VMICC HMRC Meeting Minutes IERE Offices  - DRAFT November 7, 2003 We started the meeting putting together our mass mailing of the HMRC's Heavy Metals Handbook, a Guide for Healthcare Practitioners. We started the mailing party about 3pm and had it almost all done by about 3:40 when May started the official meeting. Attending were May Gerstle, Shaheeda Pierce, Rita Schenck, Dan Schueler, Bonnie Meyer from King County Health Department, Marian Abbot from the State Dept of Ecology, Mary Ellen Walker and Stephen McDonald.  May read the minutes from our September meeting and suggestions were made for repairing errors in the minutes. With the changes, the minutes were accepted, I think.    We discussed the project for creating a clean source of soil with the folks at DIG. Steve suggested a site visit Carnation Corporation's Anaerobic Digester project, if they're still running the program. There will be a subcommittee that will be doing the work, apparently in conjunction with IRPPC. Rita Schenck will be doing some contracted work, at first trying to find acceptable sources of clean soil, including investigating the possibility of creating the soil on Vashon. Rita said that none of the available soil sources were willing to have an ongoing program. It was suggested that DoE might think about testing one of the sources that might be willing to have their product tested if there would be an ongoing commitment to purchase the soil. One of Rita's contacts, a kidney disease patient, said that after going to one of the dirt symposiums, she remediated the top foot of her garden topsoil, replacing it with clean soil. After planting tomatoes on the new soil, she had them tested and they were free of contamination. She also had her local wild blackberries tested, and they were within acceptable levels. We talked about the video being created by the Tacoma/Pierce County Health Department, based on a TV show about the ASARCO smelter issue. We have a copy of the apparently four part series of tapes.   Announcements May showed us a letter from Dow Constantine congratulating and thanking the committee its work, especially the work creating the Heavy Metal Handbook. Reports Bonnie Meyer said that the county programs for childcare areas are going well and that a new soil sampling is getting started. The county is now giving out the new fish nail brushes, a popular new item. They now have a program for providing materials in Spanish. There will be a conference at UW on November 8 about effects on the human body of toxic metals, especially Arsenic and Lead. Marian Abbott talked about the newly available final report of the Area Wide Task Force Implementation Plan. Ecology is also developing a new plan for creating an accurate map of predictions of the dispersion of contaminants from ASARCO. Marian talked about the Pierce County outreach program that will include things like billboard ads, brochures, posters and other educational materials. They conducted a baseline survey at the start of the program, and in a year Ecology will be funding a study to find out how well the educational outreach worked.   Steve Macdonald talked about some of the Earthworks projects that they are doing for IRPPC. They're still working on editing the video from last April, the ball still being in Ecology's court. They are also working on a new agreement for their Ecology grant covering the two year period starting last July 3 of 2003.   New Business Election of new officers. May Gerstle will not be returning as HMRC co-chair. Shaheeda Pierce agreed to continue as co-chair. Adam Rawson was nominated to serve as the new co-chair for the next year. The two co-chairs were nominated, seconded and elected unanimously. As part of the commitments by the co-chairs, it was agreed that we will go to schedule of holding meetings every other month, possibly switching to quarterly at some time in the future. Because of being too close to the holidays, our next meeting will be at the Library at 3:30PM on January 9, 2004. Submitted by Dan Schueler, November 7, 2003