Suffolk bill targets chemical in driveway sealants

A Suffolk County lawmaker wants to ban the use of coal tar-based coatings on driveways and parking lots, saying the products pose health and environmental risks.

Sealants are used to protect pavement from damage inflicted by the sun and extreme temperatures. Coal tar sealants contain coal tar pitch, a byproduct created when coal is heated to make coke for use in the steel industry.

Concerns that contaminated dust from the coal tar sealants is washing into streams or being tracked into homes has led Washington, D.C., and other cities to adopt bans in recent years.

Paving industry groups oppose the bans, which they say are based on bad science that unfairly characterizes coal tar sealants as unsafe. They say the sealants last longer than alternatives such as asphalt, which is petroleum-based and may grow more expensive as oil prices rise.

A legislative hearing is scheduled Tuesday night on the bill, which was introduced earlier this month by Presiding Officer William Lindsay (D-Holbrook).

At issue are the sealant's high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chemicals formed when coal, oil or other substances are incompletely burned. Some have been classified by federal officials as cancer-causing and are toxic to aquatic life.

"There seems to be enough clinical evidence that there's a correlation between exposure to this stuff and an increase in cancer," Lindsay said.

Paving contractors should switch to asphalt or latex-based sealers, which are safer, he said. Recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey have linked the use of coal tar seal coat in parking lots with elevated PAH levels in household dust and urban streams and lakes.

"All the studies are saying that these are real high concentrations at the application source itself, and that they are a major source of PAHs to the environment," said Peter Van Metre, a USGS hydrologist.

One Long Island water body the agency studied, Newbridge Pond in Wantagh, had the second-highest concentration of PAHs among 40 U.S. lakes examined in a 2010 paper.

The agency also looked at levels in house dust of apartments with sealed pavement. Researchers found that PAH levels indoors were 25 times higher in apartments where parking lots had coal-tar seal coatings.

But industry groups call the research flawed and say the USGS failed to prove the link between sealers and PAH levels inside homes or the environment.

"The science is incorrect," said Anne P. LeHuray, executive director of the Pavement Coatings Technology Council in Alexandria, Va.