Toxic Ooze at School Remains a Mystery

Detectable levels of toxic chemicals and heavy metals are evident in a tar-like substance oozing from a Cudahy schoolyard, but scientists still have not determined how dangerous they are, officials said at a meeting Thursday night.

“This is validated test data, but we have not yet drawn any conclusions,” Carolyn Douglas of the Environmental Protection Agency said at a meeting of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s environmental task force.

However, Don Coleman, a spokesman for the school district, said the test results verified the district’s position.

“There is no major danger there. The samples they took from the ground (support) what we’ve said all along,” Coleman said.

Douglas said a laboratory analysis of the samples taken from the playground at Park Avenue Elementary School show levels of arsenic, cadmium, zinc and lead. She stressed the study was simply designed to determine what chemicals were on the site, nothing more. “I don’t do risk assessment.”

Parents and students became concerned earlier this year that the petroleum-based ooze might be harmful, so the district closed the year-round school and transferred its 1,100 students.