Archive for the ‘Washington’ Category

Investigators who are trying to determine what caused a fire which destroyed an abandoned school in SeaTac, Washington are being delayed by problems relating to asbestos which was present in the school.

The four-alarm fire began around 6PM on Saturday May 31, and around ninety firefighters from eleven different agencies responded quickly. Firefighters were unable to enter the building, however, due to its dilapidated state and concerns that the building might collapse. The fire burned for over an hour, after which the only structure left standing were the bricked sections built in 1937.

Work crews have brought a backhoe to the scene of the fire at Angle Lake School and have been waiting to use it since Monday June 2, but officials say they must wait due to environmental concerns.

The problem? Asbestos is present in the roof, and officials say that the backhoe operator must be licensed to deal with asbestos.

Asbestos was a common component of construction materials up until the 1980s due to its high fire resistance and other desirable factors, but the demolition or renovation of older buildings means the asbestos they contain must be dealt with appropriately.

Asbestos is therefore present in many schools built before this time, as well as residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. The substance was so cheap and had so many desirable properties that it was added to thousands of products, including many types of construction materials.

However, due to the hazards associated with asbestos exposure, many problems associated with its exposure are now arising. Inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause lethal diseases such as asbestosis and mesothelioma due to the chronic inflammation that the fibers cause in the lungs. For these reasons the management and disposal of asbestos-containing construction waste is tightly controlled.

Failure to adhere to laws and regulations controlling asbestos handling can lead to hefty fines, as many contractors have discovered over the past several years.

And in this case, the presence of asbestos in the Angle Lake School’s roof means delays in the investigative process while a licensed professional who can legally deal with the asbestos waste is located.

March 19, 2008 - Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration demolished an old guard shack that had been located on the grounds of the Leesburg Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center. The shack had been known to contain asbestos since the substance had been located there in 1993. FAA Managers involved in organizing the project put a crew of mentally disabled people to work at the site.

Now, the FAA’s inspector general, as well as Alexandria federal prosecutors and a grand jury, are investigating the intent behind the decision to put people with severe disabilities to work on a potentially hazardous task. The investigators are concerned that the decision to use these workers was a deliberate attempt to by-pass required safety procedures.

FFA spokesperson Diane Spitaliere says federal investigators will determine whether the FAA managers knowingly put the groundskeeping crew to work on a task that could endanger their health.

The tiny two-room guard shack was demolished after the FAA extended their security perimeter following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The perimeter extension meant the guard shack was no longer needed.

Following the July, 2007 demolition of the shack, a security guard at the traffic control center told superiors that asbestos materials were being disposed of by mentally-challenged employees. This was confirmed by an FAA white paper on the incident that had been obtained by The Washington Post.

A month after the work was completed, FAA managers checked results of the survey that was carried out in 1993, and determined that asbestos had been contained in the shack’s floor tiles.

An initial FAA report on the incident quoted a manager who said the mentally disabled workers were not involved in the site clean-up. However, Spitaliere claims this is not true, saying that the FAA did not follow its own required procedures for asbestos clean-up.

According to Spitaliere, the FAA’s procedures involve obtaining permits for handling asbestos materials, as well as carrying out pre-demolition asbestos tests. Neither of thee requirements were followed, according to the FAA spokesperson. In addition, the FAA could not trace the final location of the asbestos materials, despite federal regulations that that require such materials to be disposed of in labeled containers at an approved landfill.

The work had been carried out by workers from Leesburg-based group Every Citizen Has Opportunities. The group trains and finds work for mentally and physically disabled people. Workers from ECHO have provided groundskeeping services for the FAA for around thirty years, according to the group’s executive director William Haney.

Haney says he asked the FAA for a written report on the role his workers had played in the asbestos incident, but never received a response apart from being told the workers had an “incidental” role.

National Air Traffic Controllers Association union representative Rich Santa says FAA employees had determined that the ECHO workers had been ordered to handle asbestos materials, but were not provided with protective gear.

Santa also says that an FAA employee who had reported the incident to managers was told to mind his own business. In addition, says Santa, managers should have known better on this project because asbestos had been found in other FAA buildings.

FAA spokesperson Diane Spitaliere says the manager who had ordered the ECHO crew to handle the guard shack debris is “no longer in that position”.

SEATTLE, Washington - A ruling by a Washington State Court of Appeals is being viewed as a victory for victims of secondary asbestos exposure. Many believe that the ruling will make it easier for those who were exposed to asbestos because another household member worked with and around asbestos to make a claim if they develop asbestos related cancers like lung cancer or mesothelioma.

While it has become common for plaintiffs who worked directly with asbestos or who were exposed to asbestos in the course of their occupation to bring suit and collect compensation for damages caused by asbestos, there was an entire class of victims of asbestos who had a far harder time proving their cases.

Those who lived with family members who worked with asbestos on a daily basis were also often exposed to asbestos that was brought home from the job on the clothing or body of the other household member. There have been many cases of mesothelioma and lung cancer diagnosed in wives who were exposed to asbestos while laundering asbestos-coated work clothing for their husbands, and a number of young woman who developed mesothelioma at a young age with no occupational exposure of their own - but a family member with a history of asbestos exposure.

Among the most heartbreaking of the secondary exposure stories is one that is currently unfolding in a Knoxville court of appeals. It starts twenty five years ago with a 21 year old newlywed who got the job of his dreams, a secure job with a future, one that would allow him to provide for his family. He was still working at the factory when his wife delivered their first child - a beautiful baby girl born too early to survive on her own.

Each day after work, he raced directly from his job to the hospital where his daughter’s little lungs were growing stronger in an incubator. He sat with her and his wife, held her, rocked her and sang to her - and within weeks, he brought his baby girl and her mother home from the hospital to live happily ever after.

Except the happily ever after didn’t happen for Doug Satterfield. Twenty years after those frantic afternoons spent holding and praying for his newborn daughter, she developed mesothelioma, a cancer that is almost always related to occupational asbestos exposure. Twenty one year old Amanda Satterfield never worked around asbestos - but her father did.

And every day, he came home from work covered with asbestos dust from his work at the Alcoa plant where he worked. Those afternoons he sat and held his fragile daughter in the pediatric intensive care unit, her unformed lungs were filling with deadly asbestos fibers.

Alcoa and other companies have argued that it was not their responsibility to safeguard the health of their workers’ families. Lawyers for plaintiffs have argued it was well-known within the industry that workers could carry home industrial contaminants on their clothing and bodies, and that providing showers and laundry on site could reduce exposure of family and household members.

Like the Washington case, the Sattefield case was originally dismissed by a lower court. As more of these decisions are overturned on appeal, and plaintiffs are allowed to move forward with lawsuits against companies who could have prevented their asbestos exposure and did not.

ATHENA, Washington – William Koskela has been fined by the Department of Environmental Quality for improper handling of asbestos and materials containing asbestos.

The DEQ imposed two fines against Koskela, totaling $6358 for unsafe handling and improper disposal of asbestos. Koskela was fined $4,458 for allowing an unlicensed person to remove cement asbestos board siding from a building at 454 E. Main St. In addition, he was fined $1,900 for accumulating asbestos-containing material at the same address without properly labeling and packaging it.

Koskela had until January 28 to respond to the department’s action. Since he didn’t, he’ll be required to pay the penalty amount.

Asbestos and its handling comes under the purview of the DEQ because the mineral fiber is considered a hazardous air pollutant. The material was widely used in construction until the 1970s when it became public knowledge that inhaling asbestos fibers causes a deadly cancer, mesothelioma, and a number of other cancers. It also causes other respiratory problems, including asbestosis, a crippling lung disease in which the lungs become scarred with fibroids and eventually are unable to do their work.

Because of its wide use, asbestos is present in most older buildings. Renovations in those buildings are tightly regulated by the local arms of the Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental quality organizations. When materials that contain asbestos are destroyed or damaged, they may release asbestos fibers into the air, creating a hazardous situation for others in the area. The regulations are designed to safeguard the public by preventing the release of asbestos fibers into the air.

In many states and counties, it is illegal for anyone other than a licensed contractor to remove asbestos and materials that contain asbestos, even in private homes. In other counties, homeowners who live in their single family homes may remove asbestos containing materials themselves, but must still follow all the precautions recommended by the EPA or local regulatory agencies or risk fines and civil or criminal charges.

Proper disposal of asbestos-containing materials is also closely regulated because of the risks to the community and the general public. All asbestos-containing materials must be tightly sealed, often in double wrapped heavy bags or sealed into covered plastic containers to prevent asbestos release. Asbestos containing materials can not be left uncovered outside where asbestos dust can contaminate the air and affect others in the community. When asbestos is being transported, it must be transported in a covered vehicle, and the materials can only be disposed of at a landfill that is licensed and certified to accept construction and demolition debris containing asbestos.

Asbestos exposure is a serious health hazard. If you are renovating or remodeling your older home, it is strongly suggested that you have your home surveyed by an asbestos professional to prevent any damage to asbestos containing materials. Asbestos should only be removed by licensed professionals using approved precautions and methods.

NORTH BEND, Washington - As if facing the hazards of asbestos while fighting fires and training wasn’t enough, now the firefighters at North Bend Station 87 have to deal with concerns about asbestos on the home front. Last week, the firefighters who work out of the station at 112 W. Second Street were relocated to another building when asbestos testing revealed asbestos in their building. The testing was done as part of remodeling work planned at the station.

Asbestos testing is a routine part of remodeling and renovations these days. Many older buildings - nearly 750,000 public buildings according to the EPA - were built with some asbestos-containing materials. While many uses of asbestos were banned in the late 1970s and early 1980s, hundreds of thousands of buildings were already built with materials that contained asbestos. Those materials ranged from roofing shingles to patching plaster to pipe insulation and floor tiles. In all, nearly 3,000 products containing asbestos were sold to the general public and to contractors in the construction industry.

As those buildings age, the asbestos used in their construction can become a health hazard. According to the EPA, as long as the materials containing asbestos remain intact, asbestos is not a danger. It is only when those materials are worn, broken or damaged in any way that asbestos may be released into the air to become a dangerous environmental pollutant and health hazard.

Inhaled or ingested asbestos fibers have been shown to raise the risk of developing lung cancer and a number of other types of cancer. Asbestos exposure is also the only known cause of a rare cancer called mesothelioma, a cancer that affects the lining of the lungs, heart or abdominal cavity. The asbestos fibers also can scar the lungs and lead to a condition called asbestosis, which is progressive and always fatal.

Those fibers are often released into the air when older buildings are demolished or undergo renovations. For that reason, the EPA in conjunction with local environmental and health agencies closely regulates and monitors demolition, renovation and removal of asbestos containing materials.

Firefighters from the North Bend 87 fire station have been relocated to the North Bend Public Works building where they will continue to answer calls. Paramedics connected with the station have moved to the Snoqualmie Fire headquarters and will respond to emergency calls from there.

A spokesman for the fire department said that he wasn’t sure when the building was built. The original testing for asbestos was done Wednesday and was negative. However the department discovered the asbestos when additional tests were carried out. The further tests turned up asbestos, and the administration took the precaution of evacuating the building and relocated the firefighters.

WILMINGTON, Delaware - W.R. Grace has asked for an extension on its $250 million bankruptcy loan until a federal judge makes a decision on how much the chemicals maker will have to pay to settle asbestos-related claims brought against it.
Grace has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to extend its line of credit through April 2010. The loan is due to expire April first, but has been amended several times since it was first approved in 2001.

Grace said that if the court agrees to the extension the company can avoid the substantial expense of obtaining a replacement loan. The loan gives it “liquidity protection in the face of significant economic uncertainty”, the company said in papers filed with the court on Monday.

Grace is facing a key point in the reorganization process. The company has asked a bankruptcy court judge to invalidate more than a hundred thousand of the claims brought against them in various asbestos lawsuits. Currently, the company faces billions of dollars in possible cost to settle the existing claims. They hope to reduce that amount to a more manageable figure that will allow them to exit bankruptcy in good shape for the future.

The company entered bankruptcy in 2001 in a move to handled the billions of dollars in asbestos claims against them. The Grace company manufactured many products containing asbestos, including Zonolite vermiculite insulation, made with vermiculite from a mine in Libby, Montana that was badly contaminated with asbestos. The mine was closed in 1994. In the years since, over 1,500 residents of the town have been diagnosed with asbestos-related illnesses because of their exposure.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the nation have charged that Grace products exposed them to asbestos and were the cause of their mesothelioma, asbestos cancer, asbestosis or lung cancer.

Grace contends that many of those suits have been brought by people who offer little or no proof that they are actually ill, or that they ever had contact with Grace products. Attorneys for the company have asked the bankruptcy court to impose a standard of proof and invalidate any claims that don’t meet it. If they succeed in their strategy, it could set a precedent that affects the way that asbestos lawsuits are defended in the future.

The court will consider the loan extension request on March 17. If it is granted, Grace will pay Bank of America a fee of $2 million.

In addition to the civil lawsuits, Grace and several of its former executives also face criminal charges in connection with the vermiculite mine in Libby.
The trial is expected to continue into the spring. Grace executives declined to comment yesterday.

EVERETT, Washington – Firefighters who may have been exposed to asbestos during a training exercise last July are being followed by doctors to monitor their health, said a spokesperson for the city of Everett.

It is common practice in many cities to run fire department training exercises in houses slated for demolition, but exercises are generally only scheduled after asbestos is removed from the buildings or the buildings are cleared as asbestos free. That was not the case in the training exercises held last July for the Everett Fire Department.

The story first broke about a month ago. At that time, it was assumed that fire department officials were not aware that the buildings contained asbestos. Now many firefighters have serious questions about why they were allowed inside the houses before the city removed the asbestos.

According to records that have come to light in the course of the investigation into the incident, less than a week before the trainings were to take place, a construction company informed an Everett Fire Department captain that asbestos and lead had not yet been removed from the houses that were scheduled to be used for the training.

The houses, located along N. Broadway and Tower Street, were slated for destruction as part of the plan for the city’s new bus transfer station. A survey found asbestos in those houses. Abatement was scheduled after July 30.

In a meeting that included representatives from the construction company, the engineering company, Everett Transit, Everett Community College and the fire captain, the captain was told that the training would have to be scheduled after July 30.

The training that was held less than a week later, and involved firefighters chopping holes in walls, which released asbestos into the air.

The president of the Everett firefighters union, Robert Downey, said that the firefighters have been training in those houses since May, assuming that everything was safe. Last month, city officials said that no one from the fire department knew about the asbestos exposure risk. Now they believe that there was “some miscommunication” between the Fire Department captain who attended the meeting and other administrators about when the training could start.

Since the incident, the city has developed a new process to ensure that firefighters will not be exposed to asbestos and lead hazards again. The new process includes a checklist to ensure that all hazards are removed before firefighters train in a building. They are also tightening policies about the use of breathing apparatus and safety and decontamination procedures.

Because firefighters believed there were no hazards present, many of them did not use breathing apparatus or follow asbestos decontamination procedures following the training.

The state Department of Labor and Industries has stated that all Everett firefighters have probably been exposed to asbestos during their careers because the fire department had no policy to check for hazardous materials before training.

The city has pledged to monitor the health of the firefighters, and is looking at the best ways to do that. The Firefighters union has contacted a pulmonologist to do an assessment of the firefighters. A check back to 1996 shows that no Everett firefighters have filed claims against the city for asbestos related diseases.

Asbestos exposure causes a number of serious health problems, including lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, a rare cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs, abdomen or heart.

EVERETT, Washington – Firefighters who were exposed to asbestos during training exercises last year were not informed of the possible asbestos hazard even though at least one Everett fire official knew of the hazards in the training houses. In addition, the Everett fire department invited other Snohomish County fire departments to train in the houses without informing them that the asbestos had not been removed from those houses.

Those fire departments are not trying to determine if their firefighters were exposed to asbestos. Everett city officials say that they alerted both fire departments about concerns, but many firefighters are asking why they haven’t yet been notified that there was potential asbestos exposure during the training exercises. They apparently were not informed even after a Department of Labor and Industries investigation found that Everett firefighters were probably exposed to asbestos when they trained in the houses in July. The exposure is believed to have been serious enough that the consultant recommended Everett firefighters should be checked regularly by a doctor to monitor their health.

Troy Smith, union president of for firefighters in county Fire District 7 said that the first they heard of the possible asbestos exposure was when the story broke in the news, and that District 7 firefighters have not yet received official word of the possible exposure.

Smith said that seven District 7 firefighters joined other new recruits from around the county for a two-day training event in Everett in May. In performing search-and-rescue drills, he says, firefighters cut into the walls. At times, trainees were not wearing protective masks and there was dust all over the place. He admits that they didn’t tear houses apart as the Everett firefighters did, but there were asbestos products inside and there was no decontamination process to ensure firefighters were not exposed.

A spokesperson for the city stated that the city believes that firefighters from other counties were not exposed to asbestos during their training. The spokesperson also said that Fire Districts 1 and 7 were contacted when the city learned of the problem and informed of the situation.

Dangerous to inhale
Asbestos is a mineral made up of microscopic bundles of mineral fibers. It was widely used in construction and building materials in the past and many buildings contain materials made with asbestos. When those materials are disturbed, the fibers can become airborne and be inhaled into a person’s lungs. Exposure to asbestos has been linked to a number of cancers, including an always-fatal rare cancer called mesothelioma. Mesothelioma affects the thin membranes that line the chest cavity and abdomen.

Smith said that he has contacted attorneys to find out what the firefighters should do to determine if they were exposed to asbestos during the training exercise and if they should seek medical attention.

The fire districts are meanwhile polling firefighters and trying to determine which firefighters and recruits may have been exposed to asbestos, and waiting to hear from Everett about which houses involved in the training exercise may have contained asbestos.