Contamination

ATLANTA -- More than a million doses of a common vaccine given to babies as young as 2 months were being recalled yesterday because of contamination risks, but the top U.S. health official said it was not a health threat. The recall is for 1.2 million doses of the vaccine for Hib, which protects against meningitis, pneumonia and other serious infections, and a combination vaccine for Hib and hepatitis B. The vaccine is recommended for all children under age 5 and is usually given in a three-shot series, starting at 2 months.

The owner of Carrolltown Center in Eldersburg has asked the Maryland Department of the Environment to waive further cleanup of a chemical spill that occurred there eight years ago.R. Dixon Harvey Jr., mall owner since 1993, has agreed to continue collecting samples from the dozen monitor wells on the property as a precautionary measure.About 40 gallons of tetrachloroethene -- a minimal spill, environmental officials say -- overflowed from a dry-cleaning storage tank in February and June 1990, contaminating ground water and subsurface soil.

A plan to improve the New Cut Road landfill could lead to less contamination and a new ballpark site, according to Bureau of Environmental Services officials.The proposal -- aired at a public forum last month -- included adding protection for ground water and a new gas flare to burn off contaminants at the 40-acre landfill, said John O'Hara, chief of the bureau.The ground water remediation system would add a layer of protection to "minimize the amount of rainfall that percolates and enters the waste," O'Hara said.

Ducks and other waterfowl are the likely source of bacterial contamination that has kept Miami Beach Park's swimming area closed since July 7, Baltimore County environmental inspectors said yesterday.The bayfront swimming area will not reopen until county officials can develop a plan to drive the birds out, said Ian Forrest, bureau chief for waste management and community service.But officials would not predict when that plan might be completed. "We're working on it every day," said John F. Weber, county parks director.

With a Monday deadline looming for the sale of the Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point shipyard, Peter Angelos and Bethlehem Steel yesterday failed to resolve differences over the handling of possible environmental contamination at the shipyard.Angelos and Bethlehem wouldn't comment on the talks, which included representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice."The deal is there except for the EPA issue," Angelos said.A source familiar with the negotiations who insisted on anonymity said: "The purchasers find the environmental issues are formidable and difficult to resolve and pose a potential threat to consummating the transaction."

Where some see industrial blight, others see opportunity: Such was the premise of a state "brownfields" law passed just six weeks ago to reclaim industrial properties.Baltimore developer Sam Himmelrich is one of those who sees opportunity. Six months ago, he purchased a forlorn, contaminated industrial building at Howard and Ostend streets, a stone's throw from the new football stadium. His idea was to turn it into an office building.But because the former Parker Metal Decorating Co. was known to have been contaminated with low levels of solvents and metals, a bank refused to loan him the money if the property was to be used to secure the loan.

Miami Beach Park's swimming area will remain closed until at least July 23, while Baltimore County environmental inspectors continue searching for the source of a water-borne bacterial contaminant.Results of the search -- begun July 9 -- were expected early this week, said Ian Forrest, bureau chief for the county's Waste Management and Community Service. But inspectors, he said, have had difficulty reaching the owners of nearby septic tanks -- a possible source of the fecal coliform contamination.

More than 300 Howard County residents near the Alpha Ridge landfill would be hooked up to a new water system at little or no charge under a plan introduced last night by council member Charles C. Feaga.The county began building a new $11.5 million water extension to the Marriottsville area near Alpha Ridge last month and would like to see residents shoulder some of the costs.Under the Feaga plan, the county would pay about $1.3 million in hook-up fees for the residents, many of whom have complained that that the landfill, which has contaminated nearby ground water, will eventually contaminate their wells.

Howard County officials plan to spend about $15 million to cap the Alpha Ridge landfill, collect the gases it emits and contain the contaminated ground water below it.They detailed the plan at a public meeting at Mount View Middle School in Marriottsville on Tuesday night, during which about 20 area residents quizzed them and their landfill consultants, Reston, Va.-based SCS Engineers.Residents have fought for years to close the landfill and control the toxic chemicals that seep from below it. There is no evidence that contamination has reached residential wells, but neighbors say it is only a matter of time.

The Keystone landfill could be capped and systems to treat contaminated ground water and burn methane gas could be in place by late 1997, environmental officials said.The private landfill in Adams County, Pa., across the border from northern Carroll County, has been on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund cleanup list since 1987.The agency has been working with engineers retained by landfill owners Kenneth F. and Anna M. Noel and with a task force of Pennsylvania and Maryland residents and government representatives on plans to clean up or contain the contamination.

To comply with a Justice Department ruling this week, the Pentagon might have to pick up the pace in cleaning heavy metals and other contamination at Fort Meade that fouled nearby wells and forced evacuations of base housing. In an advisory letter to the Pentagon intended to settle a lengthy dispute among federal agencies, the Justice Department said that the military must obey an "imminent and substantial endangerment" order issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 for Fort Meade and other Defense Department facilities in New Jersey and Florida.

A city crime lab employee left his own DNA on the pistol police say was used to kill an off-duty Baltimore detective, indicating that a recently discovered problem with contamination at the lab may be more widespread than officials originally believed. Evidence from the murder trial of Brandon Grimes was not among the 12 instances city officials identified last week in which lab employees introduced their own DNA into crime evidence. But lab officials testified yesterday that there are thousands of partial strands of unknown DNA in evidence samples - like the one recovered from the pistol in the Grimes case - that must be checked by hand.

Baltimore crime analysts have been contaminating evidence with their own DNA - a revelation that led to the dismissal this week of the city Police Department's crime lab director and prompted questions yesterday from defense attorneys and forensic experts about the professionalism of the state's biggest and busiest crime lab. Edgar Koch, who had been the city lab's director for the past decade, was fired Tuesday because of the DNA contamination and...

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler notified the Army yesterday that the state plans to sue to get it to finish cleaning up groundwater and soil contamination at Fort Meade. Ratcheting up a long-running dispute, Gansler sent the Army a notice of the state's intent to sue under federal pollution law, accusing the military of failing to comply with a year-old cleanup order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Army has been working for years, under supervision by the EPA and the state, to find and clean up pollution at the 5,400-acre base in Anne Arundel County stemming from past careless disposal of fuel and munitions.

ATLANTA -- More than a million doses of a common vaccine given to babies as young as 2 months were being recalled yesterday because of contamination risks, but the top U.S. health official said it was not a health threat. The recall is for 1.2 million doses of the vaccine for Hib, which protects against meningitis, pneumonia and other serious infections, and a combination vaccine for Hib and hepatitis B. The vaccine is recommended for all children under age 5 and is usually given in a three-shot series, starting at 2 months.

Arundel residents sue over contamination A group of Anne Arundel County residents whose drinking water was contaminated with coal ash filed a class action lawsuit yesterday, contending that Constellation Power Source Generation Inc. knew about groundwater leaks but never warned residents. A copy of the lawsuit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, could not be obtained yesterday. But the residents' attorney, former Prince George's County Executive Wayne K. Curry, issued a news release yesterday saying the lawsuit was taking a stand for those who are not being protected by regulations.

A federal judge in southern New York ruled yesterday that a lawsuit filed by Fallston residents against Exxon Mobil Corp. for future and past contamination of their wells by the gasoline additive MTBE may proceed as a class action suit. The order allows Fallston residents whose wells have been tainted by methyl tertiary-butyl ether and those whose wells have not shown levels of the additive but who may have been affected by declining property values to seek damages from Exxon Mobil and a former Exxon station that was at the intersection of routes 152 and 165. The ruling by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin consolidates the claims by the Fallston residents into one case and allows them to collectively seek damages because their claims are based on the same legal theories, the judge said.

Too many Americans are getting sick from the food they eat. There's no single fix, because there's no single cause of contamination and no single germ at fault. But the first sensible step would be the creation of a single food safety administration, responsible for addressing all problems related to food-borne illnesses, and wielding toughened regulatory power. Food gone bad is turning up everywhere. The bug E. coli was discovered this fall in spinach, in tomatoes and in something - no one yet knows what - that was served at taco restaurants in the Northeast and Minnesota.

Maryland health officials confirmed yesterday that two more people in the state were sickened by eating spinach contaminated with E. coli during a recent nationwide outbreak, bringing the number of cases in the state to five. Since an alert Sept. 14 prompted grocers to pull potentially tainted bagged spinach from store shelves and consumers were told to discard any bagged spinach, state officials have investigated 15 cases of possible E. coli contamination of spinach. They have found that five of those cases are associated with spinach contamination; eight are not and two are pending, said John Hammond, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

7-Eleven Inc. is responsible for the leak of a gasoline additive that threatened Aberdeen's water supply, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. The source of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, discovered in Aberdeen's wells two years ago was the 7-Eleven store on South Philadelphia Road, just across the highway from the city's well field, state officials said. The state's investigation found a crushed vent line in the gas station's underground tanks. Tanks are vented to allow fumes to escape into the air, where they dissipate.