Eugene I. Taylor, PhD
Cambridge MA 02140

Mr Harold D. Cox July 4, 1999
Chief Public Health Officer
Cambridge Public Health Dept.

1493 Cambridge St.
Cambridge MA 02139

Dear Mr Cox,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the abestos sampling plan proposed for the W. R. Grace site by the owners.

In my opinion, as a professional in the field of psychology who has been exposed to asbestos in the past when Harvard University had this same problem at William James Hall, the Grace site is too toxic to be developed and the proposed plan for containment absolutely inadequate. The health risks to the public are too high, the proposals for containment actually ludricrous, and the level of scientific monitoring for cancer rates, either in the past or over the next forty years, non-existent.

I maintain that there has been no provision whatever to safeguard the public against any risk of cancer as long as there have been no long term epidemiologic studies of the health of the population. There has never been any monitoring of private property abutting Russell Field, although Russell Field has been found to contain the same cancer causing agents as the Grace site, just as there has never been a long term health assessment of the neighborhood over the past eighty years. Nor is there any provision for the health monitoring of the local residents over the next firty years, when we can expect the effects of Grace's folly to hurt families the most, after Grace has long since cashed the checks for development and fled the scene. Grace would like to put in 1000 new parking spaces, but there has never been any monitoring of the total air quality in the neighborhood for the tonnage of cancer causing agents dumped onto the community daily; and now Grace proposes to aid that threat by adding cancer causing asbestos to the air. Grace maintains that my children, one of whom already suffers from a respiratory difficulty, will not be affected by airbourne particles; that my water will not contain the residue from their truck washes, or that there will be no threat from the large number of trucks they plan to send in front of my house--Clifton St, the only exit as they leave the Grace property on the north side. They have done nothing but avoid responsibility for their actions in the past. Their current proposal looks to me like more of the same.

So far, Grace has used physical science and existing environmental law to keep the focus on containment, when the true risk to public health has not been assessed; namely, where the scientific studies have actually focused on people. Where there has been concrete evidence, such as at their toxic waste dumping sites in Woburn, Grace have been found linked to the deaths of local children from Lukemia. We cannot afford to allow Cambridge to become another Woburn.

I strongly urge you to inform the public about their legal rights regarding the possibility of a class action suit against these environmental polluters regarding the long term develoopment of diseases related to the project. In my estimation the asbestos project they propose also constitutes continued negligance and contamination of the environment. I also strongly urge you to permit the federal EPA to get involved in the asbestos problem at the Grace site as an unreported contaminant at the earliest possible date. I believe their investigations will corrobortate my conclusion that the site is to toxic to develop.

Submitted by

Eugene Taylor, Ph.D.