Tava Indian Kitchen— small space, big taste WEEKEND | 21 MARCH 15, 2013 VOLUME 21, NO. 7
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MOVIES | 24
Testing and treating to cut toxic vapors HEALTH CONCERNS REMAIN FOR RESIDENTS IN AREAS AFFECTED BY TCE VAPORS By Daniel DeBolt
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MICHELLE LE
Chris Keiner, attorney for the Mountain View-Los Altos district, holds up a copy of the Oracle while explaining California’s legal protections for student journalists.
Crowd debates high school sex articles MVLA OFFICIALS HEAR FROM DOZENS OF STUDENTS, PARENTS ABOUT JOURNALISM PROGRAM By Nick Veronin
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hen Chloe Tarrasch, the Focus section editor for the Mountain View High School student
newspaper, was putting together a special two-page spread on sex for the February edition of the Oracle, she never imagined the controversy that would follow its publication.
“We’ve had so many conversations and debriefs of what has happened within the past See HIGH SCHOOL, page 8
Stop sign sought at crash site NEAR-MISSES OCCUR EVERY DAY ON PHYLLIS AVENUE, SAYS RESIDENT By Daniel DeBolt
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hen Mountain View resident Ruifan Ma was struck and killed last week, it was at an intersection where neighbors have wanted a stop sign or stoplight for years.
INSIDE
Resident Chuck Zissman said he was the first on the scene. “Frankly, it sounded more like a vehicle collision than a vehicle hitting a pedestrian,” said Zissman, who lives on the corner where Ma was hit while crossing Phyllis Avenue near Hans Avenue
at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, March 4. “I assumed it must have been a bicyclist. I was pretty shocked to see it was a pedestrian. I don’t know how fast she was hit, I just know it was loud. It knocked her See STOP SIGN, page 15
VIEWPOINT 19 | GOINGS ON 26 | MARKETPLACE 27 | REAL ESTATE 29
there’s a connection,” said Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight. He added that what people are exposed to at their workplace is a big factor. “People work in different places. In any area you knock on doors, you are going to find one-third of the population gets cancer.” “TCE is not a chemical that shows up in your vegetables,” Siegel said. “One of the reasons it comes up in the air is because it easily volatilizes, so it comes out of the plant, too.”
ike toxic vapors coming out of the ground, health concerns about TCE are lingering in northeastern Mountain View. In a meeting in City Hall for the MEW Superfund site’s Community Advisory Board Tuesday evening, Allison Nelson of Sherland Avenue said she had been speaking with her neighbors and noticed that many of them suffer from similar health problems, including cerebral palsy and migraine headaches. She said many of her neighbors eat Cancer link vegetables grown in their yards, The EPA calls TCE a “carcinowhich she is concerned might gen by all routes of exposure,” contaminated by trichloroethyl- including drinking contaminated ene (TCE). groundwater (the city’s water is Nelson lives not safe, the EPA says) far from the former or breathing its location of numervapors. Inhalation ‘I want to hear can cause “hepatic, ous silicon chip ma nu fac t u r i ng from anybody renal, neurologifacilities that leaked cal, immunologiwho says their cal, reproductive, the solvent from large underground landlord doesn’t and developmentanks in the 1960s, tal effects,” the allow their 70s and 80s, creatEPA reported in ing the largest toxic for its final property to test 2011 site in Silicon Valley. health assessment Roughly bordered of TCE. (for TCE).’ by Middlefield In and around LENNY SIEGEL, CENTER Road, Ellis Street the MEW, TCE and Whisman FOR PUBLIC ENVIRONMENTAL vapors rise from OVERSIGHT Road, it’s known as the contaminated the “MEW.” soil and groundResidents’ conwater and enter cerns were addressed by local buildings through cracks in the toxic cleanup activists and Envi- floor or foundation. Elevated ronmental Protection Agency levels of the vapors were recently officials on Tuesday. found inside two homes on Nelson was cautioned against Evandale Avenue. EPA officials reading too much into her neigh- were recently surprised to find bor’s health problems and worry- TCE in high concentrations in ing about vegetables grown in the the groundwater on Evandale area. See TCE TESTING, page 14 “You can’t infer from disease if