Thousands of PCB-contaminated lighting fixtures finally out of NYC schools
Five-year effort makes 883 schools safer for kids
Here’s some good news for the city’s children: A multi-year effort to replace crumbling lighting fixtures containing toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in hundreds of public schools — many in Brooklyn — has been almost 100 percent accomplished.
Lighting ballasts and caulking installed between 1950 and 1978 contained the now-banned PCBs. The substance has been linked to cancer, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune disorders.
Yet thousands of the old fixtures remained, crumbling and dripping, in the city’s classrooms.