Tons of car shredder residue dumped at Brookhaven landfill raises environmental concerns

Three miles from the Brookhaven landfill sits the state's only auto shredder south of Albany.

Crushing cars and appliances at the rate of one every eight seconds, Gershow Recycling's vast Medford operation yields mountains of scrap iron sold to steel mills across the country while extracting other metals, down to the smallest bits of aluminum and copper that technology can detect.

By weight, the company says it salvages 77% of what it takes in.

It's everything else — the leftover plastic, rubber, glass, foam and textiles trucked to the Yaphank dump — that's raising questions about environmental impact and bringing calls for stronger regulation.

An obscure waste stream known as auto shredder residue or, informally, "car fluff," is buried at the landfill at a rate of about 110,000 tons a year, according to a Newsday analysis of records. Town officials rarely talk publicly about it, and even some of the most involved community advocates have never heard of it.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation permits local landfill disposal of car fluff, but blames the material for pollution at a former scrapyard north of Syracuse.

There, the agency said, its "disposal ... resulted in the contamination of" soil and groundwater by PCBs, the only contaminant car fluff must now be tested for; as well as toxic heavy metals; volatile organic compounds and the "forever chemicals" known as PFAS, which the federal government has said can cause cancer in humans.

California and some European countries deem car fluff hazardous, citing these same pollutants.

Elevated PFAS levels were identified last year in a groundwater plume spreading from the Brookhaven landfill, but no single source was blamed. Car fluff, like the construction and demolition debris and trash incinerator ash that also long have been dumped at the landfill, is considered nonhazardous in New York.

The landfill will stop accepting construction debris by next year. Car fluff and the ash, which is tested for metals, is likely to keep coming in for several more years.

"This is another important example of the DEC needing to update regulations and testing requirements for all materials," said Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment nonprofit, which has fought for stronger oversight of the town dump. "They should be doing more due diligence about what's being deposited at the landfill."

DEC officials told Newsday their regulation of car fluff is above federal guidelines for nonhazardous solid waste, since it requires the material be tested for PCBs, "a known contaminant of concern for this type of waste."

Prompted by Newsday inquiries, however, the agency acknowledged that it doesn't itself retain these PCBs test results. A reporter had to file a public records request with Brookhaven for them.

"Every single thing isn't submitted to the department, but they do have to have it, and the department has access to it," Dave Vitale, director of the DEC's materials management division in Albany, said in an interview.

'We're constantly worried'

The town and DEC said they stay on top of all potential contamination at the Brookhaven landfill, including PFAS, by regularly testing for it in the liquid that permeates the waste, known as leachate, and is meant to be captured by liners. Though regulators recently made Brookhaven develop a plan to clean up the landfill's PFAS plume, it made no estimate of when the pollution occurred and which waste may be most responsible.

"A determination of [car fluff] contributing to PFAS contamination has not been made," the DEC said in a statement to Newsday.

The Brookhaven landfill opened in 1974 and stopped accepting non-incinerated solid waste in 1990. Construction debris and ash, which have historically been dumped at higher volumes than car fluff, also could contain the most widely used PFAS synthetics, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), which are ubiquitous in nonstick and water-resistant products, officials said. 

Their use in auto manufacturing, however, has risen and is expected to continue rising as vehicles become more lightweight and their surfaces more resistant to water, grease and oil, according to researchers.

PFAS chemicals do not degrade over time. This spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it will require drinking water providers for the first time to limit PFAS levels to 4 parts per trillion, the lowest level current treatment systems can attain.

The town sampled water from wells south of the landfill in 2022 and 2023 and found maximum levels of PFAS between 6 and 88 parts per trillion, according to town records. One well measured as much as 300 parts per trillion, records show.

PFAS exposure can lead to reproductive issues, developmental delays, increased cancer risk and immune system problems, according to the EPA. 

"We're constantly worried about what we're drinking, what we're putting in our bodies," said Georgette Grier-Key, the NAACP's Brookhaven chapter president and a leading opponent of the landfill, which borders the majority Black and Latino community of North Bellport.

Environmental concerns disputed

Per state regulations, Gershow regularly tests its car fluff for PCBs, which were banned from use more than 40 years ago. Company president Kevin Gershowitz said that if the DEC ever deemed car fluff to be a significant contributor to PFAS contamination, which he doesn't believe to be the case, manufacturers and not recyclers should be held responsible.

"PFAS needs to be banned," Gershowitz said in an interview from Gershow's 55-acre property in Medford earlier this summer. "PCBs were banned."

Still, he and a company attorney asserted that car fluff was not related to any PFAS found near the landfill, saying its disposal there came after the town first installed the liners meant to collect and treat the leachate before it can seep into groundwater.

The DEC, however, has not eliminated any waste as a potential contributor to the PFAS plume, a spokesman confirmed.

"It's everywhere," Gershowitz said of PFAS, rattling off everything from baby diapers to contact lenses to the pen a reporter was using to transcribe his comments. "I would rather know where it's not."

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico, whose public comments about the landfill have mentioned only construction waste and ash, declined interview requests for this story.

Town Recycling and Sustainable Materials Management commissioner Christine Fetten, who oversees the landfill, said in a statement that while the presence of PFAS "is likely within elements of vehicles as well," she also emphasized their use in household products, food packaging and building materials.

"Waste management facilities across the country, including Brookhaven and beyond, grapple with these elements as they are in the majority of our day-to-day lives," Fetten said of PFAS chemicals.

'No idea that it's been coming in'

Ten years ago, the Brookhaven landfill accepted more than a half-million tons of construction debris and more than 300,000 tons of ash annually. In that context, auto shredder residue was a fairly insignificant fraction of its total waste. Last year, with construction debris down to 200,000 tons and the volume of ash remaining steady, the 111,374 tons of car fluff buried at the landfill accounted for 16% of its waste, state records show.  

When the town ceases taking the construction materials, car fluff will be an even more critical town revenue generator. The town board late last year passed a resolution authorizing a new contract to continue accepting fluff from Gershow at current levels through 2027, for annual payments of approximately $7 million, records show.

Car fluff is conspicuously not mentioned when Brookhaven-elected officials talk publicly or write opinion pieces about the future of the landfill. Some landfill opponents, despite their close review of town meetings and publications, didn't know about its disposal alongside the construction debris and ash.

The DEC provided records showing before 2019 Brookhaven recorded some car fluff under "other" waste streams, making it difficult to learn exactly how much Gershow disposed of at the landfill.

"We had no idea that it's been coming in, and it's probably something that they don't want researched," said Lynne Maher, of the Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group, or BLARG, a coalition of residents who have called for increased transparency surrounding dump operations and a permanent closure of the facility. "It’s typical of the opacity of the town."

Other landfill vendors recently have faced controversy. Earlier this year, the DEC issued Reworld, formerly Covanta Hempstead, hundreds of "significant" environmental violations for how it handled its incinerator ash before it was dumped in Brookhaven. The action followed an October Newsday investigation that found the facility long had disposed of ash it couldn’t be certain was nonhazardous, with employees acknowledging in internal company documents that they were "lucky" regulators didn’t challenge them.

Gershow's car fluff disposal at the landfill has not been accused of any causing environmental harm. However, last month the company agreed to pay $555,000 to settle alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act stemming from its nearby shredding operations. 

Federal authorities alleged the company did not install equipment that mitigates the volatile organic compound pollution created when its operation vaporizes plastics, paints and oils, or properly report its air emissions.

A Gershow spokesman said it believed it had a strong defense, but chose to settle "rather than enter into an expensive, drawn-out legal battle."

Contributes to upstate pollution sites

In 2016, the DEC said car fluff caused PCB contamination at the former Roth Steel shredding operation in Syracuse. In 2019, it said the old CNY Car Crushers site in nearby Hastings had PCBs, metals and PFAS contamination from fluff.

The state DEC put out this public notice in 2019 stating that the old CNY Car Crushers site in upstate Hastings had PCBs, metals and PFAS contamination from fluff.

Both upstate sites are part of the state Superfund program for inactive industrial sites now deemed to potentially pose significant threats to the environment and human health.

Neither Gershow's Medford property nor the still-active Brookhaven landfill are state Superfund sites. The DEC in June signed off on the town's plan to begin characterizing the scope and severity of the newly discovered PFAS plume, with work expected to take two years.

Whether any particular landfill waste — or any outside source — created the plume, changes to the auto manufacturing industry have prompted growing research into PFAS and car fluff.

In 2021, the EPA said "significant amounts of nonmetal materials are contained in the shredded materials" from scrapped vehicles, such as plastics, paints, caulks, sealants, rubber, switches, fluids and fluid residues. The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies, has noted that PFAS are used in gaskets, fuel system seals and hoses, engine compartment wiring and gauges and as repellents for upholstery and windshields.

Research published last year in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling concluded PFAS concentrations in scrapped vehicles "are anticipated to increase into the future in line with lightweight vehicle design."

Authored by University of Wisconsin civil and environmental engineering professors and a PhD student, it concluded that the PFAS in car fluff "will require closer evaluation in relation to human and environmental health."

It cites a 2021 report commissioned by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment that identified car fluff as one of five waste streams most likely related to significant PFAS emission risks in Europe.

Gershow representatives, however, cite the same Wisconsin study's acknowledgment that higher levels of PFAS have been found in household waste items and precipitation. 

‘A problem there’

Morton Barlaz, a distinguished professor emeritus of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University, said determining car fluff's contributions to PFAS contamination — as opposed to construction waste and incinerator ash — would be complex, requiring studies comparing contaminant levels at landfills that only accept fluff versus ones that accept it as one of multiple waste streams.

"It begs the question: Relative to municipal waste, is it consequential?" said Barlaz, who spent 40 years studying solid waste, including car fluff. "I just don’t have the data yet."

Car fluff is considered a hazardous waste in much of Europe, but in the United States only one state has taken such a step.

Citing the material's potential to contribute to lead and cadmium pollution, California's Department of Toxic Substances Control in 2018 said it would require auto shredders to obtain mandatory hazardous waste permits. After industry pushback and lawsuits, the state continues to exempt large shredders from having to take fluff to specially designated hazardous waste landfills. 

In 2021, the department analyzed auto shredder residue and concluded in a report that, even when it's chemically treated to reduce levels of heavy metals, auto shredder residue "continues to exhibit the hazardous waste characteristic of toxicity and is a hazardous waste." The exemptions, as well as the litigation fighting them, remain active.

New York does not require generators of car fluff to treat the waste with any chemicals before disposal, DEC officials confirmed.

"We’re not treating it with the same care that you would treat something classified as hazardous waste, when it has the same constituents and the same negative impacts on the environment and the community around it," Ben Eichenberg, a staff attorney with the California environmental nonprofit Baykeeper, which is a party to the lawsuit, told Newsday. "There's a problem there."

By Paul LaRocco

paul.larocco@newsday.com@paullarocco

Paul LaRocco is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in late 2010, he has also covered Nassau and Suffolk county politics and government and the Town of Oyster Bay.