through talking with a co-worker at the Lewis County Health Division.
Last year, she took her son to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital and Health Center in Tacoma to be evaluated for cystic fibrosis. The tests came back negative.
"They could never figure out why this baby is so sick," Linder said.
Linder believes Ecology has known about the problems with her water for years, but said she only learned of their seriousness after making calls to experts.
"For the longest time I thought they knew more than they were letting on," she said. "the more I found out about PCE, the more traumatized I got."
Ecology spokeswoman Sandy Howard said the agency notified Veenhouwer but not Linder.
"We were working with the source, " Howard said. "It's the well owner's responsibility to notify all of the users. We did our best to notify everybody of the situation, particularly if they were going on bottled water."
Ecology plans to send the family to a Seattle hospital Feb. 12 for toxicology testing. Normally, this would be a job for the state Department of Health, but Howard said Ecology is paying for the evaluation to expedite the process.
David Eaton, professor and director of the Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health at the University of Washington, said the family's chances of getting cancer from PCE are "incredibly small."
Tests have shown levels as high as 11 parts PCE per billion parts water in Linder's well water. The federal safe drinking water standard is 5 parts per billion.
"These very low standards in drinking water have the potential to unduly alarm people," Eaton said. "That's an extremely small amount there is very little chemical at that concentration."
Koenraad Marien, a state Department of Health toxicologist, said he does not know of any solvent that causes a skin rash at such low levels.
The chances of getting cancer after drinking water contaminated at this level for 70 years increases by one case in a million, Eaton said. On average, people have a one-in-three chance of getting cancer, anyway.
Vinyl chloride found near the Bulldog site is "considerably more hazardous" than PCE, Eaton said. It is associated with a rare form of cancer, angiosarcoma of the liver.
But tests have not found vinyl chloride in area residents' well water, Howard said.
Two years ago, Ecology began providing a water-purifying system to Linder's neighbors, Larry and Kathy Thurman and their four children. Before, the state simply supplied bottled water.
Tests at the Thurmans' well revealed "extremely high" levels of PCE contamination, Ecology said in its report. A test in 1997 found 3,740 parts PCE per billion parts water, the highest ever found in state groundwater.
But the Thurmans report no ill effects from their exposure to the water. They have lived at their south Chehalis home 12 years.
Their two boys and two girls ages 14, 11, 6 and 4 - remain healthy, Kathy Thurman said.
"They've all be fine," she said. "It was scary, you know, because you don't know what the results are going to be 20 years from now. It's just something you deal with. I mean, I can't go out there and change the ground. You just hope it doesn't affect you."
Thurman said she didn't know about the testing offer.
"I've always said, 'Well, we have to wait till we have health insurance, she said.
It's unknown which water supply Veenhouwer Dairy uses for its cows. The family did not return calls for comment.
Eaton, the UW toxicologist, said it's unlikely PCE would become concentrated in the cows' milk.
John Henderer covers county government and environmental issues for The Chronicle. He can be reached by e-mail at jhenderer@chronline.com or by calling 807-8239.
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