The HN headline for this story is a bit misleading. Kind of subtle, but it implies, as written, that Google had secret workers at a Superfund site and that their identities have been revealed. I was expecting something much odder when I clicked the link :)
"Superfund" is synonymous with "toxic place" but I agree, the problem is that "Superfund" sounds a little too much like "super fun" and not enough like "uncontrolled hazardous waste site that needs federal funds to cleanup"
It seems higher levels of trichloroethylene than this are/were common, even outdoors: (note this data is 10-20 years old)
Reported worldwide background levels vary from <17 to 109 ng/m3. In rural areas levels of 0.10–0.68 µg/m3 have been reported (4,5). In urban areas levels are higher. In European cities, the reported range is 0.04–64.1 µg/m3 (mean concentrations 0.8–18.5 µg/m3). For Germany,
5–15 µg/m3 is reported as the typical concentration range for urban areas (4). In the United States, concentrations in municipal areas ranged from 0.03 to 13.5 µg/m3 (mean
concentrations 0.5–2.1 µg/m3) (4); the average for urban areas of 2.5 µg/m3 (0.46 ppb) that resulted from a compilation of data in 1982, is in agreement with more recent measurements (3). Mean concentrations (24-hour composite samples averaged over 1–12 months) in 11 Canadian cities ranged from 0.7 to 0.96 µg/m3 (5).
The median value for indoor air from the 2031 entries in the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data base on volatile organic contaminants (VOC-AMBI) is 0.68
µg/m3 (0.125 ppb); the average value was 7.36 µg/m3
(1.347 ppb) (6). In Canada, mean indoor air concentrations of up to 165 µg/m3 with an overall mean value of 1.4 µg/m3
have been reported (5). Concentrations measured in several western European countries varied from 0.76 to 1200 µg/m3
. Concentrations are generally higher in indoor air than outdoors (4). An important source for trichloroethylene in indoor air is volatilization from contaminated
water (7).
The problem at Google was discovered when routine air sampling found TCE at a level of 7.8 micrograms per cubic meter in a hallway of one building on Nov. 21. The EPA was notified as required. It is unclear how long the levels had been above the danger threshold. The previous sampling in September 2010 found nearly undetectable levels.
In an effort to reduce the vapors, workers sealed cracks in floors and walls where TCE might get in. But despite their efforts, samples collected on Dec. 29 found the problem was getting worse: TCE exceeded the 5-microgram safety threshold in five locations in two of the four buildings.
> The median value for indoor air...is 0.68 µg/m3; the average value was 7.36 µg/m3
That's a big skew. It would be interesting to know what the distribution here is, but it sounds like most places have very little trichloroethylene and then a few places have tons of it. So it may still be an unusually high concentration.
It may also be that the EPA set the numbers correctly and just tons of people are exposed to harmful levels of it. I'd love to hear from someone with specific knowledge here.
If they are referring to the Ellis/Middlefield campus - I used to work at that site, and I can remember around 1998/1999, when they added a huge honking water fountain spraying water against a ventilator of some kind.
It was a bit nerve wracking seeing all of the various environmental teams walking around Ellis for a couple weeks wearing full on HazMat suits while we were just strolling around in Shorts and T-Shirts...
That's really scary to have to work with. I wonder if Google thought the problems were in a zone that they could've been handled or if things were always this bad. Talk about a sick building.
Background missing from article: Trichloroethylene was in widespread use during the early days of silicon fab, and was part of the "RCA clean" that was used in order to remove everything from the surface of a silicon wafer.
On the plus side, unlike the common case in the mining industry, the Valley companies involved are mostly at least paying for the cleanup of their associated sites. Granted, it might just be because they have no choice, since the sites are clearly theirs, while in mining the sites seem to frequently end up attributed to some tiny company that promptly goes bust, leaving taxpayers paying for the cleanup.
The best part of this article is the typical "TCE, an industrial solvent used in making computer chips, is known to cause cancer and birth defects" part they use to try to scare people. Roughly everything that does not kill you in sufficient quantities can cause cancer or birth defects. They then cite really really odd studies that don't support anything in particular, or are completely irrelevant for the topic at hand.
Let me give this a try: "Workers at the site were exposed to tap water, a chemical known to cause birth defects[1] and death[2]"
Not that i'm claiming TCE is great for you, but articles like this are almost completely content free in terms of actual science.
One Google employee who was visibly pregnant was asked if she was aware of risks associated with TCE exposure.
"We're really not allowed to talk about it," she said. "Sorry."
This is a very shameful part of such incidents. Without transparency and communication, we will never resolve these issues.
If transparency and communication had existed from the start, that ventilation would not have been disabled or certainly not have remained so for such a period of time.
In my opinion, the entities that create such messes should be examined fully and, where appropriate (particularly in cases of willful neglect), drained of their resources in order to correct the problem.
And, once such problems exist in the public environment (including employment settings), nobody -- upon threat of criminal prosecution -- should have the ability to constraint communication and dialog about them.
The employee was declining to discuss the situation with a reporter. It isn't a coverup of a whistleblow, nor was the reporter their to help the employee. If the reporter was concerned for health more than story, the reporter would have made more of an effort to separate the woman from the TCE.
When I worked at 1600 Plymouth and Google was looking for more space I was surprised they weren't building on the empty lot across the street. Then I walked over there between a gap in the fence and walked around. About ever 15 - 20 yards was a test well. Looking at the superfund data it was in the process of being 'remediated' which was a program where steam gets pumped into the ground to migrate chemicals out.
Part of the legacy of the 'silicon' part of silicon valley.
"The site is now home to about 85 businesses, including the software firm Symantec, the insurance company eHealthInsurance, a patent law firm, a baby ultrasound center, an adoption service, a restaurant and a cafe."
Anybody else a little depressed that Google employees took precedent in this story, over an _ultrasound center_ housed on a site with chemicals that might cause birth defects?
> Pregnant women who are exposed to low levels of the chemical during a crucial three-week period in their first trimester face an increased risk of having a baby born with holes in the heart
This is going to scare many pregnant women and their partners, but it's almost worthless information. What is the baseline rate of babies born with holes in the heart, and what is the rate of babies exposed to TCE? And what's the consequence of hole in the heart - is it a problem for every child born with it? Without that information you've just got a scary soundbite but nothing else.
The proportion of mothers who were both older and had presumed TCE exposure was more than six-fold greater among case infants than among control infants (3.3% [8/245] versus 0.5% [19/3780]). When adjusted for other variables, CHD risk was over three-fold greater among infants of older, exposed mothers compared to infants of older, nonexposed mothers (adjusted OR, 3.2; 95% CI, 1.2-8.7). Older maternal age, alcohol use, chronic hypertension, and preexisting diabetes were each associated with CHDs (adjusted ORs, 1.9, 2.1, 2.8, 4.1; 95% CIs, 1.1-3.5, 1.1-4.2, 1.2-6.7, 1.5-11.2, respectively), but residence close to TCE sites alone was not.
"[...] were each associated with CHDs [...] but residence close to TCE sites alone was not."
So, they actually found no correlation with TCE exposure. There found a correlation with one of the subgroups [TCE + other variable], one out of many, that they selected after examining the data.
As far as I understand only women that were older (≥ 38) had a significant effect from being exposed (on top of the increased risk due to being older).
You are misunderstanding the statistical theory. The xkcd comic was making a joke about misused priors. You have no reason to believe that this paper used a wrong prior and peer reviewers overlooked it, nor have you examined the choice of p-value.
