Graham Nash fans can breathe easy.
Friday night’s concert by the legendary member of Crosby, Stills, and Nash will go on as scheduled at Memorial Hall after outside testing showed air and surfaces inside the town-owned building were within a normal range for silica dust.
The decaying downtown venue was closed last week after the union representing Department of Public Works employees alleged that outside workers dismantling a wall behind the stage kicked up potentially dangerous dust by using a leaf blower to clean up.
“We’re confident [in] saying that the building is safe as far as reopening and allowing our guests and visitors back into the building,” Town Manager Derek Brindisi said Thursday afternoon.
Dale Webber and Butch Machado, the president and vice president of the DPW union, raised concerns about the dust at a Select Board meeting last week, saying a vendor, Katco Contracting, left the entire hall coated with what they presumed to be silica dust.
Select Board members did not respond to the concerns during the meeting, but Brindisi ordered the building shuttered until an independent lab could conduct testing. At the time, Brindisi said he was confident there was no health risk and called Webber “irresponsible” for causing what he considered undo alarm.
People exposed to respirable crystalline silica can develop serious lung disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After bringing in Servpro to clean the hall, town officials hired Indoor Doctor, a testing firm, to sample the air in the hall and test it for silica. Brindisi said the company told him last Friday that the results showed some silica was present in the air, but within a range to be expected in a building the age of Memorial Hall, which opened in 1926, and not at a level considered dangerous. The finding was not unexpected because silica is present in the bricks and mortar and the cement foundation, it said.
But the report from the testing company also suggested steps the town could take to improve air quality in the venue. It recommended running quality air purifiers to reduce mold spores, ultrafine particles, chemicals, odors, and other harmful indoor air pollutants. It also recommended conducting additional HEPA vacuuming to eradicate miscellaneous and settled silicate particulate.
After the air was sampled, Servpro returned to conduct a more extensive cleaning of the building beyond the main hall. After that, on Tuesday, Indoor Doctor tested surfaces such as armrests, handrails, the stage, and offices. Brindisi said he was told the levels of silica were within a normal range, and that the report said no further actions were required before re-opening the hall.
“We’ve done as much as we can as far as cleaning and testing and so we are prepared to reopen Memorial Hall,” he said.
The union, however, is awaiting the results of its own testing, which Webber said should come back on July 25.
“I’m not challenging his results,” he said of Brindisi and the outside testing, adding that the sample he sent out came from the base of a rubble pile after a cement coating was removed from the hall’s rear wall.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.