Discovery of Arsenic in Soil Brings Fear to Cudahy School

Luis Alvarado is consumed by one word: arsenic.

The poison has been found at low levels at his daughter’s school in Cudahy. And that’s why Alvarado is about to take an extraordinary step. He’s moving.

“It’s not worth taking the risk,” he said Tuesday, waiting for his kindergartner to emerge from Park Avenue Elementary.

Slightly elevated levels of arsenic have been detected in the kindergarten play area at the school, which sits atop a landfill and has a history of environmental problems.

State environmental officials said the arsenic levels are not high enough to pose short-term risks to students and faculty. But many parents and teachers at Park Avenue are fearful and remain suspicious.

One parent, Jose Lopez, wary of potential harm, is making his son change clothes each day upon returning from kindergarten. Several teachers are thinking about asking for transfers. Principal Hilda Almada-Higgins is trying to steer her staff through an anxious period.

“Of course it worries us,” said Almada-Higgins. “They tell us there’s no immediate danger, [but] I think there’s always a cloud that makes you wonder.”

District officials say they will clean up the contamination by May, about the same time a plan is put forward to address broader environmental concerns at the campus.

A solution can’t arrive soon enough for Lopez.

“I think it’s a big, big problem,” he said. “It’s no good, but I don’t have an opportunity for another school.”

The arsenic scare is the latest environmental trouble at Park Avenue.

Soon after the campus opened in 1968, oily liquid surged through the asphalt playground during the hot summer months. Complaints were lodged by teachers and parents over the years but to little effect. Finally, in 1989, the school was shut down for 15 months while Los Angeles Unified officials capped the sludge with a thick polyethylene liner, installed a ventilation system and repaved the playground.

The traces of arsenic--perhaps a result of pesticides or dumping on the site when it was a landfill--were discovered in recent months on the opposite side of the campus, in the kindergarten area. As part of a broader environmental review of the site, district consultants found the toxic metal in soil samples taken from dirt around tree planters and other places.

Additional testing found arsenic at 38 parts per million. That concentration of arsenic is higher than typical “background” levels of up to 10 ppm in the Los Angeles area. But the level is not high enough to be a significant short-term health risk, according to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The arsenic would only have posed a significant health risk from short-term exposure had it been found at several hundred ppm, said Hamid Saebfar, chief of the agency’s school property evaluation and cleanup division.

“If we had found arsenic at high levels, we would have closed the school down,” Saebfar said. “We don’t find that.”

Tests showed slightly elevated levels of lead beneath the asphalt pavement in the kindergarten area, but state health officials said the substance posed no health threat.

Still, state and school district officials agreed that it would be wise to limit access to the kindergarten area. As a precaution, the district has fenced off a patch of grass in the kindergarten area and covered tree wells with plastic sheeting and wood chips.

Officials also have sought to calm jittery nerves. State and district officials, along with counterparts from the Los Angeles County Department of Health, met with Park Avenue teachers Tuesday to give an update.

“This most recent development has caught everyone’s attention,” said Angelo Bellomo, head of the district’s environmental health and safety branch.

Despite reassurances that the kindergarten area is safe, the arsenic scare has caused an uproar at the quiet campus, tucked into a neighborhood of modest homes along the Los Angeles River about 10 miles southeast of downtown.

“There are a lot of teachers who look with a lot of reservations about what they’re being told,” said Sal Valdez, teachers union representative at the campus. “There’s an element of doubt and fear. . . . There’s still a lot of work to be done.”