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June 30, 2021
Media contact: Delia Hernández, PHD.Communications@state.or.us
Draft document says future risks from facility emissions averted, but past risks can’t be determined due to lack of data
PORTLAND, Ore.—Oregon Health Authority is seeking public comment on a draft public health assessment that documents the agency’s analysis of health risks related to the Bullseye Glass, a colored art glass manufacturing facility in Portland.
A summary fact sheet of the public health assessment is also available for review.
The public comment period for the public health assessment is open until Sept. 7, 2021. Comments can be emailed to ehap.info@state.or.us or mailed to the following address:
Oregon Health Authority – EHAP
800 Oregon St., Suite 640
Portland, OR 97232
In the draft public health assessment, OHA was not able to conclude whether people breathing air near Bullseye Glass Co. were affected by long-term past exposure to the company’s emissions. That’s because there is not enough information about conditions before emissions were reduced in February 2016.
While the assessment couldn’t say whether Bullseye emissions affected health prior to February 2016, it noted “Had emissions from Bullseye Glass not been reduced and levels of metals measured in October 2015 been allowed to persist, long-term exposure to that air could have harmed the health of people breathing it.”
The draft assessment also confirmed that:
- Levels of metals measured in the air around Bullseye Glass during October 2015 were not high enough to harm the health of people who only breathed it during that one month.
- Exposure to soil, garden produce and air, since February 2016, around Bullseye Glass will not harm health.
- Interventions to reduce emissions from Bullseye Glass reduced current and future cancer risk more than 50 times and non-cancer risk more than 100 times.
- Based on the October 2015 air monitoring data, the contaminants that posed the greatest risk around Bullseye glass were cadmium and arsenic.
“We recognize this report doesn’t directly answer questions about health risks from breathing air around Bullseye Glass for years in the past. That may be disappointing to some people. It certainly is to us,” said David Farrer, Ph.D., toxicologist with the Environmental Public Health Assessment Program (EHAP) at the OHA Public Health Division. “What they can be assured of is that levels of air toxics were greatly reduced in February 2016 and haven’t posed a health risk since then.”
In February 2016, Bullseye put in place measures to reduce potentially harmful emissions from colored art glass production with oversight from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The discovery of those harmful emissions highlighted a gap in federal industrial air toxics rules implemented by Oregon that has since been addressed by DEQ adoption of state rules known as Cleaner Air Oregon.
Extensive environmental sampling by DEQ after the company first reduced emissions in early 2016, and continuing through early 2017, confirmed that levels of metals in soil, homegrown produce and air are too low to harm health.
OHA began developing the Bullseye Glass public health assessment in mid-2016 in response to community concerns about past and current exposures to arsenic, cadmium, chromium and other metals used in Bullseye’s colored art glass production. After OHA submitted the assessment to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in August 2017 for review and certification, concerns arose about the quality of some data used. This prompted the federal agency to suspend its review of the draft PHA while it carried out a more thorough analysis of the data. During this review, ATSDR also reconsidered the appropriateness of using the 2015 data to estimate risks from long-term past exposures.
In a December 2019 memo to OHA investigators, ATSDR cautioned that OHA should not use any of the 2015 data to evaluate health risks from long-term exposures that occurred in the past. It also concluded, in agreement with DEQ, that the October 2015 chromium data are not valid due to analytical laboratory problems. State investigators could, however, use the 2015 data for other metals (excluding chromium) found in Bullseye emissions to conduct a hypothetical assessment of long-term health risks that might have existed in the future had the facility continued to emit metals to the air.
For more information on OHA’s Environmental Health Assessment Program, the public health assessment process, and how to submit public comment, visit http://healthoregon.org/ehap.
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