Incorrect
Information

The Vermont Dept of Health and the Vermont Dept of Environmental Conservation are promulgating incorrect information in 3 ways.

1. Their input assumptions are not reasonable. Using a baseline of 30 years of work, 11 hours a day, and 250 days of the year in the buildings is an inflated assumption.

2. Their data is extrapolated. State Toxicologist Sarah Vose admitted on a Zoom call on September 29, 2020 that the probabilities of an occurrence are so low they are not reliably measured, and risk assumptions have to be extrapolated.

3. The public may hear a scary term like "PCB" and think they are at risk. But anything scary multiplied by effectively zero, which is the case here, is effectively zero. The Department of Health presented scary information and did not make clear the importance of ultra-ultra-low probabilities.

The Department of Health also did not discuss airborne PCBs relative to those ingested. When considered in the context risks seem incredibly small.

To put things in context...

If risk of 1 in a million exists over thirty years with inflated time in the building, a student has real risk closer to 1 in 15 million. To put that in perspective, every man, woman, and child living in New England would have to attend BHS for one additional case of cancer at some point in the next 40 years. Not death, case.

Let's look at this in perspective.

The average person has a 1 in 1,162 chance of dying from self-harm over four years, a chance that skyrockets for students in the captivity of their bedrooms. You have a 1 in 114 chance of dying in an auto acccident over a lifetime, so driving to BHS is 7,518 times more dangerous than PCBs, assuming you drive there for 4 years.

You can see more stats here to put things in perspective.

And one more thing...

Vermont Toxicologist Sarah Vose herself stated in this letter to the Burlington School District, while referencing Champlain Elementary's numbers, "PCBs are everywhere, and there are many different sources of exposure. It is very difficult to avoid exposure to PCBs. With the low PCB levels found in your school, diet (fish, fatty meats and high-fat dairy) is the major source of exposure for people (staff and students). The PCB amounts in your school are very low."

Champlain Elementary had numbers similar to those of BHS.

See the letter here