HAMPTON TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania - A broken toilet valve at the St. Ursula Parish School caused water damage to two floors of the school and released asbestos that had been encapsulated at the school since the 1950s.

The valve gave way on the second day of Christmas break, when the school was empty. The water gushed from the broken valve for about nine hours. The resulting flood covered the entire main floor of the school with an inch of water before it seeped through to the floor below. The damage is extensive, and will close the school indefinitely said Rev. Garrett Dorsey, the pastor of St. Ursula’s parish.

Mopping up took several hours and involved the local fire department’s help, said Dorsey. The mess left behind will take considerably longer. The damage to the building includes damaged and popped floor tiles, and sodden ceilings collapsing onto the desks and floors below.

The school does have insurance that will cover the cleanup, said Dorsey, but it will take time. The damage is so extensive that all the floors and ceiling will need to be ripped out and replaced. In addition, there’s an unexpected problem that’s cropped up more and more often as older schools start to deteriorate.

The problem is asbestos. During the time period that the school was built, asbestos was widely used, especially in public buildings. It was the fire retardant of choice, and was added to hundreds of products used in construction. In a building like St. Ursula’s School, there might have been asbestos in anything from the adhesives used to fix the floor tiles into place to the ceiling paint and plaster.

In the early 1970s, the news broke that asbestos, far from being a miracle fiber, was a silent killer. The men and women who’d worked in construction and dozens of other industries were being diagnosed with a very rare cancer, mesothelioma. Over the next decade, the government and the public began to hear about the conspiracy perpetrated by the asbestos companies on its own workers and on the American public. Asbestos, the miraculous mineral that was supposed to be protecting our children from fire, was killing those who worked with it.

Most schools built before 1980 contain asbestos. Since 1980, most states have enacted legislation requiring schools to document all the asbestos containing materials in the building so that maintenance and repair workers are aware of where they are. Federal law requires special handling for projects involving asbestos, carried out by workers who are trained to enclose the area and prevent the drifting of asbestos fibers into other areas of the school.

Since asbestos is only considered dangerous when it is “friable” - deteriorated enough to create dust and shed fibers into the air - most experts recommend “encapsulation” as a method to protect people from asbestos that was used in a building. Encapsulation involves covering the asbestos to prevent fibers from being released into the air.

The flood at St. Ursula’s released asbestos that had been encapsulated in the building since the 1950s, possibly beneath the floor tiles or in the ceilings. Before children can return to the building, all the asbestos will need to be removed.

In the meantime, the school may bring in trailer classrooms in order to continue classes.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Asbestos Exposure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.