Tar ‘Ooze’ in School’s Play Yard Is Mystery

Where a month ago schoolchildren played, a team of federal environmental experts drilled 2 1/2 feet into the ground Saturday, seeking clues to the mysterious oily, tar-like substance that oozes through the asphalt at Cudahy’s Park Avenue Elementary School.

For four hours, the representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency--wearing protective clothing, gloves and masks--collected water, air and ground samples from the school’s playground.

They shoveled, they poked, they scraped, they sniffed.

‘Gooey and Smelly’

And still, they had little idea exactly what the substance was or what was causing it to appear.

“It’s black, gooey and smelly,” said Doug Frazer, EPA regional project officer, noting he believed it contains traces of hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of discarded oil sludge with a pungent scent.

The visit by the EPA was the latest attempt by school, health, environmental and community officials to identify the substance that has been appearing periodically for 20 years and get to the bottom of why it continues to bubble to the playground’s surface.

“It was coming up when I attended school there from 1971 to 1975,” said Jose Mireles of Cudahy, a 26-year-old a Los Angeles policeman. “There was also a rotten egg smell in the summer. You couldn’t breathe. We thought it was normal.”

In the face of a new round of complaints by parents and teachers, school officials two weeks ago fenced off about one-fourth of the playground, making the tar-like spots off-limits to students of the year-round school.

Committee Formed

Cudahy officials have accused the Los Angeles Unified School District of acting slowly, teachers at the school have formed what they call an “ooze committee” to keep abreast of the issue and a handful of parents have withdrawn their children from the school--with more threatening to do the same.

Some parents complain that their children suffer from eye irritations, rashes and headaches.

As early as 1968, when the Cudahy school opened, school district workers had patched leaks in the asphalt, long-time school employees said.

EPA spokesman Terry Wilson said Saturday it will take the agency about four months to analyze the samples and determine whether the ooze is hazardous.

What is known is that the school and a nearby city park were built atop landfills that had operated since the 1930s and were shut down before the early 1960s, Wilson said. Trash, oil sludge, abandoned vehicles and old boats were reportedly dumped there, he said.

Although EPA officials said it was yet to be determined whether the substance is hazardous, a recent study by an environmental firm for the school district identified the ooze as either a type of toxic coal tar or a petroleum-based asphalt tar.

School district officials, too, seemed to agree that hazardous compounds are present in the ooze but they said they pose little danger to students at the school.

“We are confident right now that unless students ate a bunch of this stuff or rubbed it all over their bodies, there is no problem,” said Don Coleman, district public information officer.

In a report to the district in December, Thomas N. Dixon, a project geologist for Anaheim-based Thorne Environmental Inc., said the firm found in the ooze methylene chloride, a potential carcinogen that can cause eye and skin irritation and kidney and respiratory ailments.

It also found methylnapthalene, known sometimes as white tar, which can cause headaches, eye irritation, abdominal ailments and mental confusion. In addition, phenanthrene, a potential carcinogen, and pyrene and benzo pyrene, combustion products that are carcinogenic and toxic, were discovered in the substance.

Sources of Danger

The report said the “immediate danger” would come from eating the ooze, breathing the vapors if it were burned or from prolonged skin contact.

Engineers and scientists for the state Department of Health Services, which investigated the seepage last month, found some different compounds, all of them mild to moderate toxins.

Dennis Leonard, a program supervisor in the department’s toxics division in Burbank, said that the substance may be a “petroleum hydrocarbon, possibly a refinery byproduct.”

Leonard, who performed a preliminary review for the EPA, said the black ooze could cause skin burns because of its acidic nature and would be harmful if eaten.

School officials stress that the seepage has occurred in isolated spots, not throughout the playground’s surface.

“They are small spots of asphalt that become gooey when there is hot weather,” said Shirleen Bolin, a school district administrator. “They are not bubbling pools out there like on the Beverly Hillbillies.”

Variety of Sizes

She said the ooze spots range in size from that of a half-dollar to 6 to 8 inches in diameter.

At first, Cudahy City Manager Gerald Caton accused school district officials of not being cooperative in responding to inquiries about potential toxins at the school site. District officials have denied this.

Now, “We are just pleased that people are taking this seriously and things are in motion,” Caton said.

The district was ordered last month by state authorities to begin checks of the playground and to install barriers until the ooze spots were covered or removed. School board member Leticia Quezada said she hoped the installation of the fence would “calm any fears and anxiety of parents and the community.”

About 100 parents met with district and state health officials last month, with some parents demanding promises that children would be unharmed by the substance. School officials said that, although they have seen children sometimes play with the ooze, they do not know of any cases when a student has been harmed.