Document akKvNmZqY98QMrYeqnReoRrX

Scary Asbestos Asbestos scares people. EPA estimates as that roughly one- The discovery of a white, powdery third of the nation's schools have as material left over from previous con bestos problems. This amounts to a struction work prompted administra tors of Apalachicola (Fla.) High School to postpone the start of classes this fall while they determined potential risk, the agency says, to 15 million children, and 1.3 million teachers, administrators and staff. Little wonder people get scared. whether the material was asbestos. But the EPA itself acknowledges Similar concerns at Clara Barton that the number of people among the High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., re 16 million it designates as "at risk" sulted in the school's being shut down who will actually be exposed to dan for the fall term, and its students gerous friable asbestos is negligible. farmed out to other schools in its dis The preponderance of scientific trict. The fear that asbestos fibers knowledge on asbestos strongly ar may have been accidentally dislodged gues that there is no evidence that during a removal process this past , low-level exposure to asbestos in such summer threatened the opening of settings as schools causes either asnine Cabell County, W. Va., schools. bestosis or mesothelioma (which af That asbestos causes lung cancer fects the lining of the lung and abdo has been known and widely publicized men) , the two cancers most often re since 1939, when the surgeon general sulting from exposure. Indeed, almost of the Navy described the health risks all asbestos-related cancer deaths re of excessive exposures to asbestos- corded to date have occurred among containing materials in shipyards. But people who worked in industries with over this period, neither the govern high levels of exposure to asbestos ment, politicians nor the media have material-such as shipyards and made much effort to help the public building construction-levels not understand when asbestos is danger found in schools. ous and when it is not dangerous. To put asbestos in perspective, we During the next year, the scare sto should consider how it rates among ries should proliferate. A new rule other risks of daily life. The risk of drafted by the U.S. Environmental succumbing to lung cancer from Protection Agency under orders from smoking just one cigarette a day is es Congress, and taking effect Saturday, timated to be at least 1,000 times will require inspection of more than greater. And the risk of dying in an 100,000 school buildings throughout the automobile accident is at least 10,000 country's 45,000 school systems for times greater. "friable" asbestos (dry, crumbling material that can become airborne). In cases where the substance is found, cleanup and maintenance plans will also be required. In fact, the greatest threat posed by asbestos in schools is its removal. Higher levels of asbestos are usually found in a building for up to five months after it has been removed This process might be manageable, than before. Many buildings mainly except for the EPA's requirement (en require competent maintenance or re forced with a $25,000-a-day fine for pair of asbestos material rather than noncompliance) that the schools pub complete, costly removal. licly announce the presence of as bestos-containing material whenever it's found. The problem with this re quirement is that it often causes un due alarm among parents and school workers who've received no help from their government in putting asbestos in perspective. The EPA does not re quire removal if the asbestos does not pose a health threat, but the reasons for this alternative often get lost amid Congress and the EPA bear partial responsibility for instilling in the gen eral public such overheated fears of asbestos. They have made "environ mental risk" an issue that attracts great amounts of concerned publicity. But for all the time and money spent on these matters little progress has been made to help the public under stand the complexities of making judgments about environmental the emotionalism. risks-or the relative absence of such As the new rule takes effect, the risks. Instead, the EPA will .do what EPA should be making its own highly federal regulatory agencies tend to public announcements to clear up mis do-simply coerce a response from conceptions about the extent of the as the country's independent local school bestos threat. The first thing it should districts, perhaps someone ought to do is disabuse the public of the notion coerce the EPA to make a more forth that asbestos is unsafe at all levels of right effort to tell the nation's parents exposure. This fact gets lost in such what science knows about asbestos. Letters to the Editor Smoking Hazards of Asbestos Your editorial "Scary Asbestos" on Oct. 12 was a breath of fresh air. It put the haz ards associated with asbestos in buildings into perspective by mentioning the fact that removal presents greater danger than taking prudent action to control the escape of respirable fibers into the ambient air. Unscrupulous operators who sell asbestos substitutes and fraudulent rip-out contrac tors are profiteering from the hysteria as sociated with this burgeoning industry. That is not to say that asbestos isn't bad and that the major sellers have not been concealing the danger of their products for 50 years. Our tort system will exact justice on them, even though the meager recovery the victims' survivors obtain will be inade quate compensation. There are two other vital points associ ated with asbestos-related diseases: The threat of contracting mesothe lioma, the vicious form of lung cancer that is always lethal, from inhalation of as bestos fibers is confined almost exclusively to smokers. If you don't smoke, asbestos inhalation isn't likely to give you lung can cer. If you do smoke, the probability that it will is very high. .There is a latency period of 25 to 40 years after the onset of exposure to as bestos before the dread mesothelioma ap pears. This factor alone has allowed most employers of asbestos-exposed workers to escape legal responsibility. Smoking is the greater culprit in the as bestos fray. William English Oakton, Va. . * ** Asbestos causes lung cancer almost ex clusively in damaged lungs and that dam age is mostly caused by tobacco smoking. You did note that smoking is a greater risk than asbestos but you didn't provide the linkage. Well-documented evidence sup ports this and, in fact, tobacco companies have become co-defendants in many law suits against the asbestos industry. E.P. Coughlin Philadelphia * ** Your editorial told it like it is, with one exception. Almost all lung cancers seen in asbestos workers have been among smokers. Asbestos is regarded as a pro moter, not an initiator, of lung cancer. You imply, but didn't clearly state, that as bestos-related illness is dose-related. These facts are too often overlooked and bear di rectly on the minor problem of asbestos in buildings. Roger S. Mitchell M.D. Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado School of Medicine Denver _O ^-- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1987 HWBUI0006319 ** * The greatest threat posed by asbestos isn't its removal. It is. in fact, when as bestos containing materials are disturbed by well-intentioned but uninformed con tractors during construction activities. Once disturbed and airborne, asbestos fi bers do pose a health hazard. Building owners and managers, who are aware of this potential danger, can retain a compe tent consultant or trained contractor to deal with this special health hazard. Quali fied contractors can ensure safe, economi cal and professional asbestos abatement. Michael C. Toll Commodore Environmental Services Chicago *- * * I've long held that the asbestos peril is vastly overrated, and I'll "go to the mat" to back up my opinion. How well I remem ber, back in the 70s, my mother cooking over a gas stove, as many homemakers did then. Routinely she reached for a flat, round asbestos mat to reduce the heat to "simmer." That went on for years. When mats wore out, she bought replacements at the hardware store. My parents suffered no lung problems, neither did they die young. And in spite of the contaminated air we breathed as chil dren, my sister and I today are healthy and strong. Our lungs may be laced with hazardous fibers, but we are managing very well. '-n. without oxygen tanks. Helen K. Cook Kansas City, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL OCTOBER 28, 1987 Manville Files Appeal Of Ruling on Asbestos DENVER, Colo. - Manville Corp. has appealed an Aug. 6, U.S. Claims Court decision that ruled the company failed to prove that the government breached its wartime contracts with the company. Manville's suit against the government, which concluded on June 12, sought recovery for payments made by Manville to individuals who were exposed to asbestos in government-owned or controlled shipyards during World War II. The company contended that the government breached its mandatory World War II supply contracts in its use of government specified insulation and fireproofing materials. "We believe there are significant errors of fact and law that justify an appeal and warrant reversal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit," said Robert Batson, Manville's senior litigation counsel. I2A-69 JOURNAL OF CONHHRCE ' OCTOBER 7, 1387 12A--Contra Costa Times Tuesday, October 20, 1987 U.S. court halts shift of Cal-OSHA to federal control By Doug Willis Associated Press writer SACRAMENTO -- Gov. George Deukmejian's plan to abolish CalOSHA suffered setbacks Monday in separate court hearings, but a final decision on the worker safety pro gram is still at least three weeks away. First, before a state 3rd District Court of Appeal pane], attorneys representing the Republican gover nor were peppered with critical questions by all three justices dur ing oral arguments over a suit chal lenging Deukmejian's legal author ity to abolish the program. Then, in a separate hearing 15 minutes later in federal court. Chief U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting U.S. Labor Secretary William Brock from issuing an or der that would give final federal ap proval to Deukmejian's attempt to abolish the program. Brock had announced his inten tion to decertify the state program Oct. 1, but Kariton issued an order preventing that until Monday's state court hearing. Karlton's followup order after that hearing placed even tighter restraints on Brock until the state court rules. The 15-year-old state agency, which worker representatives say enforces much tougher standards than the federal agency Deukmejian wants to replace it, ceased opera tions in July after Deukmejian ve toed the $8 million that the lawmak ers had appropriated for it. Since then, worker safety inspec tions in California have been left to federal inspectors operating under an interim "concurrent jurisdiction" arrangement which neither side in the dispute wants to continue. Attorney Ralph Abascal, who represented workers opposing Deukmejian in both court hearings Monday, said he was "very, very en couraged" by results of the back-toback court appearances, while attor neys representing Deukmejian and Brock declined to make any sub stantive comment outside court ex cept to acknowledge the procedural setbacks. Presiding Justice Robert Puglia of the 3rd District of the state Courts of Appeal said at the conclu sion of an hour of oral arguments that his court would rule within three weeks on whether Deukme jian acted legally in closing down the California Occupational Safety and Health Act program without legislative approval. Although none of the justices on that panel said how they intended to vote, all three directed their most probing and hostile questions to at torney's representing Deukmejian. Puglia, regarded as the most con servative judge on the panel, said the principal question in the CalOSHA suit involved whether the governor or Legislature has author ity to set program priorities "and it seems to me the Legislature has done that." $520,000 , asbestos award A jury in Cleveland has awarded $520,000 to a former government employee who sued the maker ofa fire proofing material that contained asbestos after she was diagnosed ashaving an asbestos-related disease. The former employee, Geraldine Layne, 46, of Cleveland, sued the U.S. Mineral Products Company of Stanhope, N.J., in 1983, three years after her illness was diagnosed, said her lawyer, Robert E. Sweeney. He said U.S. Mineral Products supplied a fire proofing material, Cafco, used in the construction of the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building in downtown Cleveland. Sweeney said Cafco contained 25 percent to 30 percent asbestos, which has been shown to cause cancer. Layne worked in the building for 12 years. The company contended that Layne's medical condition existed before she went to work in the building. Company officials said they were considering an appeal. // UC i OBLk 8 , 133? 45A-3 CHICAGO QAII.Y I AU BULLETIN DAILY 6500 HWBUI0006320