EPA works to fight radiation at Bushwick-Ridgewood border

Former Wolff-Alport site at 1127-1129 Irving Avenue
Former Wolff-Alport site at 1127-1129 Irving Avenue

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working to reign in high radon levels and guard against gamma radiation at the former Wolff-Alport Chemical Company site on the border of Bushwick and Ridgewood.

Work at the 1127-1129 Irving Avenue site, which has been contaminated since the 1930s, involves constructing thick concrete and lead floors beneath businesses Terra Nova Constructions and neighboring Primo Auto Body Shop.

Radiation levels in the area were not high enough to warrant concern of immediate health problems, but were “high enough to do something,” Eric Daly, EPA project manager, told DNAinfo.

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Wolff-Alport conducted some work with the Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Project, the program that ultimately produced World War II’s first atomic bomb, according to EPA documents cited by DNAinfo.

Work on the shielding should be completed in December, Daly told the news site. [DNAinfo]Julie Strickland