Thank you for the reply. I would love to meet with Kathy to discuss all of this. I would like to hear her opinion and experience to weigh in on testing methods, options and resulting data! Please pass on my contact information to her, I would so appreciate that.

The plan you sent me, only states 5 rooms that are being worked on (1,5,8,301,library). The letter the parents received from the district mentions 10 other rooms. So if there are people onsite testing, they must have testing plan to follow or they would not know what to do, one we have not seen regarding these 10 other rooms. (I have attached the original email to the chain below so you can see the rooms I am speaking about)

Mark Katchen did not survey a group of teachers to make an assessment on open windows or not. So his argument that actual exposure testing would be with windows open on a cold day is without merit. I have been told by many teachers that they do not open their windows during the winter. In addition, the windows in all rooms are closed at night. When the kids arrive at school and enter the rooms, the rooms have been shut tight all night. We want to know what is in those rooms and use the best way to find that out, not an ideal risk assessment based on possible uses. We just need to discover what is causing the PCB exposure and reduce it. If we do not know the source than we cannot ensure that there will be no future exposure.

Adding ambient outdoor air in the room dilutes the test results. As parents we want to know if our kids are being exposed to any PCB’s. At that point, we can determine the source and remove it so that no one will be exposed further. I understand the risk assessment issue, but you cannot access risk with bad testing data. Reliable data only comes from good test planning. As you have told me many times, if the worst case scenario is safe, then all scenarios are safe. That I can live with, but testing using methods that are proven to not find results or diminish them are not acceptable.

I have spoken to numerous PCB experts that work to discover sources of PCB’s and they will affirm that you must test with the room sealed. They also highly suggest ventilation systems should be on with low air flow machines. Therefore, anything less will be highly criticized by the public. This would be bad for Malibu and bad for everyone involved.

The only goal is to test the school completely and thoroughly and find out what is wrong and fix it. We are not interested in putting a band-aide on this. We want to know beyond a shadow of doubt that our school is safe and is a healthy place for our kids and teachers to go to school to everyday. We need to know that 30 years down the line, they will not get sick because we failed to do everything necessary today to clean up our environment.

I hope you understand where we are all coming from and the importance of this matter to this community.

As always, I thank you for your help, advice, encouragement and assistance.

Jennifer deNicola

310-848-5400