Tampabay: Tests may reveal effects on children

The playground was within sight of the slag-crushing operation at Stauffer Chemical Co., but kids had no idea what was going on just across Anclote Boulevard.

"I don't think we really knew what it was," Corvaia said of the Stauffer plant.

On Thursday, however, a federal official said the government needs to find out more about whether exposure to pollution from Stauffer hurt students at Gulfside Elementary between 1977 and 1981, when Stauffer closed.

Ronnie Wilson, the ombudsman for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said Stauffer repeatedly violated air pollution standards before it closed, and "dust filled with a multitude of contaminants" had to travel a short distance to reach the school yard.

Gulfside Elementary, with an enrollment of 700, sits just north of the Pinellas-Pasco line. Stauffer's 130 acres is just south of the line, along the Anclote River and near Tarpon Springs' city limits.

Wilson's report said that up to 2-million pounds of asbestos were used at the plant, but no one has ever accounted for the disposal of that material. At Stauffer, which cooked phosphate ore in a huge electric furnace, the asbestos was packed around the furnace's burner elements as insulation.

In his report, Wilson said that little testing has been done to determine whether the slag, a radioactive byproduct of phosphorus processing, contained asbestos. If it did, he said, "it would be reasonable to assume that some of the fibers reached the school amidst the dust of the slag-crushing."

On Friday, the Pasco County School superintendent said he will provide researchers with the names of former students. Approximately 3,000 children attended Gulfside between 1977 and 1981.

But so far, nobody has asked for the information.

"We'll cooperate any way we can," said Superintendent John Long. "But we've spent thousands and thousands of dollars testing the soil, the water, the air around (Gulfside Elementary) school and we've found nothing."

Stauffer officials maintain there has been no scientific evidence to suggest students were ever subjected to any harmful emissions.

But emissions tests at the school did not occur until after the plant closed, Wilson noted in his report.

Wilson's recommendations came as welcome news to Dr. Tom Mason, the former chairman of the University of South Florida's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, who has been calling for a study of former Gulfside Elementary students for years.

"What happened yesterday was that an appropriate and important corner was turned," said Mason, who is now the director of the Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance at USF.

Mason will work with ATSDR officials to outline the scope of the study.

"It will happen," he said.

Mason proposes starting with a sample of students, perhaps all of the students who attended the school in 1977, tracking them down and assessing their disease experience to determine if there are elevated disease rates compared to the general public. Mason also hopes to help coordinate a study of Stauffer's 2,567 former employees as well.

"No one knows the answer to this because it's never been done," Mason said.

The very fact that Wilson found the study necessary has some former students worried.

"Of course, I'm concerned for my own health," said Corvaia, 29, who attended Gulfside Elementary from 1978 to 1984. "You don't know what happens when you breathe in chemicals like that at such a young age."

Corvaia said she had no idea what went on at Stauffer, but she does clearly remember why she didn't play on the rope ladders suspended from the wooden playground equipment.

"You would climb up the ropes, and they would always be dusty," said Corvaia, who is scheduled to graduate from Brooklyn Law School in June. "It would always be dirty so I would stay away from it."

Corvaia said she's "pretty healthy" but, as someone who just got engaged, worries about getting pregnant. She notes that her aunt, who is slightly older than she is and attended Gulfside Elementary, has two healthy children.

Richard Wendlek, the assistant principal at the school while Stauffer was still in operation, said people often talked about how it was odd that the school was located near a chemical plant.

"I do recall that it occasionally was dusty," said Wendlek, who now heads Academy at the Lakes in Land O'Lakes.

Al Bashaw, Gulfside's founding principal, doubts any emissions from the plant affected students. Bashaw, who is now the Pasco school district's director of student services, said he never noticed any dust or smoke from the Stauffer plant make its way onto school property.

Neither can he recall any staff member, student or parent ever making a complaint. He noted that some may recall smoke generated by the smokestacks from the nearby Florida Power plant.

"I don't think anyone at that time thought there was any risk," Bashaw said. "But hindsight is better than foresight."

- Times staff writers Kent Fischer and Steve Hegarty and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.