Archive for January, 2008

ITHACA, New York – New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced that the state will award $2.3 million to rehabilitate a gun factory that is contaminated with asbestos, lead and other toxic chemicals.

The former site of the Ithaca Gun Factory has been an issue in Ithaca for some years. Even after toxic wastes were supposedly cleaned up at the old factory building, there were reports that vats of chemicals and crumbling asbestos permeated the abandoned building.

After a group of homeless persons who took up residence in the building set a mattress on fire, calling the fire department to the scene, the issue of asbestos and chemical contamination became a public issue. Various city officials spoke out against the presence of the abandoned factory building and called for its demolition.

Frost Travis of the development firm Travis and Travis, working with the current owner of the site to plan its development, referred to the gun factory as an “attractive nuisance”, attracting the attention of teens and others who might be enticed into breaking into the premises. Others called it a health hazard and a disaster in the making. As early as 2003, a city official stated that the site as it stood represented a “significant risk to the community and certainly to firefighters if they are ever called to battle a blaze there”.

The hazardous conditions and asbestos dangers at the site will soon be a thing of the past, said Spitzer in announcing the award of the Restore N.Y. grant that will fund cleanup of the site and demolition of the factory. Once the site is cleaned up, Travis & Travis will develop the property into 33 high-end condos and a public park.

Travis told a packed council chamber that when the property is fully developed, the city will have a “beautiful public park with views of Ithaca falls that has been unavailable to the public for over 100 years”.

The gun factory site is a 2.1 acre property that was home to the Ithaca Gun Company until 1986. It has high levels of both lead and asbestos contamination.

Jean McPheeters, Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce President, said that she’s been afraid that the site was going to be a “tragedy scene”.

Despite multiple cleanup attempts by many different agencies, the asbestos and lead contamination have not been completely removed.

Spitzer and Travis both lauded the private/public collaboration that will handle the cleanup and development of the contaminated site.

After his speech, Spitzer addressed concerns raised by those in attendance about building high end housing when there is a need for affordable housing by stating that the state and private collaboration is accomplishing the elimination of a hazardous environmental site, which had been sitting there without anyone in the private sector able to address it. He said that the government was doing what government should – stepping in to eliminate the environmental hazard.

CHARLESTON, West Virginia – Asbestos reform and tort reform are among the top three of eight key issues that need to be addressed in order to foster economic progress in West Virginia, says the Chamber of Commerce.

None of the eight key solutions are news to anyone who has followed the Chamber in past years. Once again, they are urging legislators to focus on taxes and tort reforms in an effort to make the state more business-friendly.

Chamber President Steve Roberts said in a statement that the chamber’s list of key solutions will improve the state’s business and human capital capacity and offer new employment opportunities to West Virginians.

Roberts said that it is “imperative” that state legislators address the key issues in light of the current national economic climate in order to foster new expansion and maintain current economic growth. He named lawsuit reforms, health insurance and tax relief as the issues that are vital to make West Virginia more competitive.

The eight key solutions include:

- Workforce training. A number of West Virginia officials and politicians have expressed concern that employers and potential employers can not find enough trained workers in the state to fill their needs. West Virginia must invest in a coordinated plan to train a workforce capable of taking on the jobs that need to be filled.
- Repairing the court system. The Chamber is pushing for further legal and tort reforms to make the legal climate more business friendly. Among the reforms requested is making elections for the judiciary non-partisan.
- Asbestos claims. The Chamber says that the system of dealing with asbestos claims in the court system must be reviewed and changes made to ensure that legitimate, properly diagnosed asbestos claims are heard in a timely and appropriate manner. They expressed concerns that the law does not provide minimum medical criteria for filing a suit, and that those who are diagnosed with malignant conditions like mesothelioma are not heard immediately.
- Health insurance reform. The state must work with business and labor, says the Chamber, to offset the high cost of health care and improve accessibility to insurance, as well as develop a prevention-based insurance and health care system.
- Business costs and tax reform. West Virginia’s business tax structure, according  to the Chamber, greatly increases the cost of doing business in West Virginia. The Chamber supports doing away with several taxes and privatizing workers compensation to reduce the costs to business.
- Regulatory permits. The current process to obtain regulatory permits and environmental permits is obstructive and must be improved in order to attract more businesses to the state.
- Industry protection. The Chamber called on the state to protect the coal industry and manufacturing segments of the state’s economy.
- Infrastructure. The legislature must continue to approve funding to improve infrastructure for such things as broadband and fiber connectivity.

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio – Teachers at Everts Middle School in Circleville have agreed to come in and teach on two in-service days and on the first day of spring break to make up days that were used while the school was closed for asbestos cleanup.

The closure occurred when cleaning and updating the 92 year old school’s heating system belched thick dust throughout the school. The work on the furnace was done during the holiday break when there were no students in the school. School officials tested the dust for asbestos and made the decision not to reopen the school until receiving the results of follow-up air quality tests showed that the air in the building was safe for children and staff to breathe.

Asbestos is a toxic substance that is regulated by the EPA. The mineral was used in many different ways in building over the past century and few school buildings in the United States are completely asbestos-free. Breathing the toxic dust can result in severe illnesses, including mesothelioma, a rare cancer that only affects those who were previously exposed to asbestos. It can be decades between asbestos exposure and the first symptoms of asbestos related diseases.

After the repairs and updates to the heating system, some parts of the school were covered with up to a quarter inch thick coating of heavy dust. Asbestos was detected in that dust, and the school notified the County Health Department, the city building department and the EPA, who oversee incidents of asbestos release and cleanup.

In addition, the school installed additional air filters on air ducts into classrooms and made plans to recheck the air quality in the school monthly for the rest of the year.

The additional days that the school was closed put the students at Everts School over the allotted five calamity days for the year, necessitating measures to make up the missed days.

The makeup days will take place on February 19, which was to have been an in-service day for teachers, March 20, the first day of Spring Break for the school district, and April 4th, another in-service day.

Teachers will have other options to make up the 15.5 in-service hours before the end of the year. Superintendent Sam Lucas said that the teachers’ union had been heavily involved in the decision of how to solve the problem.

The cost of the clean-up tops $42,000, including money paid to a specialty asbestos and hazardous waste removal company for nearly 700 hours of cleaning. It is uncertain how much of the clean-up costs will be covered by the school department’s insurance and how much will have to be made up out of school department budgets.

WELLESLEY, Massachusetts - The Wellesley School Committee has to come up with a new policy for asbestos abatement and removal, says School Committee chairman Mike Young. With renovations needed for the middle and high schools, the policy for asbestos removal needs a serious look, and soon.

The issue was raised as part of the discussions about the future of the Wellesley High School building. The school committee has dealt with the renovation of a number of elementary and middle school buildings in recent years which included asbestos abatement. Young said that the policy for those renovations was that all asbestos abatement activity take place after school to prevent the risk of exposing schoolchildren to airborne asbestos.

It was easy to work with that policy for the elementary and middle schools, said Young, because the younger children are generally out of the building immediately after school hours, leaving the buildings empty for the workers. At the middle school level, he added, it was more difficult, but still workable to maintain that policy.

At the high school, however, students are often there well into the evening, cutting into the time available for workers to remove asbestos without trying to work around students in the school building. The school committee has requested that the Permanent Building Committee revisit the policy of approving after school work.

Last Thursday night at a hearing run by the Permanent Building Committee and the School Committee, the issue was raised for citizen comments and concerns. The committee and citizens made a number of suggestions, including scheduling work during school vacations and holidays, as well as over the summer. Young said that no real policy was voted, however. Young says that it is premature to finalize an abatement plan before the decisions have been made on design and construction plans for the new high school.

Young reassured the public that asbestos in the building is not currently a health hazard to students. Asbestos only becomes dangerous when the materials containing it are disturbed, either by wear or by design. The ceiling and floor tiles at the high school are among the materials containing asbestos, and they are currently in good repair. Once the materials are damaged or destroyed, however, they may release asbestos fibers into the air where they can be inhaled by students and others in the school building. Those inhaled asbestos fibers can cause serious health problems years after the exposure, including mesothelioma, a rare cancer that has no other known cause.

Young says that until the ceiling and floor tiles are torn up when construction begins, it’s difficult to know just how much of a problem asbestos is at the high school. That will make it difficult to allot funds for asbestos removal and abatement, but by planning ahead, the school committee can keep a handle on the problem.

DUNEDIN, Fla. – Land that was once the site of a housing development torn down after the county discovered that the buildings were riddled with asbestos and lead contaminants will be used to build new affordable housing for low income families through Habitat for Humanity.

Several years ago, the land that will become the site of Shady Grove, a housing development of town houses to be built by Habitat for Humanity, was the site of a Dunedin Housing Authority apartment complex. Highlander Village, just west of the city’s waste water treatment plant, provided housing mainly to senior citizens.

When it was discovered that the 20 unit public housing complex was riddled with lead paint and asbestos containing materials, the county chose to demolish the buildings. The land has stood idle since then.

Recently, Habitat of Pinellas County used a grant to purchase the land for a proposed development of 19 homes clustered in two story buildings. Each building will be multifamily housing, with units for either two or three families.

Habitat’s preliminary site plan and necessary zoning changes was approved at a Thursday night City Commission meeting.  While Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas County has constructed single family homes before, Shady Grove will be the organization’s first attempt to build a townhouse subdivision.

It’s an elegant reuse of land that was once the site of a contaminated housing project, in keeping with projects across the country that are using land acquired by city and county governments. Often, properties in the inner city are abandoned by their owners when the property owners discover that they can not afford the costs of removing asbestos before demolishing buildings.

Federal regulations require that all asbestos containing material be removed from a building before it can be demolished in order to prevent the release of asbestos fibers into the air. Tiny asbestos fibers that are released during demolition can present a public health hazard because the fibers can be inhaled or ingested. Once the asbestos has invaded the body, it may lodge in the tissues of the lungs, heart wall or abdominal cavity and lay dormant for years before causing symptoms. The eventual result of asbestos exposure is often asbestosis, lung cancer or mesothelioma, a rare cancer that affects the pleura or the pericardium.

The removal of asbestos can be an extremely costly process, and many property owners abandon their dilapidated properties to the city or county in which they are located. In some cities, those abandoned properties are used for firefighter training before being demolished, or are sold to developers who are willing to take on the cost of demolition.
In the case of Dunedin County, the buildings on the land at Shady Grove was already owned by the county, and were demolished following state regulations that include remediation for any asbestos that may leach into the soil during the demolition.

Families who want to qualify for a Habitat for Humanity home must meet income guidelines, as well as show proof that they will be able to make mortgage, insurance and utility payments on their new properties. They must also help build a Habitat for Humanity home. County Commissioner Julie Scales said that she is looking forward to seeing Shady grove build on the site of the old housing complex.

NEW JERSEY – The announcement that Alfacel has partnered with a U.S.-based company for marketing of ONCONASE for the treatment of malignant mesothelioma has sparked a big stock jump for the New Jersey-based company.

Alfacel Corporation is a development stage company that develops pharmaceuticals for licensing and sale by other pharmaceutical companies. Earlier this week, Alfacel announced the signing of a licensing agreement with Strativa Pharmaceuticals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, Strativa gains excusive licensing, distribution and sales rights for ONCONASE for the treatment of unresectable malignant mesothelioma in the United States and U.S. territories.

Alfacel will retain all rights and obligations for manufacturing ONCONASE, developing the drug and obtaining regulatory approvals for the drug, both for treatment of malignant mesothelioma and for other cancers for which it may be suited.

In a reaction to the news which was released January 15, Alfacel stock jumped over 10% in morning trading on the stock exchange.

The benefits to Alfacel Corp include payments of up to $225 million upon achievement of various developmental and sales milestones. Those payments and milestones include:

- a payment of $5 million in cash upon signing the agreement
- a payment of up to $30 million upon FDA approval of ONCONASE as treatment of malignant mesothelioma
- further payments upon reaching other developmental and regulatory milestones that will increase sales prospects for the cancer fighting drug
- milestone payments to be made when Strativa reaches set sales milestones
- the option to co-promote ONCONASE
- technical expertise in developing an oncology sales force
- double-digit royalties on sales of ONCONASE

For the tens of thousands who suffer from unresectable malignant mesothelioma, ONCONASE represents a new hope for longer, more comfortable life with the deadly disease. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer that is caused by asbestos exposure in the past. Millions of workers in many industries were exposed to asbestos from the early 1900s through the late 1970s and early 1980s when it was revealed that asbestos causes severe health problems including mesothelioma. About 2,000 people a year are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the United States. Many of them face a prognosis of death within six months.

Alfacel currently has ONCONASE in a phase IIIb clinical trial for the treatment of unresectable (inoperable) malignant mesothelioma. It is also conducting phase I/II clinical trials with patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer and other solid tumor cancers. Alfacel has a collaboration agreement with the West German Cancer Center at the University of Duisburg-Essen for yet another targeted cancer treatment.

On January 18, Alfacel also announced that the company has signed a purchase and supply agreement with Scientific Protein Laboratories, LLP for the commercial production of ONCONASE. The drug (generic name: ranpirnase) is a naturally derived protein that targets cancer cells and triggers cell death, while sparing non-cancerous cells.

VANCOUVER, Canada – Ernie Crist, a politician whose 25 year history has been marked by resistance to widespread and rabid development, has only days to live, say his doctors.

 Crist, former District of Vancouver councilor, gave a last interview to a reporter from the North Shore Outlook. He is dying of malignant cancer that he says was caused by his exposure to asbestos while working in North Vancouver shipping yards. The scrappy politician first noticed symptoms about three months ago. In the past three months, he has had his lungs drained several times to remove fluid buildup from around them. The buildup of fluid between the chest wall and the lungs is a typical symptom of advanced mesothelioma, a rare cancer that is caused by a history of exposure to asbestos.
 
The cancer may be a rare one, but Crist reminisced about his old workmates. He’s the last of the old crew, he told the reporter. The rest have all died of cancer. Crist was finally diagnosed with the terminal cancer last week at Vancouver General Hospital. Doctors have told him, he says, that he has days to live.
Crist says that he was offered a chance to sign with his union for an ample settlement from the employer with whom he worked back then, but he turned it down. He believed, he told the reporter, that as an office worker rather than a front line labourer, he hadn’t been exposed to asbestos. He doesn’t regret his decision.

 “I had my opportunity to fight 30 years ago,” he said in the interview. Crist has been a staunch supporter of the “little guy” throughout his political career. Even after his official retirement three years ago, he remained active in representing his beliefs. Last fall, he and two political allies took out a newspaper advertisement speaking out against the plans by the current council to redevelop Lynn Valley Centre with high rise apartment buildings and office towers.

 Crist says that he has never been against development in North Vancouver, but that he wanted development to benefit communities. He hopes that those he leaves behind will form a civic party in North Vancouver with a desire to preserve the beauty of the North Shore.
Crist says that he is completely at peace with having lived a life that found meaning in struggling.
 
 “Whatever you do, live to stand on your principles and fight,” he said. His wife said that people she knows are surprised to find out that Crist is so close to death because he appeared so healthy a short time ago. The rapid decline is not uncommon in cases of mesothelioma. The cancer develops slowly over decades after exposure to asbestos. Because the symptoms are so similar to many other, less virulent conditions, doctors often don’t diagnose mesothelioma until the cancer has reached its final stages. For many, death follows within weeks of diagnosis.

 Nor is the settlement to which Crist alluded uncommon when it comes to those who were exposed to asbestos in the past decades. Companies who manufactured, supplied or worked with asbestos have faced hundreds of thousands of lawsuits for failing to warn workers and the public that asbestos is a deadly hazard since the 1970s.

 Crist is also not alone in having believed that he had not been exposed to asbestos because he did not work directly with the hazardous materials. Working in the shipyard, he would have been exposed to higher levels of asbestos in the air simply because of the work being done outside his office, and from asbestos dust carried in and out of his office by those who did work directly with asbestos. This secondhand exposure to asbestos is now figuring more prominently in lawsuits against asbestos manufacturers.

 There is something ironic in the quote from Faust that ended Crist’s interview with the reporter from the local paper.“We are the light,” Crist said. “The light is working people that fight for better conditions.”
The man who spent his life fighting for better conditions is succumbing to one of the conditions he fought to better.

METHUEN, Massachusetts - The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has fined a Methuen resident and a Lawrence resident $18,000 for violating state asbestos removal rules.

Belkis DeLeon manages a rental property at 25 Whittier Street in Springfield. The property is owned by Rafael DeLeon of Lawrence. Both parties were charged and fined in an incident involving the improper handling of asbestos.

On January 30, 2007, the Massachusettes Department of Environmental Protection conducted an inspection at the house after receiving a complaint that asbestos had been improperly and illegally removed from the property. MassDep found that a boiler insulated with asbestos had been removed from the building and replaced with a new boiler. The work was done without using proper asbestos handling and disposal procedures. State regulations prescribe very specific procedures and methods for working with and around asbestos containing materials to prevent the type of contamination that was found at the Springfield home.

MassDep is responsible for enforcing state and federal regulations to manage air quality and hazardous waste disposal. Building owners in Massachusetts are required to inform the DEP when doing or contracting for any work that may disturb asbestos containing materials. In addition, that work must be carried out using specified safety precautions to prevent asbestos fibers from being released into the air. When asbestos is released into the air, it may be inhaled or otherwise make its way into the body where it can cause significant health problems. Those problems may not become apparent until years or even decades after the original exposure. The eventual results of asbestos exposure include lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the linings around organs like the lungs and heart.

MassDEP found “extensive asbestos contamination” in the building basement and the stairwells, as well as outside the building and in the city of Springfield’s wheeled trash containers.

Michael Gorski, director of the Western Regional Office in Springfield said that any failure to follow the specific requirements for management of asbestos can negatively affect public health and the environment. He stated that the asbestos regulations are very specific about how to remove and dispose of asbestos and asbestos containing materials to prevent asbestos fibers from becoming airborne.

Ms. DeLeon responded to the directive from MassDEP by promptly hiring a licensed abatement contractor to clean up the asbestos contamination.

It is vital that property owners and contractors dealing with older buildings be aware of all the requirements regarding dealing with asbestos and asbestos containing materials. Those regulations include specifics about notification, removal methods, proper handling, packing, storage and disposal of asbestos. Property owners should contact the DEP or check the MassDEP web site for regulations concerning the proper handling of asbestos during renovations, repairs or demolitions.

NAPLES, Florida - A Florida construction company has been awarded a $25 million contract by Lee County despite the fact that their last contract resulted in serious asbestos violations being levied against the contractor.

Posen Construction Company has been accused of improperly removing and disposing of over 880 feet of asbestos pipe after employees of the construction company brought their complaints to the county and to the Department of Environmental Protection.

According to Posen’s employees, they were ordered to handle the asbestos pipe, smash it with hammers or cut it up, then load it into trucks and dump it near and in a new man-made lake south of Alico Road near U.S. 41.

Posen was first awarded the Bonita Springs Three Oaks Parkway project in May 2006, and has worked on several projects for the county since. Part of the Alico Road contract included removing and disposing of 1,220 feet of asbestos pipe which had been moved when the state widened Alico Road. Employees brought their concerns to the county and to state environmental officials after an employee was disciplined for protesting the handling of asbestos without proper training.

On Wednesday, Posen representatives told officials at Lee County that they had grouted 280 feet of the asbestos pipe in place under Alico Road as part of the widening project there. They can show proof that they disposed of another 600 feet of the asbestos pipe properly. Both of those methods are legal.

The DEP has ruled that Posen will have to dig up the 280 feet of pipe to prove their claims to the agency.

The construction company also faces charges that they failed to train employees in the proper handling of asbestos, and that they failed to notify the DEP of the work they would be doing. Both of those allegations may result in fines and charges.
Posen will be required to clean up asbestos fragments that have been found near the lake where employees claimed they had been told to dump the asbestos pipe. Posen says that the area was used as a staging area.

The allegations that employees were improperly trained before being forced to handle asbestos will be investigated by OSHA.

Despite the allegations that Posen disposed of asbestos illegally and endangered workers and the public by having untrained workers handling the toxic substance, Lee County commissioners have just awarded a $25 million contract to the company. The contractors will widen Summerlin Road to six lanes from Cypress Lake Drive to Boy Scout Drive.

The contract was awarded with the unanimous approval of Lee County commissioners who said that they were concerned about the charges, but not concerned enough to turn down nearly $4 million in savings for the low bid.

County attorneys told the public works commissioners that there was no reason not to award the contract to Posen.

Public works director Jim Lavender said that if the county didn’t do business with anyone who’d made a mistake, they wouldn’t do much business.

HIGHFILL, Arkansas – At a meeting Thursday night, the Highfill town council approved the expenditure of over $15,000 to removal asbestos in two city buildings.
Webb House, a city-owned house in the city’s park, will need to have asbestos removed before the town can proceed with plans to burn the house and demolish it to make way for park renovations. Federal regulations require that all asbestos be removed from any property before it can be demolished, though exceptions have been made in recent months for the testing a so-called “wet demolition” method.
The asbestos issue is an important one. Asbestos, a widely used building material in past years, is a known carcinogen that causes many health complications including mesothelioma, a rare cancer. While health officials generally agree that asbestos is not dangerous as long as the materials containing it are intact, demolition of a property that was built or renovated with asbestos containing materials can release toxic asbestos fibers into the air. Airborne asbestos can be inhaled by those in the area of the demolition and become lodged in the tissues of the lungs or work their way out into the lung lining or the pericardium, causing illness and disability years after exposure.
In addition to Webb House, the town council also approved money to have asbestos removed from the house that was recently purchased from the Hobart Young estate. That house will be renovated and converted into the new city hall for the town. Extensive renovations also often release asbestos fibers into the air when materials that contain asbestos are disturbed during the work. Licensed and trained asbestos removal professionals are required to do an asbestos survey of the property and properly contain or remove any asbestos containing materials that will be affected by the renovations.
The expenditure of $15,543 was approved in a 4 to 1 vote, with only Sandy Evans opposing. The money will be taken from the cash-management fund. The amount approved is conditional, and depends on the ability of the company contracted to remove the asbestos from both locations at the same time. It may cost the town more if the company has to return to do work at the second site.
Mayor Chris Holland shared the plans for the renovation work with the city council members at the Thursday meeting. The mayor asked the council to make any suggestions for changes or alterations as soon as possible so that a final set of plans can be prepared.
Other business handled at the meeting included appropriation of funds to pay off loans, as well as funds for equipment at the new wastewater management plant. The council also unanimously approved an expenditure of $10,000 to cover over-budget costs on the new police department renovations and to purchase a new sign for the police department.