W.R. Grace/Zonolite Company, 62 Whittemore Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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EPA
Region
Location of facility Type of facility Amount
of ore
received
(in tons)
Did
EPA
visit
the
site?
Were
samples
taken?
Results of
evaluation
1 62 Whittemore Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts Chemical manufacturer 11,495 Yes-May 17, 2000 Yes According to an EPA database compiled from W.R. Grace shipping invoices, 11,495 tons of vermiculite ore from the Libby mine were shipped to this site between February 1971 and December 1979. At the time of EPA’s visit, this site contained a W.R. Grace chemical manufacturing facility and had lagoons for disposing of chemicals. Dewey and Almy operated a chemical manufacturing plant at this facility from 1919 through 1954. W.R. Grace took over operations in 1954 and continued operating a chemical manufacturing plant until the early 1980s. In June 2000, EPA collected 52 surface soil samples at the site. The average amount of asbestos found in the samples was less than .004 percent and the highest amount of asbestos found in a sample was .03 percent. Subsurface soils were not tested. All of the samples were analyzed using polarized light microscopy (PLM) and twenty-eight of the samples were further analyzed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). On the basis of this information, EPA decided the site posed no public health threat at that time and no further action was necessary.

GAO-09-6R