DOUBLE JEOPARDY

...Obviously, it's going to cause a lot of damage' In its 1986 budget, the Administration slated some $5 million for the school program, a considerable drop from the $600 million allocated in 1982 for removal assistance to the schools...

...All of the stuff in these buildings is like dinosaurs that will have to come out...

...Meanwhile, Federal officials advise the school districts to get in line with other victims and file liability lawsuits against asbestos manufacturers to collect removal costs...

...cut, folded, and double-bagged it, and then hauled it to an EPA-approved dump...

...Knowledge of asbestos-related diseases precedes the Twentieth Century, but the danger warnings were mostly ignored...

...The agency is supposed to be notified when asbestos is removed during a building's demolition or renovation, yet its authority is limited to exterior emissions and disposal...

...as a fire retardant and concrete strength-ener...

...We are a small agency and can't be everywhere," says Patricia Clark, the agency's assistant regional administrator in Chicago...

...But "there are a number of jobs that go unseen," he acknowledges...

...Removal contractors have little need to Jennifer Stoffel and Stephen Phillips are free-lance writers based in Chicago...

...By now, the hazards are well-known...

...I said no way," she recalls...

...The EPA's other response to the schools' problems has been to change its policy and recommend leaving the asbestos alone in many cases...

...That's not enforcement," he says...

...asbestos production, which totaled 240,000 metric tons in 1984, is down from a high of875,000 tons in 1973, but the items subject to immediate ban represent only a third to a half of U.S...

...Elementary schools in New Jersey and Iowa are cited for failure to wet down asbestos...

...If only they could ensure contractors would do it...

...Some owners are discovering, however, that removing asbestos can be as big a nightmare as living with it, because all too often the jobs are done by contractors who don't know what they are doing or who cut corners to save time and money...

...wet down the asbestos...

...They [the contractors] have a powerful economic agenda and it's very costly to do it right...

...The suits, filed jointly by the EPA and the Justice Department, are intended to "encourage greater voluntary compliance," says Assistant Attorney General F. Henry Habicht II...

...And removal work going on inside other nonfederal buildings, public or private, is largely beyond EPA's regulatory reach...

...Their choices: Seal the asbestos with special paint and risk removing it later, wall the area off, or take it all out...

...Before choosing this approach, library officials consulted the regional office of the EPA, a private architect, and several removal contractors...

...You only get one shot to do it right...

...OSHA officials complain they have been cut back too far by the Reagan Administration, leaving too few inspectors to monitor too many jobs...

...But Washington has backed away from offering much help, even in the Federally initiated school program...

...The culprits include a state-run retirement center in Tallahassee, Florida, and a Boise State University dormitory in Idaho, where asbestos materials allegedly were not kept wet...

...As yet, there are no industry standards and next-to-no government regulation...

...And they evacuated the whole building for six weeks...

...In Burr Ridge, Illinois, for example, officials faced a costly dilemma...

...Even now, although many other countries banned asbestos use entirely when it was identified as a carcinogen, asbestos remains in use in the United States...

...The EPA also regulates asbestos under its National Emissions Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPS), but only when it finds "visible emissions...

...It's like saying go perform brain surgery...

...Six workers, dressed from cap to boots in white disposable suits and equipped with thousand-dollar respirators, are cutting away asbestos insulation from the hospital's heating pipes...

...Despite the confusion, controversy, and cost, however, EPA officials say the school program is the "only one viable" for controlling asbestos...

...But the final decision about what to do— and how to pay for it—was left up to individual school districts...

...Anyone can go in an extremely hazardous area and not find hazards...

...You have to watch people like a hawk...

...An independent environmental laboratory sampled the air throughout the project...

...John Oster, whose Midwest Asbestos Removal Service did the Veterans Hospital job, says the two-year-old company consistently gets "five to ten calls a day from people who want it out—and want it out now...

...Inhaling or swallowing asbestos fibers results in serious, sometimes fatal, illnesses: asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs...

...Sawyer continues, "In a low-bid system, which is poorly organized and under-supervised, you can't expect reasonably good control...

...As of June 1985, $45 million in grants and loans had been divvied up among 341 schools judged by the EPA to have the greatest financial need and the most severe health risks...

...But he worries about the industry's fast growth: "Rather than bona fide firms, you got everybody and his brother taking advantage...

...But, where a building is to be renovated or demolished, or where the asbestos is crumbling and disintegrating with age, removal is the only sensible choice...

...An EPA survey of just ten cities found 733,000 public and private buildings containing asbestos in one form or another...

...You can't go around telling people to do this without guidance...

...mesothelioma, an otherwise rare cancer of the chest or abdomen...

...The hospital is only one of millions of buildings that contain asbestos, and removing it is a hot new growth industry...

...Without regulation, says Kimbrell, "bad jobs are the rule, not the exception...

...J.S...

...And removal contractors are charged with similar offenses at several buildings in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and a shopping center in Colorado...

...You can't go around telling peole to do this without guidance...

...Criticism of OSHA is directed largely at its definition of "acceptable exposure levels...

...The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the sole FedStill at Risk Bungling regulators and toxic asbestos fibers are not strangers to each other...

...It doesn't have to be a bad job...

...Her tumor removed and the prognosis good, she now believes the pipe covering is dropping fibers into the laundry room...

...Diagnosed as suffering from mesothelioma, she was asked about her exposure to hazardous chemicals, particularly asbestos...

...But many critics still believe the Federal actions are a drop in the bucket...

...Pat Brennan of Peb and Associates, a Chicago firm that specializes in asbestos removal from private homes, notes many such cases...

...What to do once it is found depends on its condition and location...

...In 1985, 265 New Jersey public schools remained closed in the fall following reports that asbestos removers had left loose material on the floor, tracked dust into "clean" areas, and flushed it down toilets...

...Government officials and contractors agree that removal can be done safely...

...Over the past eighty years, some thirty million tons have been applied, and few buildings escaped...

...You have to disturb surfaces to raise dust—just like the kids would...

...Habicht notes, in this regard, that "the emission of asbestos from renovation and demolition activity is a national environmental problem...

...The asbestos in the air plenum we felt we had to remove...

...So we decided to box off the stuff from the ceiling down...

...Some experts say the best response is to leave it alone...

...It will take hundreds of years to do it...

...And the pattern is repeated across the country...

...The EPA admits that a scant 25 per cent of them have dealt adequately with the problem...

...That, however, will only slow down the inevitable, says Sawyer...

...Research support for this article was provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism...

...He expects more such suits to be filed in 1986 than ever before...

...advertise...

...People should have the option to know whether it's there...

...There's more of this going on than you want to think about," he says and suggests that ordinances requiring building owners to survey for asbestos and notify occupants would prevent a lot of damage...

...Three years have passed since Congress passed the Asbestos School Hazard Abatement Act...

...But later, talking with former fellow workers, she pieced together the facts: She had been exposed to asbestos as it was cut and pressed into boards on a summer job twelve years ago...

...Total cost: $79,700...

...Such laws, along with enforced compliance with safety standards, would also prevent another problem...

...OSHA officials admit current standards were designed to deal with a "static environment" but defend them as the result of what is "technologically feasible...

...The EPA also proposes a ten-year phase-out of all asbestos mining, processing, manufacturing, and importing...

...This gives them some options...

...In 1982, EPA said take it out, but gave no regulations," says Borwegan...

...The contractor who gets in and out of the business, we don't hear about...

...Its members include building maintenance people who complain of being exposed to asbestos while performing routine tasks—and also of being asked to remove it...

...SEIU has sued to require EPA to set removal standards and requirements for worker safety...

...The material has been used in floor tiles, brake linings, and hair dryers...

...And when a contractor shows a record of compliance, his office checks the work only periodically...

...But only OSHA, and not the EPA, visited removal contractor Oster during two projects lasting the entire summer of 1985...

...To remove all the asbestos would be far too expensive...

...Anything going on inside [the building] is beyond us," says Illinois official Klein...

...Half the contractors doing the work are "incompetent," according to Swoszowski...

...Environmental health experts have long criticized OSHA, as well as the EPA, for being far too lax...

...We still indicate removal is the best," says an EPA scientist, "but the fact is some people can't afford it...

...A state-run ferry terminal in Seattle is cited for visible emissions...

...When Victoria Calhoun discovered what she thought was disintegrating asbestos pipe covering in the basement laundry room of her Chicago apartment building, she immediately spoke to the owner...

...They call for mandatory inspections and notification and stiffer regulations...

...They say no level of exposure is safe...

...He believes that 99 per cent of the contractors are conscientious...

...The EPA "scared the hell out of people," says Robert N. Sawyer, an asbestos expert who now works as a removal consultant...

...eral agency with some power to regulate asbestos use, by enforcing standards to protect the workers exposed to it...

...More than 30,000 schools were found by the EPA to contain asbestos, and the EPA strongly recommended removal...

...production...

...It's not like a plumbing job where you can go back and fix your mistakes...

...We suspect there are many, many sites we don't even know about...

...hooked themselves up to an $80,000 respirator...

...Obviously, it's going to cause a lot of damage...

...With removal costs ranging from $9 to $12 a square foot, they balked at the third option...

...to insulate, decorate, and soundproof...

...4,800 had applied...

...and S.P...

...Some owners, upon discovery of asbestos materials, sell out rather than pay for removal, often to unsuspecting buyers...

...In Illinois, Klein's office is charged with enforcement, and he says it aims to inspect at least 80 per cent of the sites it knows about...

...It's a wonderful program on paper," she says, referring to New Jersey's training and certification process...

...Removal expert Kimbrell initiated an effort two years ago to form a professional association of asbestos contractors to act as a national qualifying group, but it failed to get off the ground...

...It was pure economics," says the library director...

...Kids were tracking it all over the place," he says, adding that state-conducted air sampling at Paterson was done improperly and did not detect the asbestos...

...It's like saying go perform brain surgery...

...There isn't anything so important down there for me to ever go in the basement again...

...Now, with all the removal activity, new charges are added: Not only are OSHA's standards useless for removal situations but the near-total lack of enforcement allows "rip-and-tear artists" to meet the demand...

...I'm hoping the states will take the lead and put asbestos abatement on the same level [of regulation] as other building jobs," says Kimbrell...

...Nine states have taken action on their own and begun licensing removal contractors in an attempt to control project quality...

...Unqualified contractors, he adds, come up with unrealistically low cost estimates and inadequate assessments of the extent of the problem...

...And OSHA is only required to make inspections in response to complaints...

...A work crew of twenty built a series of false walls and ceilings out of three-millimeter plastic...

...Recently a new concern has surfaced: the safety of a building's occupants after asbestos is removed...

...The rules are still subject to a public-comment period and won't take effect for at least a year...

...The EPA outlawed its use as insulation in 1979, but many other products are still legal, and 275,000 industrial workers are exposed to the substance every day...

...Behind the barricade and beyond three separate decontamination chambers, a delicate procedure is under way...

...He estimates Illinois will need some 1,200 removal projects in 1986, not counting jobs in Chicago, at costs starting at $40,000 and rising to the $ 1 million range...

...To be honest, probably the more conscientious employers are the ones who notify the EPA...

...He found "gross debris on the floors, walls, and ceilings" remaining after removal was supposedly complete and schools reopened...

...Ed Swoszowski, an asbestos expert and former EPA consultant, was asked by a parents' group last fall to go through several elementary schools in Pat-erson, New Jersey...

...There is a big difference, says Sawyer, between a small level of exposure over a lengthy time period in a manufacturing setting and the highly concentrated exposure resulting from removal...

...Noting a "sharp increase in demolition and renovation activity," the Government filed eleven lawsuits in January for violation of NESHAPS...

...You can check references, get supervision," says W. David Kimbrell of the Kansas-based removal firm Hall-Kimbrell Environmental Services, Inc...

...The crew used a decontamination trailer, set up at the end of a tunnel-entrance to the building, to shower and change before leaving the site...

...They [the other tenants] are trotting down there and washing their clothes...

...Six other states are considering licensing proposals...

...Improper sampling has caused some schools to spend money to remove material that was not really asbestos and others to expose students and staff to undetected asbestos fibers...

...DOUBLE JEOPARDY Asbestos is a hazard that Just won't go away ¦ BY JENNIFER STOFFEL AND STEPHEN PHILLIPS Abarricade of black plastic draped from floor to ceiling blocks the end of a stark-white, fluorescent-lit corridor on the third floor of Chicago's Westside Veterans Administration Hospital...

...He had our gardener put white paper over it so now you can't see it," she says...

...Other owners simply opt for cosmetic solutions...

...lung cancer, and other lung diseases...

...In late January, the EPA finally proposed some new rules, banning some—but not all—widely used asbestos products, including roofing and flooring felts, floor tile, and pipe...

...Calhoun's knowledge of asbestos is firsthand...

...Asbestos expert Swo-szowski warns that work in a small portion of an apartment, for example, can contaminate an entire building if done wrong...

...At their library system's executive offices, they found asbestos in the air plenum (the space above the ceiling) and covering the interior garage wall...

...But telling the schools to find and remove the asbestos without direction or funding, he says, precipitated a lot of "badly done removal" and "was nothing short of disaster...

...A notice on Thursday about a job occurring over the weekend 350 miles from nowhere makes it physically impossible...

...Requirements that schools take low bids are "a prescription for disaster," agrees Bill Borwegan, the director of occupational safety and health for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU...

...A growing group of advocates—including the Safe Building Alliance, the Environmental Defense Fund, the SEIU, and Parents Against Asbestos Hazards—demand further Federal action...

...You know as well as I do that won't do any good...

...But New Jersey is one of the states with licensing, points out Susan Mazzocchi, a co-founder of the parents' group there, and the state's schools suffered some of the worst cases of removal abuses...

...Other products, such as brake linings, will stay on the market because, say officials, there is not yet an "acceptable" substitute...

...Klein blames bad jobs on "the folks coming in from out of state...

...That may not be the best way, but that's what we've got...

...Anchored with silver duct tape, the plastic covers the entrance to what will soon be a remodeled dental surgery unit...

...The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally acknowledged the dangers of asbestos a few years ago—exposure to the substance kills an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people each year—so the owners of all those buildings are potential customers...

...It's a "megabucks business," adds Otto Klein, who manages the compliance and monitoring unit of the Illinois agency that regulates air pollution...