Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

November 27, 2019 07:00 am

Health Concerns Mount As More Old Sewer Pipes Are Lined With Plastic

Residents near renovation sites claim noxious emissions from pipe inserts are making them sick. Scientific American reports: Earlier this year Nicole Davis arrived at one of the San Antonio, Tex., offices of the audiology practice she co-owns ready to see the day's patients. But upon entering her office, Davis says she quickly noticed a noxious odor that smelled like paint thinner. Her eyes started burning. By noon, she felt nauseated and dizzy, with the burning sensation spreading to her nose and throat. Her mouth went numb. Co-workers in the building told Davis that they felt ill, too. By the evening, she says, she was vomiting. Two days later, Davis received an e-mail from an employee for a construction firm that was doing work that week on municipal pipes below street-level near the building. The employee apologized in the e-mail for Davis's "recent experience," and attached a technical document describing the hazards and health risks associated with materials used to make plastic in the pipe project. The e-mail and attachment do not state that the work caused the odor or Davis's reaction. The company was renovating an underground sewer pipe with a widely and increasingly used technique called cured-in-place pipes. A felt or composite sleeve is saturated, typically with a polyester or vinyl ester resin. Workers thread the sleeve through an underground pipe and then inflate and heat it, often with steam or hot water. The sleeve hardens to form a continuous plastic liner along the old pipe's inner walls. The technique is less expensive and takes less time than fully replacing old sewer-system pipes and stormwater culverts. [...] Davis's experience reflects, in part, the scarcity of reliable, industry-independent research and public health advice about potential risks associated with the cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP, method. The practice has grown steadily in the past two decades, with more than 35,000 miles of the liners installed worldwide, according to a 2017 market report by BCC Research. CIPP is the most popular method among a group of pipe-renovation techniques that require minimal digging as compared with excavating an old pipe and replacing it. With billions of dollars spent and loaned annually in the U.S. alone to restore deteriorating pipes, the market for lower-cost renovation approaches is forecast to remain strong for several years. The report goes on to say that there have been more than 100 incidents spanning 29 U.S. states in the past 15 years from CIPP. "Children have been mentioned in news stories and other reports in more than a dozen of those 100 cases, including a September incident in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in which middle school students reportedly felt sick from a CIPP job several hundred feet from their classroom," reports Scientific American. "Studies by [Purdue University]'s group have revealed that jobs at study sites, where installers used steam to harden the resin, release a mixture of vaporized and liquid droplets of organic compounds and water, as well as particles of partially hardened resin, into the air. The compounds include hazardous air pollutants such as styrene and methylene chloride, as well as dibutyl phthalate, which some studies have identified as an endocrine disruptor. But other emitted compounds vary, possibly depending on the type of resin used and other operational differences." Some of the first findings to look into the health implications of exposures to CIPP emissions "found alterations in gene expression and protein production in exposed cells, inflammation and injuries or with abnormal function in organs," the report says. "The findings show the potential for adverse health effects in humans," although the findings "differed from site to site, by the type of cells exposed, and by the genes and proteins examined."

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot