KANSAS CITY - The Occupational Safety and Health administration has found that Research Medical Center in Kansas City willfully and seriously violated regulations about the safe handling of asbestos containing materials over the past two years. The medical center faces $84,000 in federal fines for allowing employees to be exposed to potential asbestos contamination during an expansion project.

The hospital has 15 days in which to either agree to the fine, dispute the findings or try to negotiate a lower penalty.

Since receiving the report, the hospital has notified about 85 hospital employees that they may have been exposed to asbestos. A hospital vice president stated that none of the employees had received medical examinations to detect if exposure had taken place.

In an email to a local paper, the vice president said that the hospital does have a plan to address asbestos abatement in the areas that OSHA identified. She was not certain yet whether there were other outstanding issues to address.

OSHA reported that the asbestos was found in a vinyl wall covering with felt background. The material crumbles easily, shedding asbestos fibers in the air. Asbestos was found in numerous places, including a boiler room, hallways and an X-ray control room.

Asbestos, a widely used building material through the 1970s, is safe when it is bound, covered or encapsulated. When it is broken or exposed however, and asbestos fibers can be shed into the air, it becomes a potentially deadly health hazard. Inhaled asbestos fibers lodge in the lungs, where they can cause scarring, fibrosis, cancer and a rare form of cancer of the chest wall lining, mesothelioma. It is often ten to forty years before someone who has been exposed to asbestos shows any symptoms.

For that reason, hospitals, schools and other public buildings are required to have and maintain an asbestos management plan that note the location and quality of any asbestos that is in the building. The plan, among other things, ensures that workers and others are not exposed to airborne asbestos during repairs and renovations.

OSHA states that the hospital knew of the presence, location and quantity of asbestos going back to at least 2006, when the hospital reported that wall coverings were on the third, fourth and fifth floors.

OSHA examined those floors and found that there was indeed asbestos in the wall coverings. Workers who may have been exposed include:

- Engineers who worked in the boiler room, where OSHA claims that the hospital failed to post warning signs of nearby asbestos.
- Two employees who cleaned patient care areas, including a radiation control room
- Two maintenance engineers, one who installed an electrical outlet in the radiation control room and one who worked on the fourth floor west wing

There is an ongoing investigation by OSHA to decide whether construction workers who were renovating the fourth floor wing have also been exposed, and the hospital has already settled a case by the Kansas City Health Department by paying $4,000 in fines.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, Jobsite Exposure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.