Document 6BjvOm6JLdnNyDgGp7LBvzZd6

RECENT ASBESTOS ARTICLE I PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT AL-1071 Part 1--Focus on schools Published March 3, 1985 EPA does little to ease fears over cancer risks By Michael J. Bennett nor does it tell how to evaluate the News Special Writer risks or pick a remedy. For now. educators are on their hat to do about asbestos own--and subject to pressure from Wis fast becoming one of worried parents or unions repre the most explosive envi senting teachers and custodians. ronmental issues of the decade. Asbestos is a mineral that insu This widely used material has lates and protects against fire. It been linked to cancer in numerous can be woven or molded. Like cot medical studies, spurring a frantic ton or wool, it is composed'of mi effort costing millions of dollars to croscopic fibers. Sometimes they remove asbestos from the nation's are released into the air-- either schoolrooms. naturally or when the asbestos is As this four-part series will mined, milled, installed in build show , however, the actual risk ings or removed from them. The from asbestos is highly question emissions can be invisible or look able. Some doctors and scientists, like powdery dust. interviewed over three months, ac Asbestos is most hazardous cuse the federal government of let when it looks like dust, as can hap ting politics dominate over pen when it's being ripped out of a research, exaggerating the health building. If particles enter the dangers, causing mass confusion lungs, they can become attached and potentially making the prob permanently -- making it hard to lem only worse. breathe. They also can cause can The debate involves broad con cer 10 to 40 years l^ter. some cerns of public health policy, legal scientists say. liability and state-federal relations, In 1973. the EPA banned all as all of which come under the tricky bestos emissions that look like process of risk analysis--the bal dust, as well as the spraying of as ancing of financial, political and bestos insulation or sound medical factors in an objective way proofing. Five years later, it for the public good. The basic banned all construction uses of the argument is over how much material except to repair buildings "safety" society can afford when erected before then, as long as it astronomical sums are needed to couldn't be crumbled or turned in deal with just one of the many to powder. ; risks in the environment. Various studies, however, in The asbestos issue is focused cluding one last year by a primarily on schools, the only government commission in Ontar buildings that must be inspected io. suggest that intact asbestos for asbestos under federal regula does not pose an excessive health tions. risk to pupils, teachers and custo The Environmental Protection dians Unless it's flaking, the best Agency (EPA) requires educators precaution may be to keep hands to look closely at common con off or perhaps apply a sealant, struction items such as ceiling som: prominent scientists say. tiles, insulated pipes and fire "The mere presence of asbestos proofed walls. If they find asbestos in a building doesn't mean it's a that can be easily crumbled and can health risk." admits assistant EPA release fibers, they must warn par administrator John A. Moore, who ents and school employes that is based in Chicago. His ex-boss, "asbestos-containing materials former Administrator William may cause health problems." Ruckelshaus. acknowledges. "The The EPA issued the inspection potential for people panicking rule in 1982 and enforces it with when they 're faced with a problem fines. It will start providing lim of this kind is there." ited removal grants and loans this Thus, as one Michigan official summer. But the agency does not sees it. EPA is standing on the say the asbestos must be removed. sidelines of a cancer scare it pro Copyright 1985. The Detroit News voked. "This may be a little like saying `beware of the bull, don't wave a red flag.' and then saying `don't worry about it because you're outside the fence.' " comments Ir ving H. Davis, chief of occupa tional health services for the state Department of Public Health. "The EPA must do a better job of communicating its concept." The only guidance for school administrators and boards is the EPA ruling on May 27. 1982. that all public and private schools must determine by June 28. 1983. whether their buildings contain "friable" (easily crumbled) asbes tos. If any is found, the school must ; post warning notices and send i them to parents, teachers and other I building employes. ^ Then what? EPA doesn't say , specifically. It decided last No vember not to write a federal regulation covering asbestos hazards, saying. "There is stri ng 1 evidence that the current EPA pro" ' gram for handling potential asbes tos hazards in schools is working." George Ciampa. an EPA attor- ney in Boston, describes the policy a bit differently. "The theory is the mothers will form a vigilante mob s and storm the school committee to |-r do something." he says. "What ,'! that is 1 don't know. I couldn't sit ` down and write it out." Ciampa and other EPA attor neys have fined districts for viola tions of the surveying, notification and recordkeeping mandates. The Femdale system recently was fined $42,000 and Royal Oak schools incurred a $7,800 penalty. Ninety percent of U.S. districts have done the inspections, ac cording to the government, but only 30 percent of those required to send notices have done so. Altogether, up to 15 million pupils and I .4 million`school employes may be exposed to as bestos in a form that could release the dangerous fibers, according to ALCOA0000008350 RECENT ASBESTOS ARTICLES Part 1--Focus on schools EPA does little to ease fears over cancer risk continued an EPA estimate last fall. But no further steps have been taken to protect them because "if we had ordered the schools to clean up the problem." former EPA chief Ruckelshaus told The News last month, "then the federal government would have been or the least threatening, since the lungs expel its fibers most easily. The debate about all this has reached Capitol Hill, where influ ential members of Congress are starting to question federal agen cies' claims about asbestos risks. Lawmakers are reacting to the dered (by courts) to pay for it." scientific sparring and court deci Still, the environmental agency sions that overruled regulatory ini tries to make sure parents and tiatives similar to the EPA asbestos teachers hear about schools that rule. haven't looked for or properly re At the same time, EPA is back corded the presence of asbestos. "I ing away from plans to ban asbes support the use of press releases in tos from all domestic products and conjunction with appropriate en manufacturing processes. forcement activities." Ruckel Last summer, the agency sought shaus wrote in a a 1983 memo to approval from the Office of Man his regional chiefs. agement and Budget for two pro The EPA chief, who resigned posals to ban four uses of asbestos last December, passed along a immediately and the rest over 10 three-page sample press release to years. This would have forced his aides and suggested they warn manufacturers to find substitutes that asbestos fibers "are harmful for asbestos in such items as appli when inhaled and can cause asbes- ances. textiles, wallpaper, paint, tosis. a lung ailment, or cancer of corrugated paper, vehicle brakes the lung and gastro-intestinal and some patching compounds. tract." The budget office reportedly He defended that tactic in the balked at the cost, which couldn't recent interview. "The idea of the even be estimated. approach." Ruckelshaus said, On Feb. I. EPA announced the "was to put the pressure on the sweeping proposals were placed on school boards through publicity to hold. In an angry reaction, about clean up. if in fact cleanup was 100 EPA employes signed a Feb. necessary.'' 19 letter to Lee Thomas, the new administrator. "The retreat on as The asbestos-in-schools contro bestos makes a joke of our work." versy stems largely from they complained. studies, led by Dr. Irving Selikoff In another current development, of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New a crowded and significant trial York, that linked cancer and lung opens tomorrow in San Francisco, disease to heavy asbestos exposure where five firms that made asbes among insulation workers in New tos items and their 75 insurance York and New Jersey. The reseaTch. which analyzed data from 1942-76. focused mainly on companies will argue over who should pay the costs of damage suits filed by schools and individ shipyard employes who often worked closely with the material. Many of these workers also uals. Thi s ongoing political, scien tific and financial debate does little smoked cigarets. however, and as a result, a number of prominent doctors, authors and political scholars have challenged the as bestos studies and an overall belief among many environmentalists to ease parents' fears, teachers' worries or school administrators' headaches. The dispute actually may increase the public's confu sion about the complex issues. and scientists that cancer is largely a consequence of industrial devel opment. Here are some of the people and studies involved in the con troversy: The studies were also ques William Borwegen -- He is tioned because the asbestos handled by those workers gener ally was the blue or reddish-brown variety. Another variety, white, is much more common, especially in U.S. buildings. It's the type used nearly all the time and seems to be safety and health director of the Service International Employes Union, whose members include 85.000 school custodians and maintenance workers. The union sued EPA on Jan. 29 in an attempt to secure formal standards that 2 would help educators, parents and school employes determine how to deal safely with asbestos. "EPA puts the weight of the burden on individuals to encourage the removal of asbestos from the environment of children." he told an EPA hearing last May. "They can potentially put friend against friend, teacher against administra tor. parent against school and chil dren against all of the above.'' Dr. Robert N. Sawyer--A holder of engineering and medical degrees, he teaches at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the hospital that performed the original asbestos studies cited by the EPA. He supervised the na tion's first major asbestos removal project in 1972 at Yale's School of Architecture. He also was a scien tific consultant to the New York Board of Education when it carried out a massive asbestos contain ment effort a few years ago. Sawyer terms it "very unfortu nate" that many school districts are ordering complete removal of asbestos -- he predicts that the agency "will cause more adverse health effects, including malignan cies. than it is preventing." "Currently there exists a com mon misconception . . . that the discovery of asbestos-bearing con struction products automatically indicates serious contamination and exposures in a school build ing." he testified at an EPA hearing last July in Boston. "The surge in demand for re movals greatly reduces the probabilitv that the local school administration will obtain a com petent contractor, experienced workers, knowledgeable architec tural advice and a safe removal op eration. There is a limited supply of such qualified personnel, and demand has already exceeded supply. "The basic problem is that you're causing cancer in abatement workers by allowing this unneces sary removal." A British health commission --After three years of hearings and study by scientists, it said there wasn't enough danger from asbes tos to warrant its general removal from buildings. "Present evidence suggests that dangers from asbestos in buildings are likely to arise only when asbes tos fibers are released into the air when products containing asbestos are damaged either accidentally or during maintenance or repair." it CV \ G c G c c: - G c- .o G G .G o O <5 G v s'. oG CL CO' G p_r~: G G G Gr G C; f. (. s C' C ALCOAO 000008351 Excerpted page from Conclusions of a 1984 Canadian inquiry 588 Chapter 9 is far above the cost of life saving in other programmes. From the stand point of occupants, asbestos control in buildings is uneconomic because the risk it removes for occupants is insignificant, and its costs are large. Our conclusion that the occupants of buildings are generally not at risk from asbestos fibre exposure, and that asbestos control work may expose workers to substantially elevated asbestos fibre levels if not carefully per formed, raises the question whether the programme to remove asbestos from all Ontario schools, involving an expenditure of provincial funds of over $26 million to date, constituted an over-reaction, albeit well infentioned, to public concern vigorously expressed by parents alarmed by per ceived health risks to their children. We appreciate that children may be somewhat more at risk from a given fibre exposure than are adults, as dis cussed in Chapter 5 above. The risk assessment models presented in the Appendix to Chapter 7 predict that children may be exposed to almost twice the risk faced by adults. Even acknowledging that the very young may be more susceptible to asbestos disease, the health risks to children remain in significant because the level of exposure in asbestos-containing schools has in general been extremely low. The exceptions would be cases where asbes tos material was actively disturbed, or where it fell onto building surfaces and was disturbed. It follows that, with these exceptions, the programme for removing asbestos from all asbestos-containing schools was not justified by the health risk posed to students. In some cases, the asbestos control work may have been justified in order to protect building renovation, main tenance. or custodial workers from exposure to asbestos if their work would have disturbed asbestos insulation. (See Chapter 10, Section D.) But nei ther the scale nor the pace of the school programme was warranted by the risk posed by most asbestos-containing schools to occupants or workers. If anything, the scale and pace of the programme significantly increased the risk to some workers directly engaged in control projects. Crash program mes invariably mean that inexperienced contractors and personnel will en ter the field. A number of asbestos-control projects in schools were conducted in a manner which, according to the evidence before us. may have generated significant risk for the workers involved. (See Chapter 10, Sec tion D.) There is no question, however, that the crash nature of the asbestos control programme in schools was occasioned by a climate of public appre hension; the actions of school boards and of the Ministry of Education, paralleled in other jurisdictions, show them to be responsive to public demand. F. Recommendations for Occupant Protection We conclude that a universal programme of building inspection and control is not warranted to protect building occupants. As Pinchin has noted, this would be quite expensive. In addition, it is unlikely that such a programme could be performed at a high level of competence in a short said. A Canadian commission--li studied the issue in Ontario, where S26 million was spent in a removal program, and said last April; "Even acknowledging that the very young may be more suscepti ble to asbestos disease, the health risks to children remain insignifi cant because the level of exposure in asbestos-containing schools has in general been extremely low. The exceptions would be cases where asbestos material was actively dis turbed or it fell onto building sur faces and was disturbed. "It follows that with these exceptions, the program for re moving asbestos from all asbestoscontaining schools was not justified by the health risk posed to the students. ... If anything, the scale and pace of the program sig nificantly increased the risk to some workers directly engaged in control projects." U.S. House Committee--Last summer. Congress approved legislation to appropriate S50 mil lion in grants and loans--the down payment on a projected S600 million -- to help private and public schools remove asbestos. But the House Appropriations Committee added a stipulation that no money can be spent until EPA "develops guidelines for assessing asbestos hazards and selecting ap propriate abatement options." A House subcommittee opens hearings this month into EPA's ap propriations requests for the next fiscal year, including new grants and loans to help schools handle asbestos. Members could raise the broader issue of how the agency is behaving on the matter of asbestos, as they did in a strongly worded report last March: "There is no conclusive evi dence of measurable adverse health effects produced by the inhalation of 'white- asbestos at low nonoccupational exposures or from ingestion even at high concentra tions," wrote ranking member Ed ward Boland. D-Mass. "Recently, the asbestos-inschools program has received wide attention. However. EPA's han dling of the problem has not en couraged rational or responsible risk management. ... EPA techni cal guidance is lacking on how school officials are to evaluate risks and select appropriate correc tive measures. "The potential for risk and overreaction is tremendous -- leading to wasted resources and possible higher asbestos exposures if complete removal is undertaken in schools where modest contain ment measures are appropriate. The committee urges EPA to pro vide more balanced and complete technical information to encourage more rational and less emotional responses to asbestos in schools." The House panel suggested that the agency assess the relative dangers of different asbestos types and evaluate medical studies "to identify the specific risks of 'white' asbestos at low environ- ALCOAOOOOOC6352 RECENT ASBESTOS ARTICLES Part 1--Focus on schools EPA does little to ease fears over cancer risk continued mental exposures." Lawmakers also called for "animal studies to determine the biological activity lion (nanograms) and pans per tril lion (picograms)--levels that can be identified, but which are so mi of the Service Employes Interna tional Union. "The ultimate ab surdity is that EPA has created a and health risks of asbestos substi croscopic that health dangers seem high level of concern about asbes tutes." extremely remote. ``The behavior of the ERA on tos. but refuses to tell anyone how to deal safely with the substance." For its part, the EPA acknowl this entire issue is absurd." com edges there is a risk in plains John J. Sweeney, president removing asbestos from schools. News stafl writer Dudley K. Pier son contributed to this story. "Like any other rapidly growing industry, asbestos removal has at tracted companies with varying ex perience and competence." notes the EPA's 1983 booklet for school districts and other building What's the cost and who pays? owners. "A breach in the containment barrier is a significant exposure hazard for building occupants . . . By Eric Freedman News Lansing Bureau you don't have the money. Disposal and transport of removed material has been a problem." Such concerns have not changed much since then. Moore, the Midwestern EPA official, con ANSING -- For Michigan's public Land private educators, the asbestos controversy sparks debate over health and dollars. Romulus officials found themselves in a similar position: Their high school roof was crumbling and releasing asbestos fibers from the ceiling. Money was tight Voters rejected a bond proposal to pay foi firms: "Unqualified contractors Nobody knows exactly how many asbestos removal and a new ceiling. Sorm . . . unwittingly go about it in the schools across the state have asbestos in parents and teachers actively pressed for ac wrong way and may expose them their walls, ceilings, insulation or pipe tion. selves and inadvertently contami wrapping. And nobody yet knows the over "We finally bit the bullet and look it ou nate the whole damn building with all cost of removing or sealing the material, of the general budget." Romulus Busines- the asbestos." which some specialists link to long-term Manager Joel Carr said of the SI03.000 es For now. the EPA's main publi diseases. pense. "The board wanted to do it from th. cation on asbestos for school admi- The price tag for some districts will be beginning, but it was a financial dilemma." nistrators. landlords and millions of dollars. Others face bills of a However, some districts say that dilem contractors is that 1983 booklet few thousand dollars. And some fortunate ma is overwhelming. Consider the Davisoi --200 pages entitled Guidance for systems found no asbestos at all. School District in Genesee and Lapee Controlling Friable Asbestos- Neither the U.S. government nor the counties: Containing Materials in Buildings. state requires a district to do more than in Asbestos extraction in three school The guidebook does not say spect schools for easily crumbled asbestos would cost S3.1 million, an architect said there are several types of asbestos and maintain records of what is found. Since that estimate was made, asbestos w.i -- including the white variety Remedial action is optional, even if the ma found in a fourth school, adding up t- (known as chrysotile). terial is flaking into classrooms, gyms or $400,000 to the potential bill. The system' There also is no such reference halls. annual budget is S12 million. in one of two supplemental vol "It's totally up to the districts and the "It's going to be pretty tough to come u; umes. Evaluation of the Asbestos- local boards of education." explained Den with S3.1 million." observed Assistan in-Scliools Identification and nis Carpenter, energy projects coordinator Supt. Donovan J. Green. Voters rejected Notification Rule, published last for the Michigan School Business Officials millage increase that would have provide- October. In the other 1984 supple group. $312,000 a year for building maintenane ment. Asbestos in Buildings: A Na- Many school officials opt for prompt ac and asbestos removal, and the school boat tional Survey of Asbestos- tion. despite the cost and uncertainty over "hates to go into long-term debt" b\ issu Containing Friable Materials. the health risks. Other districts want to act. ing bonds. Green added. mention of the "white" variety ap but can't afford immediate repairs. As a result, the district is tackling asbe- pears in two charts and in a two- Gov. James J. Blanchard will ask legis tos in small steps. During the last tv- sentence reference. lators soon to authorize special bonds to years. it spent SI 1.000 to remove falling a* Many scientists contend that help pay the tab. because only a tiny bestos in open areas of the high school an sensible action on asbestos re amount of federal aid is forthcoming. S85.000 to clean one junior high llooi quires knowledge about the differ Some educators are not waiting for gov "Our idea is that, if we can do some woi ences of the varied forms and their ernment checks, however. Akiva Hebrew each year, we'll eventual!) get it clean.- relative health risks. Day School in Lathrup Village spent up." said the assistant superintendent. Another technical issue provok $41.000 to contain asbestos in its furnace ing debate is the "no-threshold" belief--an assumption by EPA and other federal agencies that po room, a hallway and classrooms. The ex pense "hurt us terribly." said President Barry Eisenberg. "It came out of our oper Lansing schools are taking the same .q proach. An inspection found asbesiin 47 of its 54 buildings, and removal coal tential carcinogens have no safe ating budget. cost $2.5 million, according to ph> si.. exposure level. Some scientists "The asbestos was minute (in amount), plant coordinator David Finnie. To dai. disagree by noting that they now but the potential for danger was there. You the district has spent SI65.445 on com. can measure down to parts per bil- can't take chances with the children, even if tive measures. 4 ALCOA0000008353 What the technical terms mean Published March 3, 1985 Amosite: Technical name lor brownish-red asbestos. Strong medical evidence links inhalation of fibers to elevated cancer rates. Asbestosis: Lung-scarring disease that makes breathing progressively more difficult. Lesions on lung membranes are linked to inhalation of asbestos fibers Also known as plueral asbestosis. it first was reported m 1907 m Britain and can be fatal. Bronchogenic carcinoma: Most common form of lung cancer Can be caused by inhaled asbestos fibers or by cigaret smoke, and the risk increases when both are present. Chrysotlle: White asbestos, the type used most commonly in building materials Not conclusively linked to elevated cancer rates Crocidolite: Slue asbestos, linked by strong medical evidence to above-average cancer rates Published March 3, 1985 "We have no plan to do complete re moval now." Finnie said. "As there is a problem, we'll find the money to correct it." Douglas Roberts, state deputy superin tendent of public instruction, noted that "districts determined to remove or control asbestos have limited financial options." In general, a district can only dig into its oper ating budget or seek voter approval of a bond issue or millage increase. ! Voters in the.Merrill School District, straddling the border between Saginaw and Midland counties, will decide April 2 whether to approve more than 5240.000 in bonds for high school asbestos removal. A few districts have issued "energy con servation notes" with some of the proceeds earmarked to replace asbestos insulation. The notes don't require voter approval, but are of limited scope, because insulation isn't a major source of asbestos in most schools. Broader help is proposed by Gov. Blanchard, who is asking lawmakers "to issue state bonds on behalf of local school districts to pay for removal of school asbes tos." The got'grnor said Jan. 23 in his State of the State message that bonds issued un der a "shared-credit program ... should save school districts money through lower interest and issuance costs and provide them with an incentive to move quickly to remove this hazard" The move could cut local communities' borrowing costs from about 10 percent to 5 percent, said state Treasurer Robert Bow man. Legislation to authorize the bonds and create a Michigan municipal bonding au thority has been drafted and scheduled to be introduced this month. Bowman predicted passage, saying the issue of asbestos-removal is nonpartisan. The first bonds could be issued two months later. School administrators also can try for federal aid or compensation from asbestos manufacturers, who are being sued for dam ages. Under a law' passed by Congress last summer, needy school districts nation wide are eligible to share S50 million in 1985 grants and loans for asbestos-control projects--an amount that is dwarfed by the cost of such remedial work. The environ mental Protection Agency (EPA) will an nounce the first recipients in June. Another S550 million is authorized to be spent over the next five years, but the EPA has said it may not request the full amount from Con gress. Many educators question the effective ness of the initial EPA money. "It's a spit in the ocean." said Carr of the Romulus district. "There's not enough for the state of Michigan to hardly talk about." agreed As sistant Supt. Green of Davison. EPA officials agree with such com ments. but stress that federal policy intentionally defers removal decisions --and costs--to the local and state levels. The goal is to avoid creating "a cost-free benefit to the schools." former EPA chief William Ruckelshaus told The News. With out forcing systems to find a way of cover ing the tab. he explained, many educators would demand maximum cleanup help. Ac cordingly. EPA's limited funds are unlikely to reimburse any district for work that has started. As a result. Deputy Supt. Roberts in Lansing said only 39 of the state's 1.800 public and private systems applied for the EPA program, with the final deadline 12 days away. Their requests exceeded SI3 million. Despite the slim odds of selection, the state urged districts to file because their forms will provide details on the scope of asbestos in Michigan schools, the informa tion also will be used in appeals to Con gress and the state Legislature for more dollars, according to Roberts. Carcinogen: A cancer-causing substance Doctors generally identify carcinogens based on animal tests and human studies, although they can t always confirm a direct link or determine the precise level of exposure that may be dangerous. Electron microscopy: Expensive technique to measure amount of microscopic airborne asbestos m an enclosed area Encasing: Stopgap measure to contain asbestos by building a structure around it--such as a new wall or drop ceiling. Under federal law. asbestos still must be removed before building is demolished Encapsulation: Use of sprayed-on coating to seal in asbestos Can create a moisture barrier on ceilings and walls, however, and asbestos still must be removed before demolition Friable: Crumbled or damaged asbestos that is easily powdered. Fibers become airborne since they are smaller and more buoyant than dust Glove bag: Airtight enclosure placed around pipes and other small areas during asbestos removal. Worker inserts hands into rubber gloves with cuffs sealed into clear plastic unit. Mesothelioma: Cancer of membranes that line the chest and abdomen. Almost never occurs in people who haven't been exposed to asbestos. First linked to asbestos in 1955 Negative air filtration; Three-chamber system to keep fibers from spreading during large-scale asbestos removal It filters contaminated air before venting it and pumps in fresh air. Threshold level: Cutoff point for sate exposure to a substance that is considered dangerous. Specialists often disagree over actual level or question whether one exists. Asbestos: A group of minerals that separate into fibers. The white, chalky version was used widely by the construction industry from the 1930s until the late 1970s for fire protection, insulation and decoration. Found in some ceiling tiles, furnance or pipe wrap, roof shingles and vinyl floors. U S. government has banned construction uses, but allows asbestos in brake linings, appliances and other items ALCOA000008354 re:e-.~ ASBESTOS ARTICLES Repairs cost $100,000 in Romulus History of the issue Mother's fight 1866 Asbestos, mixed with sodium silicate, used for insulation material. spurs school board to act 1870 Asbestos mixed with cement lor commercial uses. 1898 Corrugated asbestos paper introduced. 1907 Asbestosis reported among British miners! mill workers. 1955 Inhaled asbestos fibers linked to chest cancer known as mesothelioma 1964 International science conference hears Or. Irving Selikotf report on high lung cancer rate tor asbestos insulation workers. Conferees urge more studies of health risks. 1978 U.S. bans asbestos in construction materials. 1982 EPA requires schools to inspect for asbestos installations and publicly report any in an easily crumbled condition: Manville Corp files for bankruptcy because of 16.500 asbestos damage suits 1983 Deadline for school inspections and notification under EPA rule. 1984 Federal judge approves national class-action suit against asbestos manufacturers by school systems. 1985 EPA defers future ban on all asbestos uses in consumer products. By Mike Wowk News Staff Writer hyllis Kreft has no regrets about Phelping to get rid of 47.000 square feet of ceiling asbestos in Romulus High School. A mother of two. she mobilized other parents into a committee two years ago that pressured school officials for months. They spoke at school board meetings, sent fivers home with students and staffed an information booth at the Romulus City Fair. Mrs. Kreft hauled a TV set and video recorder to each elementary' school in the district to show a film about asbestos. in the end. the Romulus school board spent S100.000 to pull asbestos out of the high school ceiling, even though voters rejected three bond issues to finance the project. "Ifl had todo it all over again." Mrs. Kreft says now. "I would picket that school until they shut it down. People were not listening to our argu ments. but my son (Steve, now 16) was going in there every day and breathing that air. You don't fool around with something like asbestos." In contrast. Warren Consolidated We're drinking asbestos 107, L"UW government report, asbestos is Melted snow found in virtually all water and Ginger ale many beverages. The study Vermouth suggested microscopic asbestos River water fibers are a routinely ingested Beer mineral and not considered a health risk The findings. excerpted below, were cited last year by a commission criticizing Ontario school officials for "an Tap water Beer Orange pop Tap water over-reaction , . to public Port wine concern" about asbestos in their 'Tap water buildings: Beer Sherry Vermouth Tonic Beer SoU,,Ce Ottawa (3 week sample) Unspecified Italian brand Ottawa River at Ottawa Canadian brand "B" Toronto, from Lake Ontario Canadian brand "A" Unspecified Montreal, St. Lawrence River Canadian brand Ottawa, from Ottawa River U.S. brand "B" Spanish brand French brand Unspecified U.S. brand "A" Fibers/liter 33.5 million 12.2 million 11.7 million 9.5 million 6.6 million 4.4 million 4.3 million 2.5 million 2.4 million 2.1 million 2.0 million 2.0 million 2.0 million 1.6 million 1.7 million 1.1 million *TAP WATER samples passed through filtration pianis Pipers were identified as mostly wmie asbestos by electron microscope but me authors wrote Thai the numbers must be considered a minimum estimate of those actually present The amounts by weight o> the asbestos touna <n these samples were exceedingly small SOURCE: AsOesiOS Fibers In Beverages and Drinking Water Dy Hugh M Cunningham and Rodenc D. Pontefract. Nature journal. July 30. 1971 School District officials decided not t disturb the asbestos--mostly in the for of boiler-pipe insulation--found in moi than 20 of their 35 schools. Spokesman Bob Freehan said test showed that none of Warren Consolida ed's asbestos is "friable" (easily crun bled). "As long as the asbestos remain intact, we felt it would not present a dar ger." he added. "01 course, we'll kee monitoring it." As in Romulus, schools official throughout the nation are askin hard questions about asbestos in thei buildings: Should we get rid of the stuff? How would we pay for the work? Is there an immediate health danger? Will removal produce more airborru fibers than exist now 7 At Romulus High, the need for intmc diate removal was clear, officials said Water run-off from a leaky roof hue damaged asbestos tiles and expose? fibers. Warren Consolidated's decision not to remove asbestos was endorsed by Clayton Environmental Consultants Inc "Almost any building will have asbestos in it. That's a fact of life." said Michael Coffman of the Southfield firm. "Bui many parents create a sense of panic when they force removal of asbestos. In many cases, it may be better to lease tt alone. " Intact pipe w rappings are a case in point. "If the canvas cover on the pipe isn't cut. you won't release any airbornefibers." according to Coffman. To save money, districts can "encapsulate" asbestos materials by ap plying a sealant or building a structure around them. That is what Detroit offi cials elected to do after friable asbestos was reported in 23 of the city 'x 2v> public schools. In most cases, peeling pipe insulation is being rewrapped aiul enclosed in metal sleeves. William Schmidt, the Detroit sys tem's acting director of engineering services, estimates it would cost at le.isi $20 million to remove all the asbestos m his buildings. For districts that decide to rip out as bestos. the costs can be staggering. ALCOA0000008355 Published March 3, 1985 Southfield spent roughly S400.000 to correct problems in 10 schools throush 1981. Ferndafe. which is appealing a $42,000 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) fine for laxness in mandatory inspections and record-keeping, earlier spent S74.000 to remove an asbestos laden ceiling. A study by the American Association of School Administrators of 1.235 ran domly selected districts shows that the average cost of asbestos removal is S 1 28.000 per system--compared to $22,000 for encapsulation. The total amount spent so far by 550 districts in the survey was more than $50 million. Former EPA chief William Ruckelshaus says that is partly why his agency stopped short of requiring districts to do more than inspect and report on asbestos content. "If we had ordered the schools to clean up the problem, then the federal government would have been ordered (by courts) to pay for it." Ruckelshaus told The News in a recent Washington interview. "It would have become a cost-free benefit to the schools." "But we wanted to force the schools to make a risk r.v. benefit decision." he added. "I think that's sensible." Without forcing systems to find a way of covering the tab. Ruckelshaus ex plained. educators would demand a max imum cleanup effort. Ruckelshaus. who left EPA last November, met with two Detroit News writers in his office at a Washington re search institute. He compared the riskbenefit debate over asbestos to a decision he made last year regarding new radiation standards for two Utah phos phorus plants. "1 refused to issue those standards be cause the studies showed that the new standards would have reduced the theo retical cancer deaths in those two towns (Salt Springs and Pocatello) by only one. But they would have cost $72 million." Ruckelshaus said. "In my view, that's a very minor risk. To spend that kind of money to (reduce pollution) is crazy." he added". A federal judge held Ruckelshaus in contempt for his refusal. A few days af ter he left, new administrator Lee M. Thomas signed documents that enacted the new radiation standards. Published March 4, 1985 Varieties of asbestos TYPE HEALTH IMPACT USES Chrysotile Least dangerous; not conclusively linked to elevated cancer rates Acoustical tiles, pipe wrap, spray insulation or fireproofing Amosite More dangerous; studies link inhalation of fibers to elevated cancer rates Cement, water pipes, sewage lines Crocidolite Most dangerous; strong evidence that inhalation increases cancer risk Boiler insulation on ships and in factories A high-risk job Insurance underwriters are among those who have caught "asbestos-phobia." Because the new and largely unregulated asbestosremoval industry deals with uncertain risks, many insurers balk at writing general liability coverage tor contractors. "Tfje word (asbestos) is enough to cause paralysis in ... an underwriter's pen," the U.S. legal counsel for Lloyd's of London told the Baltimore Sun last month. Many contractors--up to 600, according to one industry executive--have changed fields because they couldn't get protection against lawsuits from employes, landlords or building occupants who may claim health damages from the release of asbestos fibers. Firms willing to write such policies charge asbestos contractors three to four times more than most contrac tors. A Michigan removal company, Mechanical Insula tion Services of Saginaw, saw its annual premium rise from $6,000 to $44,000 this year. "Most companies don't tell their insurance companies they are doing asbestos abatement," Indiana contractor Frederick Treadway told a trade journal last year. His firm pays about $40,000 annually for $5 million in insurance. "Very few contractors have properly written coverage specific for asbestos exposure," added Dennis Garde, vice-president at Asbestos Control Inc. of Illinois, which has had three carriers in four years. "A company risks us for a year and then drops us," Garde explained to the En gineering News-Record. Nearly 100 contractors met in Louisiana last month to discuss forming a self-insurance plan. ; i I ) ' j > ALCOA0000008356 S RECENT ASBESTOS ARTICLES ------ Part 2--Politics & science Published March 4, 1985 Policy prompts sharp questions By Michael J. Bennett News Special Wrrter _______ Is the white asbestos commonly used in U.S. buildings as dangerous as the government suggests? ERKELEY. Calif.--Prom B inent scholars are criticizing There are several kinds of asbes the role of politics in setting tos. some that crumble more easily health priorities to protect the pubtlhican others. An asbestos product from asbestos and other presumesudch as insulation is particularly dan dangers. gerous when flaked into a powdery Senior faculty members at the Uni mist, as sometimes happens during re versity of California, among others, moval. But when left intact or cov protest what they see as a political, un ered by paint or plaster, it may not scientific reaction to cancer risks by release more fibers than already are Washington officials. present in air and water. Some scientists who disagree Such distinctions, many experts with government conclusions "are say. have been overlooked or ig afraid to come out or just don't want nored by federal rule-writers. Crit to get involved in politics." claims po ics in Berkeley and elsewhere feel litical scientist Aaron Wildavsky. the policymakers are trying, in the one of the critics on the Berkeley name of environmental concern, to campus. eliminate virtually any substance These concerns are voiced that could cause cancer. ' against the backdrop of controver Wildavsky. the Berkeley politi sies over the government's handling cal scientist, is among those trying of asbestos, a mineral that can be to change the ways Americans see molded or woven into insulation or cancer. Some government offi fire-retarding materials. cials. he asserts, use the dreaded Nearly three years ago. the Envi disease as an instrument for enact ronmental Protection Agency (EPA) ing political and social change. ordered school districts to examine That claim by Wildavsky. buildings for asbestos and tell par president-elect of the American ents and employes if any is found in Political Science Association, is a condition that can release fibers. reinforced by Ames. The notice must warn of a potential The 56-year-old biochemist, health hazard. who invented a test for identifying But many scientists question the degree of risk from installed asbes mutagens (gene-changing agents), is a principal proponent ol the the tos. ory that life itself "causes" can One is Bruce Ames, chairman of cer. He insists that most food, biochemistry at Berkeley. "People hear carcinogen and they get so including everything broiled or roasted, is loaded with carcino exited." he told an interviewer last gens. year. "But you have to think of "Far from being a rants ."he amounts. Sunlight is a carcinogen, has said, carcinogens "are literally but you don't tell your friend not to everywhere." walk across the street in the sun." Asbestos is dangerous when its mi croscopic fibers enter the lungs, where they can cling to internal mem Ames argued in a 1983 article in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Ad branes and reduce lung efficiency. vancement of Science, that carcin In addition, they may cause cancer ogens abound naturally in such years or decades later. foods as uncooked corn. nuts, Critics of the federal school- peanut butter, bread, cheese, fruit, inspection rule suggest the EPA beets, celery, lettuce, spinach, acted without sufficient evidence or ac radishes, mushrooms and rhubarb. knowledgement that these questions "Cooking our food also gener are unanswered: ates mutagens and carcinogens, as H How much asbestos -- how many fibers in a classroom's air for example--may be harmful? all browned and burned material contains them." Ames wrote last year in Science '84. "It takes a Los Angeles resident How much asbestos is present naturally in air and water? a year of breathing smog to equal the burned material that a heavy 8 Risks at home? Many U.S. homes, particularly those built during the 1960s. contain asbestos in insula tion or other construction materials. When used around pipes or boilers, the material resembles corrugated cardboard and has a white, chalky surface. In thicker attic insula tion, it looks like snow or wool. It also was blown onto walls and ceilings for decorative purposes. Specialists stress that the mere presence of asbestos is not a hazard, especially if the material remains sealed and solid. The can cer risk from an average home's asbestos is the same as from smoking half a cigaret a year, a Canadian government commission concluded last year. U.S. officials say homeowners generally need not be alarmed about intact asbestos in the home, and strongly advise against self removal. If crumbling asbestos is found, the EPA advises owners to contact an experi enced removal contractor. A national trade group in Kansas--(913) 749-4032--will refer callers to local firms. A $2.75 booklet, "Asbestos in the Home." is available from the Superintendent of Docu ments, U.S. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. 20402. Standards may shift The International Labor Organiza tion is drafting new asbestosexposure standards to protect millions of workers worldwide. Delegates from 151 nations will vote on the proposed guidelines al a June labor conference in Geneva. Threshold limits and monitoring methods now vary from country to country. In a report issued last week, the or ganization described asbestos as a "Jekyll-and-Hyde mineral" that can pose a health hazard but save lives through its use in fireproofing materials and brake linings. The United States, western Europe and the Soviet Union use 75 percenl of the asbestos produced. More than twothirds is taken for cement while the rest goes into about 1,000 industrial prod ucts. Unfortunately, no suitable alterna tives exists, the group said. From Reuter News Service. ALCQA0000008357 smoker inhales in one day." his article to ask how many of these people are The World Health Organization en continued. "And we eat even more smokers." As he explained, "It turns dorses the continued use of DDT. and browned and burned material than the out if you have blue-collar, it's a high Richard Nixon wrote in his memoirs that heavy smoker inhales, though we don't smoking population. That would ac the DDT decision was "panicky." know the risk from this." count for the excess cancers right there." Ruckelshaus later told this reporter Ames' conclusions place him in direct The well-known professor, who has his 1972 move was "political." He ex opposition to the environmental move written 20 books, says doctors and plained in a 1981 interview: "Society ment. a cause he used to champion. He scientists share the blame for what he demands certain decisions be made by helped convinceihe Consumer Product sees as environmental alarmism. someone, and in this case I was the Safety Commission to ban Tris, a flame "When there was 99.99-percent un someone." retardant used in children's pajamas un animity among scientists, then these til it was linked to cancer. fears don't get very far," Wildavsky said. "But when you have, say, just a 5- He also was an early advocate of percent difference among scientists-- or reducing the limits of workers' ex 2- or 3-percent difference--there are posure to ethylene dibromide (EDB). eanough to carry this off. " To political scientist Nelson W. Polsby, the DDT episode shows that environmentalists are "making it impossible" for the EPA and similar agencies to be "evenhanded." soil fumigant banned by the EPA last "There's no incentive in it." the 50- year because it caused cancer in rats. Ames urged the agency, however, not to outlaw EDB unless it recommended an And once the public becomes year-old professor said at his Berkeley alarmed, in Wildavsky's view, it's office. "No matter what they do. there's inevitable that politicians take notice.a chance they might be wrong, and could equally effective substitute to help farm He noted that fears of cancer and other be crucified for it later.'' ers fight crop pests--the kind of risk- effects of pollution have "captured a Consequently. Polsby said. EPA and benefit question also raised about great deal of public attention, and very other safety or health agencies often do asbestos. few public officials would argue against what environmentalists want. Dr. Robert Sawyer of Mt. Sinai Medi this." Critics say that's why journalists and cal School in New York urged the EPA Along that line, he accused former the public have come to believe environ at a 1984 hearing to "place the risk from EPA chief William Ruckelshaus of being mentalists' allegations generally are on asbestos in schools into a reasonable per "stampeded by this" pressure to act target, even if scientific evidence points spective." He told agency officials in against suspected cancer threats. in the other direction. Boston last July: "Until the `single fiber The Berkeley professor doesn't advo will kill' mythology is dispelled and put into perspective, unnecessary and un reasonable response actions are in cate ignoring or minimizing all potential cancer threats. "1 do believe in making as great an effort as possible to assess the The EPA's public-relations apparatus helps spread a message of vigilance over alleged dangers from asbestos or evitable." scientific information, to correct what other substances, as one veteran of the One federal insider who acknowl needs to be corrected," he stressed. staff recounted last year. edged the shortcomings in what she The basic argument made by Wil "1 worked for Ruckelshaus and his called "this balancing process" is Bar davsky and other health policy critics is successors from 1970 to 1981," Jim Sib- bara Hackman Franklin, a member of the that scientific questions should be re bison wrote in the Washington Monthly Consumer Product Safety Commission solved by scientific evidence or argu last March. "One of the first things 1 under Jimmy Carter. ments, not political decisions. learned in the job is that reporters take "When we banned certain products too much on faith what the government that contain asbestos, the truth of the matter is that we lacked information to evaluate the safety of the substitute ma Concern is not enough, they contend. Knowledge is necessary, along with the realization that complicated technical tells them. "That's the way it was at the EPA during Ruckelshaus' first term as head of terials," she told a 1979 scientific con issues do not have simple solutions. the agency," added the former Associ ference in New York. Politics and science have collided at ated Press reporter, who spent 11 years EPA since June 1972. when Ruckel as an EPA press officer. "In those days, In the broader debate, critics accuse the shaus banned DDT. The pesticide was consumer and environmental move the principal target of Silent Spring by ments of looking for any cancer-causing Rachel Carson, a 1962 book that helped the idea was to get the media to help turn the EPA into an enforcer that struck fear into the heart of polluters. substances that can be linked to industri pioneer the environmental movement. That approach ended when the al pollution of air, water and soil. By outlawing DDT. Ruckelshaus Reagan administration arrived, accord An illustration, according to Wil- over-ruled an EPA administrative law ing to Sibbison: "Previously, the EPA davsky.can be found in the way a judge who conducted 17 months of had sought to whip the public into a community's health problems often are hearings and ruled that the chemical did frenzy. Now. a less, shall we say. active linked to a local factory--even when not necessarily cause human cancer. administration wanted a cooler ap medical studies fail to confirm a connec "Surely it can't be seriously contended proach. tion. "These charges climb so fast, they that the fact that DDT has NOT been "The rules of the game were thus spread so rapidly." he said. "With the proven NOT to be carcinogenic to man is reversed for those of us who wrote the willingness to believe, it spreads." a logical reason for advocating a ban ... press releases. Where once we had writ Before jumping to conclusions about on all future uses of DDT," the law ten freely in our news materials about the a neighborhood's cancer rate, the judge declared, according to a book hazards of chemicals, employing words Berkeley professor declared, "you have titled Ecological Saniry. like 'cancer' and `birth defects' to splash c ALCOA0000008358 recent ASBESTOS ARTICLES Part 2--Politics & science Policy prompts sharp questions continued Crews protected from head to toe a little cold water in reporters' faces, we were urged to be more cautious.' ' By Mike Wowk and Dudley K. Pierson The rules appeared to change News Staff Writers back again with the appoint ment of Ruckelshaus two years ago here are no paper face masks, tew to replace ousted EPA chief Anne Burford. On Sept. 28, 1983. two months after he was sworn in. Tworkers who smoke or sloppy habits at asbestos-removal jobs supervised by John Krieger. Ruckelshaus issued a memo titled. Each of his men wears a protective suit "Communications Strategy for from head to toe and breathes through a Asbestos-in-Schools Program." battery-powered respirator. Employes Regional administrators were shower after each shift with their respirators told to put out press releases iden still on. then pass through a series of tifying school systems that had airlocks to minimize release of asbestos failed to meet all requirements of fibers. the inspection rule. The strategy Desk-sized fans draw contaminated air was described as a way of involv through several filters and electronic ing "the local community in sort monitors sample the surrounding space for ing out what actions are needed to asbestos content. protect their children and school "We try to trap everything. Even smoke employes from potential health won't go through (our filters)." said risks." Krieger. vice-president of Mechanical Ruckelshaus suggested that the Insulation Services Inc. of Saginaw. handouts cover "batches" of in Each weekend for the last month. spections. since "case-by-case Krieger's 15-man crew has removed releases may quickly exhaust the asbestos fireproofing from a Michigan Bell public's attention." He included a Telephone Co. office complex in sample news release that said as Southfield. The grayish material is scraped bestos fibers "are harmful when off the building's frame and then sealed in inhaled and can cause asbestosis. a plastic bags. The bags, in turn, are placed lung ailment, or cancer of the lung in drums for landfill burial. and gastrointestinal tract." Work can't be done during normal An insider's perspective on that business hours because the building's high-visibility approach to public ventilation system is shut to minimize relations was provided by Jim Sib- chances of spreading the microscopic bison. whose magazine story con fibers. cluded: "The truth of the matter is Most of the time-consuming precautions that official sources alone will taken by Bell and the Saginaw firm are never give you an accurate picture voluntary, since asbestos-removal firms are of an agency's successes and fail not licensed or closely regulated. As the ures. Take it from me. 1 used to be field expands, especially from school one." district jobs, some officials and contractors voice fears about the lack of accepted operating standards. Krieger said he respects the stringent safeguards, despite questions about how much danger is posed by the white form of asbestos. That scientific and political debate generally involves asbestos that is intact and releases few airborne fibers. At a removal site, in contrast. Krieger recognizes that the loose fibers his crews encounter could be deadly. "My men can't afford to be indifferent to asbestos." explained the Saginaw contractor. "Exposure to asbestos can cause one of three lethal diseases--lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis. There are no cures. The victims always die." Thus. Krieger trains workers by cautioning against "the saccharin syndrome"--his phrase for the skepticism fostered by widespread warnings about 1C cancer risks from saccharin and other common products. His firm's insurance carrier also views asbestos seriously, and raised the annual premium cost from S6.000 to S44.000 this year. Employes of Mechanical Insulation Services got a personal reminder last month of what asbestos can do. The firm's president. Robert H. Bordeaux, died at 62 of mesothelioma (cancer of chest membranes). He installed asbestos at a Saginaw Bay shipyard during World War II. When Bordeaux joined the Saginaw firm in 1940. it was an insulation contractor for power plants, foundries and other industrial customers. Today, with asbestos banned from most of its former uses, about half the corporation's business consists of removing the substance it once installed--a turnabout that's common in the growing field of "asbestos abatement." Unionized asbestos-removal workers earn about S20 an hour in the Detroit area, with no premium for hazardous duty. The Saginaw firm provides roughly one day of special training in removal techniques and the hazards of asbestos. Since numerous medical studies show that tobacco multiplies the risk of lung damage from asbestos. Krieger won t hire smokers. "Those men who installed asbestos insulation in those shipyards during the war who are now dead were usually smokers." he noted. "The nonsmokers are still alive." Krieger. who doesn 't smoke, said he's not worried about getting an asbestosrelated illness because of the stringent controls on current job sites. Precautions were not always as strict in earlier years. "I've heard of some guys who scrape asbestos while wearing paper masks. They punch a hole in the mask so they can smoke a cigaret while working." Krieger added, shaking his head. "We know the paper masks are ineffective, so we got rid of them years ago." The firm's other removal projects have included four Veterans Administration hospitals, several General Motors plants and sites owned by Ford. Mobil Oil and Consumers Power. Mechanical Insulation Services avoids bidding on asbestos-removal jobs in schools--a large segment of the market. Krieger explained that educators, required by a federal rule to inspect for loose asbestos and publicize the results, often react hastily and hire the low est-bidding repair contractor. "If asbestos is removed improperly . ALCOA0000008359 Published March 4,1985 there can be a greater hazard than it' it were left in place." Krieger warned. "They have gotten rid of all the visible asbestos--but if you put (an air sample) under an electron microscope, it would look like a snowstorm." The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shares the concern and includes this warning in a publication: "Like any other rapidly growing industry, asbestos removal has attracted companies with varying experience and competence." John A. Moore, who oversees the EPA's asbestos-in-schools program, repeated that warning recently. "Unqualified contractors ... unwittingly go about it in the wrong way." he said, "and may expose themselves and inadvertently contaminate the whole damn building with the asbestos." His former boss. EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus. acknowledged the problem. "What we have consistently recommended (to educators) is that they be very careful about how they proceed." Ruckelshaus said in Washington. "And the question of whether or not they could go ahead and create a worse situation, the potential is there, there is no doubt about it." EPA would like to see states and the industry adopt a certification program to set competency standards for asbestos contractors. Municipal codes often require school districts to hire the lowest bidder, noted Moore, who said bidding should be limited to experienced or certified contractors. Moore, an assistant administrator, said the EPA hopes to create a "model certification program" this year that states can adopt qr use as a guide for establishing their own. - New Jersey and Oklahoma already license removal contractors and spot checks by Trenton officials turned up numerous health and safety violations last summer. Crews at one school were flushing asbestos down toilets. Some workers were not wearing respirators or protective clothes. Others did not shower after their shifts and tracked asbestos dust into uncontaminated areas. A Michigan contractor from Lansing shares the belief that his field should be regulated more tightly. "Somehow they should come up with some licensing procedure for this." said Charles Osborne of John E. Green Co. "They are handling a hazardous material." John Lynch, owner of Asbestos Abatement Inc. in Lansing, feels unsafe practices could increase as more contractors scramble for contracts. "As this work picks up. you're going to have more people come into the area, a lot of fly-by-night people coming into it." said Lynch, whose firm recently removed asbestos from classrooms at the Avondale Community Center in Aubum Hills. For now. a desire for cost-cutting can lead to scenes that would seem comical if they were not so serious. Dan Speights, a South Carolina lawyer involved in major asbestos lawsuits around the nation, recently told Michigan school administrators that one Tennessee district used the high school basketball team to pull out an asbestos-insulated ceiling since those students were the tallest and worked for free. Krieger shuddered at the story and said, "We see that attitude in the schools here, too. They just want the job done and they're not willing to listen how." After removal The U.S. Environmental Pro tection Agency requires contractors to put asbestos into "leak-tight containers, typically six-mill polyethylene bags." Those bags are at least three times thicker than household trash bags and asbestos waste sometimes is dampened first to keep fibers from floating. At the Michigan Bell job in Southfield, workers wash off the bags in a shower, then place them inside clean bags. The double-bagged load is put inside fiberboard drums and transport ed to the removal firm's Saginaw warehouse to await landfill burial. "If we re dealing with some thing that's hard or sharp and can tear the bags, then we'll place the material in metal drums," said company vice-president John Krieger. Not all landfills accept asbestos-laden materials and those that do are regulated by the Michigan Department of Nat ural Resources in an effort to avert ground and water contami nation. f l ALCOAO 000008360 '( recent ASBESTOS ARTICLES v Part 3--How fears spread EPA rule process criticized Original studies called misleading By Michael J. Bennett News Special Writer_________ But in Washington. Ross ASHINGTON--An 80- disagrees strongly. He contends Wyear-old docior from that policy decisions and science Brooklyn, more than have become entwined in the case any other person outside goovfearsnbestos, as well as in the gov That view is shared by Dr. Ed ward A. Gaensler. who heads an asbestosis research project funded by the National Institutes of Health. "I have not seen a new ment. prompted warnings theartnamse nt's overall cancer-preven case of asbestosis in two or three bestos in schools may pose health tion efforts. years." he told the Boston Globe hazards. Federal regulations and the in 1983. "Ninety percent of the He is Dr. Irving J. Selikoff. a scientists behind them assert that cases referred to this laboratory do world-renowned asbestos expert there can be no safe level of expo not have asbestosis. Asbestosis is who directs the Environmental Sci sure to asbestos or.any cancer- a disappearing disease." ence Laboratory at Mt. Sinai causing agents (carcinogens). The In the case of lung cancer, there Hospital in New York City. His popular expression for that attitude is no question of a link to asbestos conclusion that inhaling micro in the asbestos dispute is the exposure. But Selikoff's own fig scopic asbestos fibers can cause phrase. "One fiber can kill." ures suggest that smoking has a lung illnesses and cancer led to the greater impact than asbestos in federal mandate for school inspec tions. In the three years since that rule This "no threshold " theory causing such tumors. becomes increasingly impor "Asbestos exposure alone is tant because of advances that allownot the entire explanation." he and took effect, however, other measurements of smaller and two associates wrote in a 1969 specialists have mounted vocal at smaller quantities. paper published in the Journal of tacks on Selikoff s research and the Thus, scientists are better- the American Medical Associa Environmental Protection Agen equipped to detect microscopic tion. "Calculations suggest that cy's (EPA) response. traces of carcinogens--opening asbestos workers who smoke have One leading critic is inside the wav for policy-makers to in about 92 times the risk of dy ing of govermment -- Malcolm Ross, a vestigate or ban more products as bronchogenic carcinoma (lung can 55-year-old mineralogist with the possible health hazards. cer) as men who neither work with U.S. Geological Survey. He Some specialists challenge the asbestos nor smoke.'' argues that pivotal asbestos studies "no threshold" assumption by Smoking generally is more methods were misinterpreted, that noting the vast array of potential prevalent among blue-collar scientific methods were ignored in carcinogens in our food, our hor workers than among those in pro some studies and that the EPA mones and almost everything else fessional and managerial occupa overreacted to evidence of high around us. They advise against tions. and this may account for the cancer and death rates among as massive campaigns to remove car increased rates of lung cancer and bestos workers. cinogens from the environment asbestosis recorded by Selikoff s The EPA's school inspection without examining more closely pioneering studies of shipyard rule, say Ross and others, could what is to be removed--and what workers and factory employes. cause more asbestos-linked disease will replace it The facts surrounding anothei than it seeks to prevent. The alarm The medical community's de disease--mesothelioma (cancer ol sounded by Selikoff is "dan bate over asbestos involves a belief the chest and abdomen mem gerous." Ross states flatly. by mans scientists that it has not branes)--also are disputed hotly. claimed as many victims as To the Mt. Sinai doctor, this on Selikoff says. In fact, some promi going debate leaves educators nent specialists in lung disease with "a terrible dilemma." Asdispute the existence of asbestosis Large-scale studies of mesothe lioma are impossible because there are so few cases. Richard Selikoff recently told The News: -- a lung-scarring disease that "The school boards are in a very Selikoff says is caused mainly by Doll and Richard Peto of Oxford University estimate there are no difficult position. They have to the mineral's fibers. more than 1.000 new patient' a decide whether or not ... to spend money to perhaps save lives that won t be lost for perhaps 25.35 years. And they have to spend it now. not 35 years from now. "This is a terrible decision for them to have to make." And what would Selikoff sug gest they do? "That's another story." he replied in the phone in terview. "That's no longer sci ence." Skeptics note that X-rays of the ailment's white lesions (marks) on the outer lung surface look just like those from illnesses caused by smoking. "A person with obstruc tive lung disease (such as emphy sema) can be read as having an X-ray compatible with asbes tosis." says Dr. Barry Levine, a lung specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. year in the United States. Another research team gave the same esti mate. but suggested the figure would rise to a peak of 1.400 cases a year in 1990. "A rigidly defined relationship to (asbestos) dosage has not been established for mesothelioma." Dr. John E. Craighead, a patholog ist at the University of Vermont, wrote three years ago in the New England Journal of Science. Doe- ALCOA0000008361 Published March 5, 1985 Published March 5, 1985 lors are unsure how the malignan contaminated air and water." they cy develops, he noted. wrote in the Archives of Environ Moreover. Craighead observed mental Health. "No significant that abdominal mesotheliomas oc differences could be attributed to cur only in persons exposed to the environmental asbestos exposure" blue or reddish-brown forms of near a plant processing the mineral asbestos--not the white type used for cement. in most U.S. installations. These studies prove there is a This confirms what geolgist "threshold value" for white asbes Ross told a congressional panel tos below which no measurable last summer and what other health effects will occur, contends specialists said earlier: There are Ross, who has a docorate in geolo profound differences among types gy and has spent 20 years with the of asbestos. U.S. Interior Department. MtoptsptBhohulaoeousemitgR)nBttoetitmouicysaesrscspttndeeifsunmeossrCSsrd,ostrcrouuroumee,awisadtctnmelcttyaiieshcgkirscinosdenoheolonnegacetoilf'ghanfiiftasdaofe.ratdsttlrwomhuyhabwpsleedoteiwhbsathasymeotoseorteunosoneosx(mesotrblhtnpfyeceowlooaiuim.ntsalessroiietr,tv.e"poeere"kdiOidaarrsndevbtssategriwefboetslmhSeei.iwattaiisyhnnsile.lll likopYahzpvfw"f1efedosioa9oindbtll7irrThvtie"fetkceo9Mfeihsc.yitlrlchdteauaaaroeuisissllsssntabhesltmkytoreueilnfyseisabfancNtfssacotiielithsclanlsiai.areeeetrianisesatcoi"nhlrsco.Anle"nhmtiwnnaioadnffnegaltvieecnodteJrneptsreo--etrlracnChuoowrnscrt,wcaisn.uedbeialhsTpoeisfliiphpncofdslmoeuhl"wriaNyenabahdaosesgiliteiani.ntawc"edeaa, two Quebec mining towns. Their exposure to white asbestos had not proved to be "a significant health hazard." he says. "If it were, the women of Asbestos and Thetford Mines, where over 20 million tons of chrysotile asbestos has been mined, would be dying of asbestos-related diseases. They are not." Ross also notes that drinking water in the Thetford Mines area has "very high concentrations of chrysotile asbestos, ranging from 172 million to 1.3 billion fibers per liter' ' -- yet there is no evi dence it causes cancer. In an address to the assembled scientists. Barbara Hackman Franklin of the Consumer Product Safety Commission noted that gov ernment regulators are "charged with making decisions that are in the public interest. This means weighing the need for adequate consumer safety against the possi bility of greatly increased costs and burdens for industry and. ulti mately. for the consumer. She was speaking of possible bans on asbestos in textiles, paints and other consumer goods, but the message is the same once voiced by critics of EPA efforts in this Three Vienna specialists re area: ported last summer on similar "The consequences of whatever research in Austria from 1970-80. we do must be anticipated, and al "No increased risk for lung or ternative courses of action must be stomach cancer was found in a considered, so that we do not cause mining town with asbestos- unnecessary economic upheaval." An untimely arrival The extent of America's asbestos alarm was symbolized recently by an ironic development in West Virginia. While the Chessie Systems railroad and two asbestos firms were defending themselves against health-damage claims by rail workers exposed to asbestos, the civil case had to relocate abruptly from Huntington to another city's courthouse. Trial participants were making room for repair crews removing asbes tos from the first courtroom, the Wall Street Journal reported. r `Potential for panic is there,' former EPA chief says illiam Ruckelshaus, who Wheaded the Environmental Protection Agency from 197073 and 1983-84, discussed the federal asbestos policy Feb. 15 in his new office at the Urban Institute in Washington. Excerpts of the 90-minute interview with staff writer Mike Wowk and special writer Michael J. Bennett follow: Q. Why are you requiring schools to inspect for asbestos and not other kinds of buildings? A. It'll move to other public build ings and commercial buildings as well. It was the schools w-here it started. Q. What was the real reason behind the school rule? A. It was simply a question of who was going to pay for it. who was going to pay to clean it up. ... The approach that was adopted by the administration before I got here was the burden was to be borne by the people living in the i school districts. That's what the fight's I all over. Who's going to pay for it? Q. An EPA lawyer told me the theo ry behind all this is to whip the mothers up into a vigilante mob to storm the school committee to do something. A. You could put it that way. Obvi ously, the purpose of the approach was to bring pressure on the school boards to correct whatever situation they found. First, of all, do the inspection. Do you have a problem? If you don't, don't worry about it. If you've done the in spection and you find you have a prob lem that ought to be addressed, then you should notify the parents. If you notify the parents, the parents will bring pressure upon you to correct it. Q. The law requires schools to in spect for asbestos. Why not write some thing into it that would have required some action on their part? A. Well, you could. Q. Well, why wasn't that done? A. The agency could do it. ... There's the authority in now for the agency to order action. The theory was if the federal government ordered the ac tion. what would rapidly follow was a requirement that the federal government pay for whatever action was ordered. 1 That's what scared them. And if the federal government had to pay for it, you could just bet that the cost ALCOAO 000008362 i 1 recent asbestos articles Published March 5, 1985 `Potential for panic is there,' former EPA chief says continued would be several orders of magnitude greater than if you had some balance with whatever risk-reduction you wanted to achieve. ... If you removed the requirement of paying from the people who are going to benefit,, which is exactly what we've done with these hazardous waste sites, the demand then is for zero risk. And the cost just goes straight up because it's a cost-free benefit to them. Why shouldn't they demand zero risk? And so, the theory is you've got to keep'that cost- and the benefit in the same person. And then you can force them to come to grips with what sort of reduc tions make sense, what is reasonable to do under the circumstances. ... Now that was the theory behind trying to force the local school boards to do the inspection, notify the parents and then the parents would come in and make that kind of balance. Q. So. that was a deliberate decision. A. Absolutely. Q. So. what you're doing is essen tially putting cost-benefit analysis on the agenda of every community in the country that supports a school system. A. Sure, absolutely. We try to pres ent to them what we think the risk is. what can be done to correct it--force them to go and find out if they have any risk and then force them to make a judg ment as to what you should do about it. Now the question of whether you panic them or whether the whole thing is going to cause more harm than good, frankly I think that's there any way you do it. I don't care whether the federal government does it or the local govern ment does it. I think you've got that same problem. But putting the onus on the person to make the judgment as to how much risk they want to reduce as long as the same guy is going to pay for it. it's in my view sensible. You take that away from them, which is exactly what we've done in the Love Canal kind of situation, boy. they just demand zero risk--they want that stuff out of there. "Don't tell me how much it costs. We don't care." And why should they? Q. Dr. Bob Sawyer of the Mt. Sinai Hospital faculty (in New York) has said flatly that the asbestos policy is going to kill people. A. Well, you know, whenever we have a problem like we have with this as bestos all over the country ... and we have no governmental apparatus to grapple with it. the potential for people panicking ... is there. Any program that we would have had--whether the government moved into it with more money, with a training program, with a contractor-certification program--still would have been faced with some people deciding, once they had discovered that they had asbestos in their buildings or their schools, to go forward without waiting for the govern ment program to take hold. That poten tial is there. Our people were terribly worried, at EPA. about whether we would have people coming in and trying to remove asbestos before they knew what they were doing, and potentially causing a worse problem than was there before. That potential is there--there's no ques tion about it. ... What we have consistently recom mended is that they be very careful about how they proceed -- that they do proceed, but that they be careful about how they do it. And we provided them guidance. And the question of whether or not they could go ahead and create a worse situation, the potential is there. There is no doubt. Q. Malcolm Ross of the U S. Geological Survey is saying not just that there's a panic, but there's very good reason to argue whether or not the panic is justified. A. I've listened to him have a lengthy discussion with our scientists. I sat in a room for a couple of hours and listened to them discuss this whole issue of blue and white asbestos, and which one was really carcinogenic and which one wasn't. Our people believe, our scientists believe very strongly, that while one--I can't remember which one--is far more carcinogenic than the other, they're both carcinogenic. Those kinds of uncertainties--whether it's EDB. DDT or asbestos--are all part of this equa tion. There is enormous scientific uncer tainty in this field. ... That isn't to say this guy (Ross) is wrong, and these other scientists are right. I mean there isn't any right or wrong here, it's just a question of where the consensus came out. The censensus came out not supporting his position as he was espousing it within the govern ment. He may prove to be right. ... It is one of the most frustrating parts of the job of being administrator of EPA. It is that when you're operating in these areas of enormous scientific uncertainly, even though you try to make it as clear as you can that this uncertainty exists, people continue to take a number out of a risk assessment methodology and write it in stone, as if that number were exactly how many deaths were going to occur over a particular period of time. And we don't say that. We indicate that this is the upper bound of the risk: the lower bound can be all the way down to zero. But based on the risk as we know it and what can be done about it. here is our judgment on how we ought to proceed. Q. Is there a rational standard of as bestos exposure? A. Our scientists have consistently told me we don't know how- to set an am bient air quality standard for asbestos that makes any sense. We don't know how to do it. So what we have suggested instead are these guidelines or approaches that can be taken where you find problems of a certain magnitude in a school, com mercial building, wherever you find it. And the guidelines, in effect, take the place of the standard. With asbestos there is always some residual risk ... where a fiber can provide a risk if somebody lives long enough. Q. Do you think environmentalists exist not to be satisfied? A. That's true, but those people don't necessarily dominate the bureau cracy in EPA. One of the problems in this whole field ... (is) the paranoid style of American politics which so dominates the thinking. The Congress writes these laws as though the executive branch is not to be trusted in implementing them. ... They give us deadlines in which to act. which in most cases are unreasonable. They set standards for achievement, usually zero risk, which we can't achieve either. And then if we don't do that, we get a citizen's-right-to-sue provision and turn the whole thing over to the courts. I think that's a terrible way to proceed. ... What we've done is to divide this re sponsibility between the Congress and the executive branch and the courts, and in effect locate the power to act now here And we jusi bounce back and forth between these various branches oi government--without, in my view . pro viding the clear criteria for balancing risks and benefits and costs that the agency ought to be balancing. ... In stead. all of this responsibility is mixed between the Congress and the execuiiw branch. Getting the Congress to respond diferently than we have traditionally in dealing with these problems is some thing that just defies me. ALCOAO 0 00008363 Part 4--A shaky foundation Published March 6, 1985 Sciencejury still out on identifying killer By Michael J. Bennett News Special Writer was aimed at a 1980 draft of a "scientific support document," issued by EPA to build the founda asbestos-containing materials, and these areas have the same distribu tion as the measurements of Sebas WASHINGTON --Arguments tion for its school7inspection tien." about the cancer risks of asbestos mandate. But those assumptions and the may never be resolved because of a The final document was overall conclusions about asbestos simple truth: Science cannot prove released without major changes in dangers were criticized sharply by a negative. January 1982. The inspection rule the outside scientists hired to pro That handicap--the inability to took effect four months later. vide "peer review" evaluations of confirm that something does not The 138-page document was EPA's study, a standard research cause cancer at all exposure levels produced mainly by two agency procedure. --is a built-in limitation of medi employes--Harry Tietlebaum, One of the four reviewers. cal research. It has been exploited, who has a doctorate in biochemis Julian Peto of Oxford University in say critics of government health try. and Charles Poole, who holds England, closely analyzed the use policies, by some private crusaders a master's degree in public hehlth. of France's figures and contacted and public regulators. They adapted indoor asbestos- the original researcher in Paris. His Environmental activists "exist exposure data developed by Dr. report back to the EPA was scath not to be satisfied," claims Aaron Patrick Sebastien for the French ing. Wildavsky, president-elect of the government in 1977 and cited ear "The assertion that Sebastien's American Political Science Associ lier cancer-rate studies by Dr. Ir data are applicable to U.S. schools ation. No amount of evidence, he ving Selikoff of Mt. Sinai Hospital is unconvincing, " wrote Peto. maintains, can convince environ in New York. who has a doctorate in mathema- mentalists that asbestos is not re EPA's preliminary study con tics and is an internationally sponsible for thousands of deaths. cluded that building "materials in known medical statistician. "Dr. This philosophic and scientific common use can release asbestos Sebastien, whose measurements in debate is behind a simmering con fibers" and expose occupants to Paris buildings are claimed to be troversy over federal regulations increased risk of "numerous representative of U.S. schools, that mandate inspections of all serious arid irreversible diseases." does not regard this assumption as U.S. schools for "friable" (easily The school-inspection rule itself valid." crumbled) asbestos, considered the was issued four months later, us At another point. Peto added: mineral's most dangerous form. ing similar language and speaking "This `maximum' estimate of Those rules, which the Environ of "a significant hazard to public average exposure (270nanograms) mental Protection Agency enforces health." ... is absurd." with hefty fines, were adopted The two U.S. government Even EPA's calculation of how largely on the basis of a Paris study scientists concluded that children much asbestos fibers weigh was of indoor asbestos levels and U.S. and adults in schools across the challenged. "I could not persuade data that blamed the mineral's country might be exposed to an him (Sebastien) to offer an esti fibers for a high rate of deaths and average of 57 nanograms (a micro mate of the appropriate conversion illnesses among ship-insulation scopic weight) of airborne asbestos factor from nanograms to fibers, crews and factory workers. each day if they spent time in assumed to be 30 in the present various parts of the building. If draft," related the Oxford profes ut the jury of scientific they stayed in areas of heavy activ sor. Bopinion still is discussing ity, the maximum daily exposure whether the right suspect could rise to 270 nanograms, the has been identified and whether EasPA estimated. Frank Carlborg. who has a doc torate in statistics and taught at two Illinois universities, con bestos is a mass killer. Some reAs the buildings deteriorated cluded in his peer review that spected researchers accuse the from use and age. the maximum EPA's methods and conclusions federal government of building its exposure could be anticipated to "seem scientifically unappeal case on a shaky foundation. rise to 500 nanograms, the report ing." Four independent reviewers said. picked apart the EPA's analysis of asbestos-risk data as "unconvinc ing," "greatly overestimated," "superficial," "scientifically un A Another paid commentator. Dr. nanogram is one-billionth of a Philip Cole, told EPA: "The gram--an amount compara selected estimates of prevalent as ble to one drop of water in a one-bestos exposure probably greatly appealing." "judgmental" and square-mile lake that's 78 feet overestimated the true levels." "absurd." One doctor on an offi deep, according to a government Dr. Cole, an epidemiologist cial review panel said the EPA's scientist. Asbestos fibers are ex who taught at Harvard and now is asbestos conclusions reflected tremely light, and the EPA calcu at the University of Alabama, al "preconceived notions" and "an lated that 30 would weigh a underlying tone of bias." nanogram. leged that the draft of the 1982 EPA document contained "an un The government solicited com The federal support study said derlying tone of bias towards ments from the four professionals its estimate "assumes that the preconceived notions of the risks as part of its normal rule-making exposed population is distributed associated with airborne asbestos procedure. Their harsh language over all U.S. schools with friable in schools. ALCOA0 000008364 RECENT ASBESTOS ARTICLES Part 4--A shaky foundation Sciencejury still out on identifying killer continued "For example, the first para Accordingly. Dr. Cole warned graph of the introduction seems to EPA against relying heavily on Dr. conclude that the occupants of the Selikoff's broadly generalized These books explore the issues schools are incurring a risk of de studies linking asbestos to elevated veloping asbestos-related disease. cancer rates. Alternatives to Regulation, by Michael S. Baram. 1981. $23.95, Lexington Books. This 256-page volume tv subtitled: This is completely judgmental." "An unwarranted degree of ac "Managing Risk", to Health. Safety and the Environment. " Dr. Cole also disputed the curacy is attributed to these esti The Apocalyplics: Cancer and the Big Lie. by Edith widely discussed studies by Dr. mates.-' Dr. Cole wrote in Efron, 1984; $19.95, Simon & Schuster. This 589-page study Selikoff of New York and two col reviewing the agency-s support explores "how environmental politics controls what we know leagues. who concluded in 1964 document. "It should be appreciat about cancer. " that lung cancer rates from 1942- ed that these estimates are subject The Causes of Cancer, by Richard Doll and Richard 62 among 1.522 asbestos insula to considerable etTor. ... Pelo, 198J. $16.95, Oxford University Press. t$8.95 tion workers were "found to be at "Applying the risk estimates paperback). Thin textbook 1144 pages) presents least seven times as common as ex obtained from the insulation pected and cancer of the gastroin- workers to school occupants "quantitative estimates of avoidable risks of cancer in the U.S." testinal tract three times as (creates) the potential for gross I Illness As Metaphor, by Susan Sontag. 1978. $5.95. common as expected." Dr. Selikoff. 80. is a principal scientific proponent of the theory that asbestos will continue to cause serious illness unless removed from factories, schools and homes. His research team linked asbestos to cancer and lung disease after studying three groups: 632 unionized insulation workers in New' York and New Jer sey. Their survival rate was moni tored from 1943-76. as were the causes of death. All 17.800 members of the same union in 120 U.S. and confounding by cigaret smoking. Approximately 80 percent of the insulation workers were either cur rent orex-cigaret smokers. " Dr. Cole noted that the Selikoff team's own data "indicates that approximately 88 percent of the lung cancer deaths of asbestos workers could have been prevented if none of the workers had smoked." The fourth reviewer of EPA's support document was Dr. Kenneth Rothman, who has a doc torate in epidemiology and biosta Farrar. Straus & Giroux ($3.95 paperback. Random House). Short essay asserts that cancer has been used as a symbol of modem ills and exploited for political purposes "in the service of a world view that can turn paranoid." Love Canal; Science, Politics and People, by Adeline G. Levine, 1982. $25 ($14 paper). D.D. Heath & Co. The author scrutinizes the Love Canal pollution episode in upstate New York as a case of overblown alarmism Political Innovation in America, by Nelson W. Polsby. 1984. $18.50. Yale University Press. A 200-page examination of "the politics of policy initiation" by a well-known political scientist Preventing Cancer, by Elizabeth Whelan. 1980. $4.95 paperback. Atheneum. The author, who has a doctorate in public health from Harvard, strives to correcl common misconceptions about cancer--as she did in a 1975 book. Panic in the Pantry. Canadian locals. The study re corded their death rate, causes and vears since first asbestos exposure. tistics. "The main.objection to the document as a whole." he wrote, "is the superficial way by which Risk and Culture. Aaron Wildavskv and Mary Douglas. 1983. $6.95 paperback. U. Of Calif. Press. Wildavsky. the new president of the American Political M 933 workers in a Paterson. the actual risk estimates were Science Association, and his co-author look at how and why N.J.. factory that made insulation derived." society focuses on certain "technological and environmental from reddish-brown asbestos. Dr. Rothman echoed Dr. Cole's dangers. " Their health was checked since concern about the industrial data Risk Watch: The Odds of Life, by Drs. John Urquharl 1943. gathered by Dr. Selikoff: and Klaus Heiimann, 1984. $16.95. Facts on File Based on data from ihose workers. Dr. Selikoff and two American Cancer Society epidemiologists reported: "A'ibestos insulation workers in "The final calculations are highly sensitive to the unstated as sumption that the excess deaths as reported among the insulation workers who died are indicative of Publications. "Two physicians warn against "technophobia" and describe "myth-shattering research into the risks of living in a technological society. " The asbestos controversy show s the "problem of balancing benefit and risk." says their 200-page book. the United States and Canada suf the experience that schoolchildren fer an extraordinary increased risk of death of cancer and asbestosis. associated with their employ ment." will face each year of life for a lifetime." Despite their unanimous criticism. EPA apparently altered none of its key judgments. The case against asbestos rests on two premises: The presence of any asbestos in a building is dangerous. But their research did not com final 1982 document says: pare asbestos employes to "Exposure to asbestos fibers control groups from the generalcan lead to numerous serious and Potential risks can be projected from medical studies of workers exposed to high asbestos concen work force. Moreover, the study irreversible diseases. ... In particu trations 20 to 40 years ago. The noted that some subjects handled lar, friable asbestos-containing first premise adopts a belief that the mineral "in rather tight quar ters." a situation likely to have in creased their health risks. And other studies, particularly ones done abroad, suggested that disease patterns are influenced strongly by personal smoking habits and bv the kind of asbestos involved. materials have been found to release fibers in concentrations sufficient to increase the risk of these diseases for the building oc cupants. ... The agency has deter mined that exposure to asbestos in school buildings poses a signifi cant hazard to public health." The government's continuing "one fiber is enough" where as bestos is concerned. "All asbestos exposures, even those of very brief duration or very low intensity, in crease the risk of cancer," states the 1982 rule-support document. "The increases in risk are directly proportional to cumulative expo sure." ALCOAO 0 00008365 i Published March 6, 1985 Ayear later, however, the agen cy acknowledged that the theory is impossible to prove. "EPA and the scientific communi ty believe that any level of asbes tos involves some risk, although the exact degree of risk cannot be reliably estimated." it says at the start of a booklet still being distrib uted. That appears to some to be an example of framing a case so that the other side must try to prove a negative. In the scientific and academic worlds, severe criticism by peer reviewers nearly always would be fatal to a study like the one used in 1982 as a foundation for EPA's asbestos-inspection rule. But when the study-writers work for a gov ernment agency, different stand ards apparently apply. For more details Questions about asbestos may be referred to the federal government via two toll-free numbers-- (800) 424-9065 for the Environmental Pro tection Agency and (800) 638-8326 for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Callers may get a list of labs for asbestos-testing, advice about respirators and guidelines for repair or removal. A S2.75 booklet. Asbestos in the Home, is available from the superin tendent of documents. U.S. Govern ment Printins Office. Washington. D.C. 20402." A Kansas-based trade group --(913) 749-4032 --will provide names of local asbestos-removal contractors. Published March 6, 1985 Schools sue firms, charge negligence By Eric Freedman fied damages for the same expenses, as News Lansing Bureau well as reimbursement for disruption of operation and time spent by school ad ANSING -- Public and private ministrators. Lschools across Michigan are Beyond the expense of remedial heading for court to sue compa work, some educators voice concern nies which made and distributed asbesabout their long-range liability to people tos products. who may develop asbestos-related Pending liability suits charge that diseases in coming decades. ceiling tiles, fireproofing spray, insulat "Diseases caused by exposure to as ing wrap and other items were bestos are presently developing in an un "defectively designed and manufactur known number of children, teachers and ed" and pose an "imminent danger t<o school district employes." asserts the the health and welfare of schoolchildren, Ingham suit. Participating districts want teachers and administrative and mainte the defendants to set up a S1 -million nance personnel." fund to cover future claims against the More than a dozen districts have schools. joined forces to press two cases in No school employe in Michigan has Wayne Circuit Court and Ingham Circuit yet filed an asbestos-related workers' Court. compensation claim, according to the Educators claim the asbestos firms state Labor Department. "negligently, recklessly, wilfully and wantonly sold dangerous materials ... not safe nor reasonably suitable and fit for use in the public schools." The com The complex court battles will take years to complete, and the contro versy seems destined to reach the state panies are accused of conspiring to con Supreme Court. ceal medical and scientific information "We're two years away from trial at on asbestos dangers. the most." said Patrick }. Berardo. a Faced with hundreds of millions of Lansing attorney representing schools in dollars in potential liability, the defen both Michigan cases. He predicted the dants are fighting back vigorously. They litigation would end around 1990. argue that the claims are being filed too Lawyers for schools suing in Wayne late, that schools may have misused or County will ask Judge James E. Mies on altered the products and that they never March 15 to grant their motion for class- notified the manufacturers of any prob action status. That would let any Michi lems. gan public or private district with asbestos problems join the suit by Almost three dozen corporations are sharing legal costs and agreeing to be defendants in Michigan, including bound by the outcome. (Those already such well-known firms as Owens-pressing the Ingham suit would be ex Corning Fiberglas. W R. Grace & Co., cluded.) Kentile Floors. GAF Corp.. Armstrong Lawyers for all parties are scheduled Cork and Union Carbide. to meet today with Mies to discuss a The companies' separate lawyers are schedule for pretrial proceedings. taking similar routes in seeking to have ``Thejudge indicated he wants the suits dismissed. They contend their cooperation and some kind of coordina goods conformed with the "prevailing tion between the national class-action industry standards at the time" and that and the state action." said Robert S. districts designated which products they Krause, a Detroit attorney representing wanted. defendant W.R. Grace & Co. He was re The Ingham case, filed last Septem ferring to a federal suit in Philadelphia ber. involves six public school districts. involving claims by up to 14.000 dis The Wayne County suit began a month tricts. later, initially on behalf of the Detroit. Some districts plan to stay out of Flint and Lansing schools and Akiva court. "It would cost us about as much Hebrew Day School in Lathrup Village. in legal fees to join in the suit as it w ill Since that time other schools have to take care of the problem." said Supt. joined -- including Ferndale. Saginaw . David J. Porrell of the Ovid-Elsie dis Bloomfield Hills. Traverse City and Oak trict in Clinton. Saginaw. Shiawassee Park. and Gratiot counties. The Wayne suit seeks $500 million in Asbestos control at three schools will compensatory damages to cover inspec cost S5.000 to SI0.000. and "we don't tion. analysis and asbestos-removal know what the legal bill would be." costs. The Ingham case asks for unspeci Porrell explained. ALCOA0000008366 rece^ASBESTOS ARTICLES Published March 6, 1985 Politics can fuel cancer fire A 1984 book. The Apocaiyptics: Cancer and the Big processes in an attempt "to protect--in advance--every Lie by Edith Efron, dissects the roles of politicians and one of its citizens from the real or potential effects of car lenvironmentalists in spurring public alarm over asbestos cinogens." rand other substances linked to cancer. Expanding on her theme in Kalamazoo last October, The author, a former journalist, sharply attacks the author told science writers: "We are continually . I "white hat. black hat" distinctions between natural and pounded by natural and industrial carcinogens. And yet. ^synthetic causes of cancer. the human body can tolerate quite a bit. or else we would ! Her basic assault is on the belief that industrial care be all dead by age 20." lessness is a prime cause of cancer, which can be con Ms. Efron wrote two other books after working for the trolled by federal regulation. Most citizens and New York Times Magazine, Time and other publica lawmakers don't realize nature also causes tumors, she tions. For The Apocaiyptics, she conducted seven years asserts. of research and interviewed more than 200 scientists Ms. Efron provides a 40-page list of natural carcino --inculding many who asked that their names be with gens. including sunlight, background radiation and held because they feared losing federal grants. many common edibles. One respected scientist supporting her effort is Bruce However, she points out, federal agencies generally Ames, biochemistry chairman at the University of Cali issue warnings only about industrial carcinogens. Be fornia at Berkeley. hind that "arbitrary edict." according to the 589-page "Efron's conclusion is that the emperor has no book, is an "apocalyptic movement" of scientists and clothes, that the apocalyptic environmental movement ... regulators pushing their own political and social preju has little or no scientific foundation." he wrote in a dices against big business. They are "committed to a review of The Apocaiyptics last year. blind assualt on industrial civilization." states the angry "She argues that the scientific knowledge-to deter broadside. mine which carcinogens are hazardous is rudimentary, Federal agencies and the news media, in Ms. Efron's that Mother Nature may be responsible for most of these view, often adopt "false or baseless ideas about environ and that man-made chemicals may contribute only mini mental cancer which ... are now deeply entrenched mally to cancer. I think she is absolutely right in this." beliefs in our culture." She claims they also spread an il Ames reported in a 1983 issue of Science magazine lusion that cancer is being prevented by restrictions on that corn, nuts, bread, cheese, fruit, black pepper, certain products and emissions--rather than by medicine celery, spinach, rhubarb, mushrooms and even mother's and science. milk are teeming with carcinogens and mutagens (gene "The American press ... has been nourished on bad changing agents) placed there by nature. science since the inception of the cancer-prevention pro More recently, cancer researcher Stephen S. Sternberg gram," charges the former newswoman, now a Univer of New York praised the book and endorsed the conclu sity of Rochester research associate. "It was trained, as sion that "a perplexing double standard exists: Those one trains a circus dog. to view apocaiyptics in and out carcinogens that came from the Garden of Eden are ac of government as fountainheads of scientific truth." ceptable. while those of synthetic origin are dangerous The government, writes Ms. Efron, regulaies and unacceptable at any intake level." thousands of chemicals, products and manufacturing --Michael J. Bennett aLCOA0000008367  tr) 1 ( Editorial Published March 7, 7985 The Asbestos Hysteria pecial writer Michael J. Bennett's four- that would be on the lungs of heavy smokers. Spart series on the asbestos dilemma, which ended yesterday, revealed a host Dr. Selikoff himself has sharply reduced his own estimates of the potential hazards of of disturbing facts about the way the Environw hite asbestos. mental Protection Agency (EPA) is handling Mr. Bennett brought to light two other tell the asbestos issue. The asbestos commonly tale pieces of evidence. First, the Quebec gov used in school buildings, for example, may ernment studied the health of women in two not be nearly as dangerous to health as has asbestos-milling towns, where air and water been alleged. Even if it were, the current hys are laden with white asbestos fibers, and terical rush to remove it could do more harm found no link to cancer. Further, some EPA than good. We believe Mr. Bennett also raised officials have said consistently that it is serious questions of whether science has been impossible to write an air quality rule on as twisted to serve political ends. bestos that makes any sense because the scien The EPA ruled three years ago that asbestos tific knowledge about these fibers is so posed a serious health hazard, and that school uncertain. buildings should be inspected for its presence. The EPA subjected its studies to the peer Asbestos was widely used for a time after review of four scientists who all treated them World War 11 as insulation for pipes and to harshly. They questioned the methodology, make decorative ceilings. If material that and said some of the scientific premises were crumbles is found, school boards must notify wrong. In academe, harsh peer review is parents and staff, and then decide on what, if enough to kill such studies. Nevertheless, the anything, to do about it. EPA. eager to avoid the wrath of environmen Asbestos in school buildings became a tal extremists and opportunistic politicians, major national issue when the Service ordered a school inspection program. Employes International Union got its hands on By leaving it to individual school districts. studies by Dr. Irving J. Selikoff of New York EPA would get political credit for "doing City's Mt. Sinai Hospital. Dr. Selikoff was something" but would avoid the sticky ques tracking a high incidence of lung cancer tion of who should finance an expensive among World War II shipyard workers who cleanup. Washington offers grants and loan installed asbestos as an insulation material. guarantees totaling $50 million for asbestos The union that represents school custodians removal, but the total cost could be many demanded asbestos rules from the EPA. osten times that amount. In Michigan alone, the cost sibly to protect members' health. (A major re would be $73 million, it's estimated. moval program may also provide lucrative job New evidence shows that the best thing to opportunities for contractors and unions, it's do about asbestos is leave it alone if it is not worth noting.) flaking off. or encase damaged areas w ith The EPA should have recognized early on plastic paint or other covering. Complete re that there was something imperfect about the moval coats shelves, furniture, floors, Selikoff studies. Other scientists said that the ceilings, hot air pipes, and everything else shipyard workers utilized red and blue asbes with the very fibers the program was intended tos, not the white variety used by the building to contain. Removal is therefore a self- trades. It is true that red and blue asbestos defeating option at a cost no school board can fibers lodge in the lungs and may cause cancer afford. 20 or 30 years later, but it is also true that the Reporter Bennett made some telling addi lungs seem to easily expel white asbestos fibers. tional points that go to the heart of the w hole environmental debate in this country. Envi Further, more than 80 percent of the ronmental extremism is difficult to defend shipyard cancer victims were heavy smokers, against because scientists can't prove a and their lung X-rays show the same lesions negative -- they can't prove that cancer or ALCOAO 0 00008368 Editorial The Asbestos Hysteria continued other risks from any given substance don't ex ist. So irresponsible extremists can always play on the fears of risks that might exist. The asbestos case also rests on the ``one fi ber can kill" argument. That is. no amount of asbestos can be allowed in the environment, because as little as one fiber supposedly can make the body go haywire. This can't be proved (or disproved), but for extremists seeking to impose their values on society it has the virtue of forestalling attempts to weigh risks versus benefits. As Mr. Bennett pointed out. environmental activism exists not to be satisfied, at least on environmental concerns. Many who profess environmental concerns ac tually are pursuing larger politicals goals--to remake society along the lines they prefer. As bestos is a classic example of the strategy. In that it seeks to use parental hysteria over the safety of children, however, it is all the more reprehensible. The series' most important contribution was to point out that many supposedly ``objective" scientists have willingly lent their prestige to the asbestos scare without careful consideration of the evidence. We suspect it's not the first time that has hap pened. This sort of abuse, if unchecked, will wind up creating great public skepticism about science and cost society dearly. The EPA should review' the evidence impartially, and state and local officials should put a hold on crash programs to remove asbestos until a clearer picture of the risks and benefits emerges. These articles are reprinted by United States Gypsum Company with the permission of The Detroit News UNITED STATES GYPSUM COM&