Article should better explain the threat posed by environmental PCBs.

In a Los Angeles Times article, reporter Louis Sahagun writes about how toxic substances found in a wetland might derail a land swap deal. The November 17 story describes well the political side of the plan that is now jeoparidized by the presence of heavy PCB contamination. 

However, readers who don’t know what environmental PCBs are, where they come from and why they are so damaging are left hanging. They might wonder, "What's the big deal?"

First, PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are a human health threat. The concentrations found at the site are 2,000 times greater than what the government has deemed safe for the environment. The article quotes an Environmental Protection Agency spokesman who states that the concentrations are an ecological threat, but ventures they are not a human health concern.  

PCBs are carcinogenic, as Sahagun states. But there also are a host of other health problems associated with the long-lived chemicals that he neglects to mention. In birds and fish, PCBs can cause severe deformities, reproductive problems and immune suppression. In people, they have been shown to reduce IQ and alter thyroid and reproductive function.

The article fails to note that humans as well as wildlife are exposed to PCBs in the environment. Once in water, sediments and air, PCBs mostly remain intact, accumulating in animals and concentrating as they move up the food chain. Fish and other top predators that humans eat store the pollutants mainly in fat. People may not be fishing in the specific wetland mentioned in the article, but  PCBs – and fish – move around. Nearly every human being contains traces of PCBs in his or her body.

Finally, the article tells the story of an informant who decades ago saw “transformers leaking hazardous chemicals out there,” but it doesn’t tell readers what transformers are and that some transformers still contain PCBs.  While they have many uses, transformers are best known as the stations in high voltage power transmission where voltage strength is changed so it can be used in homes and businesses. The PCBs in them act as coolants and insulating fluids.

Although PCBs have been banned from production for several decades in the United States, they are still in use in older industrial equipment, including transformers. The chemicals do not quickly break apart or change into other types of less harmful chemicals.

All in all, informing readers about why PCBs are so problematic would help them understand the liabilities of the pollutants and the hesitation of the parties to receive the contaminated land.