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rkg'lVEW YORK TIMES, SATU1 FEBRUARY 21, 1981 By PAUL L. MONTGOMERY , SpecUl to The New York Time* , BINGHAMTON, N.Y., Feb. 19 -- Every morning for the last two weeks, squads of workers equipped with goggles . and respirators, and wearing disposable : vinyl gloves and white coveralls, have ' been passed through the police barri- . cades at the State Office Building here to ; attack the poisonous soot that has infilV trated each floor of the iS-story building. The contamination by soot laden with 'V polychlorinated biphenyls -- PCB's -- ' .. was the result of a fire in a basement . transformer before dawn on Feb. 5. Every item in the. building, from lottery tickets on sale in the lobby to the law books in the Court of Claims, received a dusting of the chemical, identified as a ' cause of cancer. . The building, the tallest in downtown . Binghamton, was not occupied at the David Seiffert, coordinator of the cleanup for the state's Office of General Services. "As best we can tell, no one has managed to contaminate an office building be fore." " . . ' l1-- v Use of PCB's in new equipment was banned by Congress in 1976, but thou sands of transformers that were built be fore that date and that used the chemical as a coolant are still in use. PCB's are stable compounds -- also used in waxes and inks -- that only can be broken down to their benign components by incineration for two seconds at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This chemical stability explains the remarkable persist ence of PCB's, which find their way into ground water and eventually the food chain. In humans, the chemical accumu lates in fatty tissue and is neither elimi nated nor broken down. ... Fire Vaporized Coolant seal on the Pyranol chamber and vapor ized the liquid. The vapor became at tached to soot particles, which was spread throughout building through the air-conditioning ducts. He estimated that 100 gallons of Pyranol was lost that way; the remaining 80 gallons spilled and were cleaned up in the basement after the fire. After the Federal ban on PCB's, manu facturers argued that it would be imprac tical to replace the proscribed coolant in older transformers with less pernicious substances. Mr. Seiffert said that, in' light of the'accident? here, that view might Change, particularly for equipment that is near air-circulating devices: Round-the-CIock Effort Mr. Seiffert said tests on the air in the building after the fire showed it to be "quite clean," with two or three micro grams of PCB's per cubic meter. He said time of the fire and has been closed since, In transformers, the relatively non that Federal law allowed as much as 500 its bustling departments and 750 employ flammable oil is circulated in sealed micrograms per cubic meter, but that a ees scattered in temporary offices chambers to cool the copper parts. The substitute standard proposed by the Na throughout the city, which is in the cen transformer in the modern State Office tional Institute for Occupational Safety tral portion of the state. Building, completed in 1972, contained and Health was 1, microgram per cubic The cleanup is expected to take at least 180 gallons of the liquid under General meter. ' . - several months, and cost at least $500,000. Electric's trade name, Pyranol; the liq "The real problem is that no one knows Officials confronted with the hare acci uid is 65 percent PCB's. what the standard should be," the engi dent are still feeling their way. According to Mr. Seiffert, an engineer, neer said. "The State Department of "It's an experimental situation," said the. fire apparently burst the pressure Health is testing air in other office build- PCB-ARCH-EXT0375966 I ." . 4A_____Thurs., Fe ',1981 ST. 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Workers Are Assured ' The main task in the cleanup is re State: workers have also been told that moval of the layer of soot and dust, which the building .will not be .reopened until is about 10 percent PCB's. Thirty-two minimum PCB standards: axe met, even workers from the New England Pollution if it means cleaning the building several Control Company of East Norwalk, times. The state offers a free blood test to Conn., which is under contract to the anyone who suspects they might have state, are working in 12-hour shifts, seven been exposed, and cleanup workers re days a week vacuuming and scrubbing. ceive periodic examinations. . So far, they have completed the first Nevertheless, there is nervousness:. cleaning of the 17th, 16th and 15th floor "My friends half-joke with' me that I and started on the 14th today. should be decontaminated," said a secre Much material -- drapes, carpets, tary who worked in the State Transporta upholstery, blank forms, desk calendars tion Department. . -- has been discarded because it would The suspicion extends to the workers: not be worth the trouble to clean. Impor-. doing the cleanup. Vincent J. Brigahte,- tant documents have been bagged and director of operations for New England put in a secure area of the basement. Pollution Control, who has spent his ca All of,the discarded material, as well as reer commuting to oil spills, tank-truck material used in the cleaning, is sealed in accidents and other environmental disas steel drums for burial at especially ters, says his men meet hostility at their licensed landfill sites in Niagara Falls motel and in restaurants. and Williamsburg, Ohio. He says he was getting onto the eleva-1 Workers in the city and Broome County tor in City Hall the other day when two i. office buildings, which share the monu young women already inside recognized i mental downtown plaza with the state him. They stepped out, refusing to ride j building, have been uneasy since the fire. with him. Officials have met several times with "It's fear of the unknown," said Mr; them to give assurances that their build Brigante. "1 guess I.can't really blame ings are not contaminated, and that the them." - . .: Monsanto Co. Lends Analyst To Reagan Po8trDl8patch Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Among the many new-' Reagan administration aides who surfaced in the many briefings on the new^ economic plan was A. Nicholas Filippello of St. Louis, on loan from the Monsanto Co. . Filippello, whose, regular job is director of economic analysis at Monsanto, showed up Wednesday to help pass out documents at a White House breakfast news briefing by Murray L. Weiden aum, also of St. Louis,, chairman of the president's Council of Economic,Advisers. ' "'Weidenbaum, , aV Washington. University economist,* said he had brought Filippello alongsto Washington . for about two months as a special consultant on macro-economic matters, which involve the economy as a whole as distinguished from individual industries or firms. ' *, "Essentially, he is pinch-hitting until I recruit the two other members of the council," Weidenbaum told the Post Dispatch. "Monsanto will be picking up his c.salary. He will, .not deal with, budgetary or regulatory matters , for obvious reasons. tt :. -` '. . 3t'- . ,1 ; i- ' ' ' ; V.; ' '-#*?} . ' ^ . - v . .,. v; '.. - _- . > ' . , : ' y-:/.. - ' . : -- ' ' " . ; - ;; . :>.y. /S-a ' ' ;;*&'. . , .V-V ' 'V. ' ' \7 .- / ... '. ' 'y ' -' ` . ' _. "'rvX * '-j., !. * ` : v . - vv - :.r. ' :pM ; ' *V .'O'; .. PCB-ARCH-EXT0375967