Written by Travis Rodgers | Edited by Amy Edel
Asbestos is present in many older school buildings because builders once considered the toxic mineral a wonder material. It resists heat, electricity and corrosion, and it also holds up for decades, so manufacturers used it in floor tiles, ceiling panels, pipe insulation, cement and roofing well into the 1970s and 1980s. Roughly half of U.S. schools were built between 1950 and 1969 and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates asbestos-containing materials are in most of the nation’s primary, secondary and charter schools today.
When Congress passed the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act in 1986, lawmakers didn’t order schools to remove every trace of it. Eliminating asbestos means disturbing it, which can release dangerous fibers that can cause disease. Instead, AHERA established a management approach: schools must inspect for asbestos, track its location and condition and take action if it’s damaged or likely to be damaged. If the material stays sealed and undisturbed, schools can leave it in place and continue monitoring it.
Dr. Shannon Fitzgerald, a toxicologist and pharmacist, tells us, “From a toxicological standpoint, the risk of contained, undisturbed asbestos is virtually zero. The problem is that too often materials become damaged, deteriorated or physically disturbed (drilled, sanded, broken). The fibers, sometimes as small as 0.1 microns, can remain suspended in still air for several days, creating an acute inhalation risk.”
Leaving asbestos materials in place can work when those materials remain intact and undisturbed. That gets harder to guarantee in an aging school building, where years of foot traffic, maintenance, repairs and other everyday activity can wear down materials such as floor and ceiling tiles. When asbestos products deteriorate or become damaged, they can release fibers into the air.
Survivor Kim Madril shares her story of asbestos exposure as a student in art, ceramics and auto shop. Her junior high school yearbook specifically mentioned that the students in shop classes wore protective clothing and the kids in jewelry making wore asbestos gloves. Finding the mention of asbestos in her yearbook solidified that her asbestos exposure happened at school. At 62, doctors diagnosed her with pleural mesothelioma, a rare cancer that forms in the lining around the lungs. Asbestos exposure is the primary cause of mesothelioma, which can take anywhere from 20 to 60 years to develop.
“The toxicology of asbestos forces us to think in generations. Our margin for error must be absolute zero.”
The Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act sets specific duties for schools. Congress designed the law to require every public school district and nonprofit private school, including charter and religious schools, to follow the same requirements for identifying and managing asbestos. AHERA requires local education agencies to complete a set of core tasks and keep them up to date.
List: AHERA Core Requirements
Dr. Fitzgerald says those intervals track directly to who’s most exposed. She explains, “Custodial and maintenance workers face more direct exposure because they service the areas where asbestos is most common (boiler rooms, pipe insulation, etc.) and perform tasks like drilling or lifting tiles that can disturb the material. Young children are biologically more vulnerable due to faster respiration rates and generally inhale more air per pound of body weight, coupled with the fact that they have a long lifespan ahead of them. Long-term staff face an elevated risk due to the duration of potential exposure to baseline building dust, which may contain trace legacy fibers from slowly degrading materials.”
Enforcement responsibilities vary at the local, state and federal levels. School districts and their designated asbestos contact person handle day-to-day compliance, from scheduling inspections to maintaining records. In states with EPA-approved AHERA waiver programs, state agencies oversee enforcement of the requirements. In other states, EPA remains responsible for enforcing AHERA.
Asbestos exposure is an ongoing issue in schools across the country in schools of different sizes and budgets nearly 40 years after Congress passed AHERA. School closures around the U.S. have highlighted both failures to comply with the law and gaps in state and federal programs that lack the staff needed to catch problems early. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General’s 2000 audit found its Region III office lacked enough staff to properly respond to complaints or conduct proactive inspections.
The lack of staffing played a role in the School District of Philadelphia closing at least 11 schools for asbestos abatement since 2019. The U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges against the district in 2025 for failing to complete required inspections at 7 schools between 2018 and 2023. Prosecutors also found damaged asbestos had simply been covered with duct tape. The district entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in which charges will be dismissed if it remains compliant with federal asbestos law for 5 years. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers didn’t respond to a request for comment on how the district’s asbestos program has changed for its members since the union’s 2021 protest and subsequent lawsuit.
List: Recent U.S. School Asbestos Closures
New York City’s public school system has had a similar compliance gap. A 2025 audit from the city comptroller’s office found that inspectors failed to complete required triennial inspections at 82% of schools with known asbestos between 2021 and 2024. Periodic 6-month checks fared even worse in some boroughs, with Brooklyn schools receiving inspections only 13% of the time they were due. One school, P.S. 107, hadn’t had a required asbestos inspection since 2008.
These issues aren’t confined to larger school districts. In Maine, for example, a contractor found asbestos insulation at Bowdoinham Community School in 2024 while preparing to install new wiring, delaying part of the school year while the district scrambled to relocate classes. North Carolina launched a 3-year, $26 million EPA-funded effort in 2023 to test more than 3,100 schools and 5,700 daycare centers for asbestos and lead after years without a statewide inspection program. In Ohio, the EPA issued a mandate against a 77-school charter system after finding it lacked a required asbestos management plan altogether.
School districts have the primary responsibility for complying with AHERA. Each district must designate an asbestos contact person to make sure inspections happen on schedule, management plans stay current and damaged asbestos products get repaired or removed. State asbestos programs and the EPA oversee compliance and enforce the law, depending on how the state handles its AHERA program.
When Philadelphia’s district failed to complete required inspections at seven schools between 2018 and 2023, federal prosecutors didn’t charge an individual custodian or facilities manager. They charged the district itself, which shows how AHERA treats compliance as an institutional duty rather than one person’s job. The School District of Philadelphia didn’t respond to a request for comment on its current inspection practices and how it’s meeting the terms of its deal with federal prosecutors.
The EPA describes its role as: “EPA, and state agencies with a delegated AHERA program, ensure compliance through compliance assistance tools and oversight as needed.” A dozen states, including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Texas, have EPA-approved waivers that let them run their own asbestos-in-schools programs. In those states, state agencies enforce AHERA, while the EPA handles enforcement elsewhere.
The EPA can fine a district up to $25,000 per day per violation or refer serious cases for criminal prosecution. We asked how the EPA verifies that schools complete required inspections and how often enforcement occurs, but the agency didn’t address those specifics.
Enforcement still depends on having enough staff to do the work. When resources dwindle, as they did in Region III in the late 1990s and reportedly again in more recent years, the EPA’s ability to catch problems before they become closures or lawsuits erodes along with them. We spoke with Linda Reinstein, co-founder, president and CEO of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, who said the problems in Philadelphia and New York City reflect broader weaknesses in how schools manage and enforce asbestos requirements.
“Philadelphia and New York City shouldn’t be viewed as isolated cases. Legacy asbestos remains a serious concern in aging school buildings across most states. When audits identify widespread inspection failures and criminal enforcement is required to secure compliance with a longstanding federal law, the problem extends beyond individual districts. These cases point to systemic weaknesses in oversight, enforcement, transparency and prevention.”
Nearly 40 years after Congress passed AHERA, people who work on asbestos policy don’t agree on whether the law itself needs an overhaul or whether the problem lies solely in its enforcement. Some school officials and industry consultants maintain the law’s framework is sound and that funding and staffing, not the statute itself, account for inspection lapses. Linda Reinstein argues the law hasn’t kept pace with the buildings it governs.
“AHERA was enacted in 1986, when school buildings and asbestos-containing materials were decades younger. Nearly 40 years later, many facilities and materials have deteriorated, increasing the challenges of effective management in place. Federal policy must reflect the current condition of America’s aging schools and provide a stronger framework for preventing exposure. When it comes to asbestos, prevention is the cure,” she tells us.
Reinstein says ADAO supports a clear set of fixes: “ADAO supports stronger enforcement, meaningful penalties, dedicated federal funding and greater public transparency. School districts should not have to choose between essential building repairs and asbestos inspection or remediation. Parents, teachers, and staff should also receive timely information about asbestos conditions without having to initiate formal requests.”
Some advocates want stronger enforcement tools, since the current maximum penalty of $25,000 per day per violation hasn’t kept districts like Philadelphia’s from falling years behind on inspections. Others point to funding as the real issue, noting that Pennsylvania’s $75 million state grant program for lead and asbestos remediation in 2024 still covered only a fraction of what Philadelphia alone says it needs to fully address aging buildings.
Age adds another layer to the debate. AHERA assumed schools would manage asbestos in place for years, but many of the buildings inspected under the original 1988 deadline are now approaching or exceeding 50 years old. Materials that were stable decades ago can deteriorate over time. Some environmental health experts argue that aging school buildings justify more frequent reinspections and a more aggressive approach to replacing materials nearing the end of their expected lifespans. Others argue that frequent, thorough inspections already catch most problems before they become emergencies and that the real failures stem from inspections that didn’t happen at all, not from a schedule that’s too lenient.
For families who want to act now rather than wait for policy to catch up, a few steps make a difference. Reinstein advises: “Parents and employees should request the school’s asbestos management plan, which must be made available for public inspection. They should ask whether inspections are current, whether asbestos-containing materials have been damaged, and what corrective actions are planned. Unresolved concerns should be reported to the appropriate state asbestos program or EPA regional office. Protecting students and employees should not require specialized expertise or persistent demands for basic information. As ADAO says, ‘Hear Asbestos. Think Prevention.’”
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Asbestos.com. (2026, August 17). Is the Nation’s Asbestos-in-Schools Safety System Working? Retrieved August 17, 2026, from https://www.asbestos.com/featured-stories/are-schools-safe-from-asbestos/
"Is the Nation’s Asbestos-in-Schools Safety System Working?" Asbestos.com, 17 Aug 2026, https://www.asbestos.com/featured-stories/are-schools-safe-from-asbestos/.
Asbestos.com. "Is the Nation’s Asbestos-in-Schools Safety System Working?" Last modified August 17, 2026. https://www.asbestos.com/featured-stories/are-schools-safe-from-asbestos/.
Travis Rodgers is an Emmy-nominated journalist with more than two decades of experience in television news. He held many roles in broadcasting, but spent most of his time as a producer crafting live newscasts for multiple network affiliates. Travis now brings his many years of writing experience to Asbestos.com.
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