Document jyb7wenqYLk9nmpjO00e892o5

CONTROLLING DEADLY ASBESTOS Asbestos fibers cause lethal health problems. Now they cause legal health problems, too. ime's up with automotive shops that Tasbestos, finally. The Occupational Safety and Health Ad ministration (OSHA) passed a rule on July 21,1986, affecting the approxi do brake or clutch work are more likely to fall into the 0.1 to 0.2 f/cc "action level," according to OSHA. If this is the case in your shop, there will be changes you will have to make. If inspectors find your shop falls into the "action mately 285,000 garages doing brake and level" category, it will be regularly checked and you clutch work. Enforcement started January 21, 1987, so will have to observe particular safety standards, in it's time for you to find out how much asbestos is in the cluding employee health surveillance in the form of air you breathe in your shop. regular checkups, and accurate records of exposure The law establishes a new Permissible Exposure levels. There may be additional requirements imposed Level (PEL) of 0.2 fibers per cubic centimeter (f/cc) of I air. Any shop over that will be monitored often and will by your insurance company, many of which are prepar ing their own tests and standards which may be more | have to provide respirators, protective clothing and stringent than the government's are. | industrial laundry service, and separate pressurized While the government test and inspection details | asbestos-free changing rooms, showers and lunch rooms. I You probably won't be required to do all that.BMyoJsot e Woods Motor February 1987 49 PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT CUR-231 0 the dust, as you would suppose, is swallowed. These can occasionally be treated with surgery and radi ation or chemotherapy. Mesothelioma, a cancer affect ing the lining of the chest or ab dominal cavity, is caused by asbes tos fiber dust. It is untreatable and fatal, and it is particularly associat ed with very limited and indirect exposure, such as washing clothing contaminated with asbestos dust or even embracing someone with as bestos dust on the skin and cloth ing. What that means is that the fibers can be transported home and cause the death of a member ofyour family, someone who had nothing to say about whether or not to ob serve safeguards. Why Asbestos? The facts are, asbestos is cheap and effective. Even with the severe health risks involved, asbestos is still used in about 15% of new cars and a somewhat higher percentage of new trucks; the larger the vehi cle, the more likely it is you'll find asbestos. The working elements of clutch and brake friction surfaces, ex haust gaskets and donuts and a few other automotive parts consist of binders, chiefly high-temperature polymers, and chrysotile asbestos, a magnesium silicate fiber with great tensile strength, heat resis tance, chemical stability and low cost. Asbestos handles high heat. Even in a panic stop or a sides tepped clutch, only the tiny high points of the pad, shoe or disc actu ally touch the metal surface. The brake or flywheel is heat-conduc tive and spreads the temperature throughout, but the high points just get hotter, sometimes as high as 1850F. The wire-like structure of the material, for all practical pur poses, does not break or melt or dis solve. But those very properties that make asbestos such an excellent material for a brake or clutch make it dangerous in the human body. Asbestos remains just as indestruc tible inside you as it does on brakes and clutches. If you've ever swal lowed loosened rust or siphoned gasoline, your body's fluids disas sembled the first and diluted the second and eventually carried the nauseous stuff away. Not so with asbestos: It doesn't melt; it doesn't burn; it doesn't break; it doesn't dissolve; it doesn't dilute; it doesn't digest. The risks of asbestos are more like the risks of high-voltage elec tricity, sharp-edged unshielded One: Have the HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) vacuum cylinder under the brake as you remove the drum. Three: Using the asbestos-tight glove, reach into the cylinder and blow all the fibers into the vacuum collector. fans, or poisonous explosive gases and fluids: Avoiding the injury is better than repairing the damage. Handling Asbestos Even five or ten years ago you could see brake mechanics blasting dust from brakes with compressed air. Blasting asbestos dust away is now illegal and generally regarded as nearly suicidal. It's as bad as running the engine in a closed shop without an exhaust hose. But most mechanics would recognize the smell of asbestos, just as readily as Two: The containment cylinder is placed around the brake and the back ing plate. Leave the vacuum running. Four: Once the asbestos dust is re moved, you can then go on to replace the brake shoes and parts as needed. Motor February 1987 51 ufj! II, A\ 66Z\] ii t JOjii Hi 00* iHj mo,;l ! P> l ^ j* i ,..4i ouj OEi''i no/ fBn 19A( isjj 31? I unji ail! M tr 0 have not been determined yet, OSHA says it will enforce the new laws. At first, asbestos monitoring will be random, with special atten tion paid to shops where there are complaints or other reasons to sus pect a violation. But don't ignore the issue until you are inspected. The risks of asbestos fiber dust ex tend to the whole community. And knowledge of asbestos hazards is becoming widespread, too. With or without federal inspections, shops that cloud the air with asbestos may have to do without mechanics or customers once people learn about the danger. The only sensible way to protect yourself from asbestos dust is to control it in the first place. If you stay below the 0.1 f/cc "action lev el," you save money and preserve the health of everyone in the shop. Asbestos fiber dust, it turns out, is much more dangerous than was thought, and the number of work ers harmed is considerably greater, too. Researchers at New York's Mt. Sinai School of Medicine have found that nearly half of all mechan If you could see in mkxosoopic detail, at 10,000 times normal magnification, you'd know which brakes have asbestos fibers and which don't But there are many manufacturers of brake linings and many applications to vehicles. To be safe, you have to assume alt brakes have asbestos. Some sort of asbestos containment program is necessary for every shop. ics who have worked with uncon trolled brake dust develop asbestosis, a disease affecting the lungs. Arguably, work at a Soviet nuclear plant is safer. Worst of all, perhaps, is that it usually takes 15 to 30 years after exposure for the damage caused by asbestos to show up. At least with that other invisible shop threat, carbon monoxide, you (or your survivors) know immediately if you are affected. Asbestos Risks The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a report in 1986 on the prevention of asbes tos disease. In the report, the EPA listed cancers and other health ef fects caused by exposure to asbes tos. If you work in a shop where there is careless asbestos use, you could one day suffer from any of the following illnesses. Asbestosis develops when parti cles of asbestos in the lungs cause the growth of scar tissue. Scar tis sue in the lungs inhibits oxygen from getting to the bloodstream. Scar tissue development is very gradual and is usually not noticed until it is advanced. There is no treatment; there is no cure. If you have asbestosis, you'll be buried with it, and probably sooner than you would have been otherwise. Obviously, as with any serious in jury, prevention is the only rational course of action. Lung cancer is currently the most common cause of asbestos-re lated death, and its frequency ap pears to correspond to the level of exposure. In addition, if someone is a smoker, the combination of that and the asbestos produces a risk much higher than you might think. Though no combination tests have been done for brake mechanics in particular, asbestos insulators who smoke have a lung cancer risk over fifty times higher than nonsmokers who avoid asbestos exposure alto gether. Other cancers (voice box, stomach and large intestine) are be lieved caused by asbestos. Some of 50 Motor February 1987 0 they can recognize the smell of 90weight lubricant, ATF or gasoline. And if you've smelled brakes, you've inhaled asbestos. Probably the worst thing you can do to spread asbestos is to grind or bevel brakes. Bevelling shoes to re duce brake noise can release as many as 72 million measurable as bestos fibers into the air of your shop, and untold billions too small to measure. Pass on that job. If somebody's brakes are loud, but you can't find a factory-bevelled set, just let the brakes squeal. Other mistakes include removal by water or brake cleaner spray blast and wiping the dust off with wet or dry brushes or rags. Those latter methods also leave you with the problem of what to do with the contaminated brushes and rags. Respirators are not practical ei ther. First of all, you would need the kind with hoses to supply out side air, which is very inconvenient in a shop. Second, everyone in the shop, office staff and customers in cluded, would have to wear one all the time. Third, respirators wouldn't control the asbestos fiber dust problem. Instead, they move dust from the shop to the mechan ic's home, and still leave a layer of asbestos dust over everything in the shop. Unfortunately, considering that almost all older cars used asbestos brakes or were relined with them, and that some new cars still do, you have to assume that every car has asbestos brakes and take precau tions accordingly. You can tell some non-asbestos brakes by their col or-after you have the drum off or caliper loose. But of course, if they do contain asbestos, it's too late. The fibers are airborne. Yes, it is very annoying when the dangers become known and the control expenses must be paid just as car and truck makers are moving away from asbestos. The risk is there anyway, and you have to con tain it. Fortunately, OSHA has found some asbestos removal techniques 52 There are several other HEPA vacuums on the market. With this one you blow the air through a screen to collect the dust. As in all HEPA asbestos contain ment vacuums, the filter is critical. that are safe and effective. If you work with asbestos brakes or know someone who does, read on. These systems could extend your life. The first type of asbestos remov al system is a containment system, which surrounds the brake with a sealed cylinder or box. Each of these devices isolates the brake area and contains the asbestos dust so you can safely vacuum it up. You reach into the container, most often with asbestos-impermeable gloves, and blow the dust off with an air gun. A high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuum system draws the asbestos dust into a canister and blows the exhaust air through a special filter. This filter is the es sential part of the equipment. It is capable of retaining any particle larger than 0.3 microns (a micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter). The systems don't easily remove asbestos dust from clutches be cause there's not much free space around a transmission or a pressure plate for the containers to fit. Therefore, containment system manufacturers recommend the vacuum attachment be used in stead. Similarly, there is difficulty fitting containers over brakes with a seized drum. The solvent-mist system, discussed below, may be more effective for both clutches and Motor February 1987 brakes on which the drums need to be pounded off. The special HEPA filter also ex plains why the attempt to collect asbestos dust in an ordinary shop vacuum is almost as bad as blasting the dust away with an air gun: The particles go right through an ordi nary filter and the vacuum motor spreads millions of hazardous parti cles through the air as far as 75 feet from the vacuum. The HEPA filter exceeds the le gal requirement for filtration, but this is not too much of a good thing. The law measures exposure by counting particles larger than 5 mi crons. Many researchers suspect the far more numerous smaller par ticles are the more dangerous ones. Five microns is not the point at which the asbestos fibers become An alternative to the HEPA vacuum is the "bird bath" system. Flush the asbestos fibers harmless; it's the point at which into the pan with the solvent. But there's more toxic waste to dispose of with this system. they get expensive to count. Once the HEPA vacuum is full, you must double-bag the dust, put a toxic waste hauler to dispose of the asbestos properly. stuck together. Then the entire glop is removed, solvent and all. it in a sealed drum, and label it to indicate that it contains asbestos fi The second removal system found effective by OSHA is a low- One type, called a "bird bath" be cause of the shape of its solvent col bers that can cause lung disease and cancer. Then you contract with velocity solvent mist to moisten the asbestos fiber dust until it is all lecting pan, uses recirculating wa ter and detergent to soak off the dust. This solvent is not blasted on More Information like brake cleaner, bouncing some asbestos into the air. Instead, it's misted on. According to OSHA, For information about asbes tos containment systems, you may contact: Hako Minuteman 111 South Route 53 Addison, IL 60101 (312) 627-6900 these solvents can either be applied by special sprayers attached to your air hose or from aerosol cans. The latter might be an economically attractive alternative for a shop Ammco Tools Wacker Park North Chicago, IL 60064 (312) 689-1111 Nilflsk of America 300 Technology Drive Malvern, PA 19355 (215) 647-6420 that doesn't do enough brake and clutch work to warrant buying an HEPA system. The advantage of the solvent mist is that there is a considerable savings in cost. The Clayton Associates P.O. Box 589 30 Southard Avenue Farmingdale, NJ 07727 (201)938-6700 For information about asbes tos-related illnesses, contact your local American Lung As sociation, or: disadvantage is that the amount of asbestos-contaminated waste pro duced, including the fluid, is great er than it would be if a vacuum con tainment system were used. But finally, whether you use Control Resource Systems 670 Mariner Drive Michigan City, IN 46360 (219) 872-5591 The White Lung Association of New York 12 Warren Street New York, NY 10019 (212) 619-2270 these methods to remove asbestos from brakes or clutches, or you avoid that kind of work altogether, it's good to know that asbestos is being used less. And that's good for all of us. Research assistance by JeffBraimes Motor February 1987 53