GREENFIELD — Officials floated the idea of hosting a community health study into adverse health effects reported by those living near Lunt Silversmiths’ Federal Street property during a public engagement meeting on Tuesday evening.

“Since this contamination, my family personally has had an uptick in adverse health conditions, as has my neighborhood,” At-Large Councilor Wahab Minhas said, inquiring about a community health study. “I believe it would be in the city’s best interest and the neighborhood’s best interest to do a study so people can be put to peace.”

The city leases the 298 Federal St. property to 401 Liberty St., a limited liability company that in turn has active subleases with Behavioral Health Network and Clinical & Support Options, and has an agreement that gives the company the option to purchase. Former Mayor Roxann Wedegartner previously explained that the city took the property for back taxes not long before 2015. Until 2009, when the business closed, the site was home to a manufacturer of sterling silver spoons, forks, cups and other items.

The status of the site’s environmental cleanup was first raised in October 2021 when the property was brought before City Council to declare it as surplus and authorize a sale by the mayor. In particular, there is concern for contamination levels of trichloroethylene (TCE), a toxin that can cause damage to the central nervous system, heart, liver and kidneys, or cancer in humans or animals exposed to it.

“There have been scientific studies done about the adverse health effects of trichloroethylene and the way it is most harmful is vapor intrusion,” Mayor Ginny Desorgher said. “We have not done a study by the neighborhood by any matter or means. … If the water sampling is higher, I would imagine the indoor air sampling that was done there might be higher.”

Lyons Witten, a licensed site professional (LSP) hired by the Lunt Neighborhood Action Group nonprofit in 2022 to study the site’s stormwater TCE contamination, presented his most recent findings at the Tuesday hearing.

When state Rep. Susannah Whipps, who represents the 2nd Franklin District, asked Witten if there have been any instances of cancer or reproductive harm in those who abut the site, he responded that nearby homes had been tested for air quality, and that the toxin was only detected in “one or two” homes. He said further air testing will be conducted in the months ahead.

“There’s another round [of testing] coming in the next month, because it’s been a while since the last round. Only one or two homes had any detection at all, in my recollection, and they were not extraordinarily high,” he said. “A survey [of health effects] has not been done to my knowledge.”

Susan Worgaftik, who serves on the Lunt Neighborhood Action Group, noted that the nonprofit previously applied for Environmental Protection Agency grant funding to conduct a door-to-door study in the neighborhood studying cluster illnesses. She said the grant proposal was denied, as it lacked the necessary data from the site, noting that the group could not obtain the necessary data from 401 Liberty St. LLC.

With TCE levels dwindling by roughly two-thirds between January and May in some locations and multiplying by 33 in other parts within the same time period, Witten said concentration levels in stormwater have been volatile, as there’s a large quantity of TCE-contaminated soil that acts as an “ongoing source” of contamination, flowing into groundwater when it rains.

“It could be evaporating, it’s certainly diluted by other stormwater,” Witten noted. “The reason it keeps showing up and it’s persistent in these groundwater and stormwater results is that there’s plenty of TCE-contaminated soil remaining on the property. The top foot of soil that was contaminated in the worst areas was stripped off the site and taken away. … That was done in order to make it ‘safe’ for people to work there as long as they weren’t digging more than a foot deep into the soil.”

Speaking to the resources available to clean the Lunt site, Health Director Michael Theroux said once the city is able to submit its latest testing results to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, it will then seek funds either for remediation efforts or further testing. He added that the costs of remediation would ultimately depend on the results of the cleanup project’s second phase — assessing testing results — after it is approved by MassDEP.

“When it comes to them doing more assessments, the town can certainly apply for more grants. … As far as dedicated staff from the city, I’m helping to run the public involvement planning group, but unfortunately, I do not have a ton of staff that can be dedicated to this,” Theroux said. “As it sits right now, we are the property owners, so we are responsible.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.