Most arsenic levels in the soil in and around Father Marinaro Park and adjacent houses are not high enough to worry about.

That's what representatives of the state Department of Environmental Protection told Butler South Side residents Wednesday night.

The DEP held its third public meeting at the Center Avenue Elementary School to report what it had found during its seven-month investigation of the former Franklin Glass site, where the park and houses are now located.

The state began testing at the 30-acre site in April after a DEP worker, who was helping members of the Butler-Freeport Rails-to-Trails organization with soil tests in the area, found some strange looking soil.

He took a sample back to the Meadville office, where initial tests showed higher levels of arsenic than allowed by residential standards. That safe level is 12 parts per million.

Franklin Glass, which opened its doors in 1887 and burned down in the early 1970s, used several sites in the woods round Coal Run and what is now Kaufman Drive to store sand and other raw glass manufacturing materials, as well as waste. These areas can still be seen from the air and at least one is considered a popular hangout for city youth.

Arsenic was used in glass production to eliminate bubbles in molten glass.

One test site along Coal Run measured 1,800 ppm, but the DEP has pointed out that was near a storage site for sand and other glassmaking materials.

As for the park and houses along Kaufman Avenue and around the park, Eric Gustafson, regional manager for the Environmental Cleanup Program in the Meadville office, said arsenic levels are low within surface soil, and not an issue for visitors or residents.

At a public meeting earlier this year, Gufstafson said the arsenic levels in most of the development range from 12 to 30 ppm.

In one spot in the Father Marinaro Park's baseball diamond, the DEP found "excessive" levels of benzo (a) pyrene, a known carcinogen. Gustafson said the DEP's contractor, Michael Baker, removed a 1-cubic-foot area of soil.

A number of areas, mostly along the periphery of Kaufman Drive and Zeigler Avenue, have higher arsenic levels about a foot below the soil's surface.

Gustafson said since the contaminated soil is capped by clean surface soil, the DEP will work with the city of Butler and other land owners to develop deed restrictions concerning excavation work on those properties.

These areas are highlighted on a DEP map in red, and as Joshua Gibson of 116 Kaufman Drive in the Franklin Court Housing development, said, "Red is a warning to me."

Gibson and his pregnant girlfriend, April Cravenor, said they are concerned about the amount of dirt that filters into their home through the apartment's air conditioning and heating unit, for both their unborn child and Gibson's 2-year-old son.

"The air conditioner sucks up the dirt and the dust is all over," Gibson told state Department of Health nurse Barbara Allerton.

Allerton is a member of a federal health assessment program to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals.

She echoed Gustafson's statements that the arsenic levels are too low to be a problem, unless someone is actually eating the soil.

For most exposures to dust and dirt in the area, Allerton recommends washing of hands, animal paws and vegetables from home gardens, which she added could be grown in raised beds, instead of digging into the soil.

She also recommends leaving shoes outside of the home instead of wearing them in and wet dusting and mopping to reduce the amount of dust in the home.

Allerton told some of the 20 people in attendance, who asked about long exposures to the site, that they also had nothing to worry about.

Gustafson told the audience the DEP finished sampling areas in and around Coal Run. The DEP is working to have the three material storage and disposal sites in the woods around the plant, now privately owned, tested as well.

The results of those tests will be ready by February, and from there the DEP will determine if any barriers need to be erected to keep people off creek banks or other areas.