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FILE NAME: New York State & NY Times (NY) DATE: 1971 June 29 DOC#: NY030 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: NYT Article - Cities Are Acting to Regulate Spraying of Asbestos Cities Are Acting to Regulate Spraying of Asbestos By MICHAEL KNIGHT New York Times (1857-Currentfile); Jun 29,1971; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2002) Pg-61 Cities Are Acting to Regulate Spraying of Asbestos By MICHAEL KNIGHT Several tone of It are sprayed into the air in' American cities every year.) Those who breathe its microscopic particles will carry it w jththem throughout life. And sometimes,- 20 of 30 years late,-the deadlyieffects --inability; to breathe or ram pant lung-cancen--begin to be felt. ` ; ' . . The substance is asbestos, a mineral whose fireproof fibers have long . been matted into felt-like sheets. It is now in creasingly being sprayed on the steel beams of high>rise buildings. - Cities around the country, often with .the help of the as-' bestos workers unions, are be ginning to regulate or ban tin spraying of asbestos as the deadly and. delayed effects of contact with it are becoming known. ' Most endangered a n the workers ,who . Install asbestos sheets around boilers and steam pipes or who spray it on auto mobile brakes or onto steel beams in construction. But . increasingly there is worry among health experts tin t tin large amounts that are allowed,* escape into the air during th e ' spraying may affect thousands of residents. When the new Missourl State office building to Kansas City was sprayea recently, "the stuff, blew all over the devil," said Richard Maupln, business manager o f Asbestos Workers Local 27. . , ; "Some of Itiiwent all the way downtown," he said. "The can see it, but they don't know it's harmful." . 1 Industry publications esti mate that 50 per cent of the asbestos used jn spraying is lost into the air. Inhalation of- the asbestos dust forms deposits on the lungs that are never absorbed or broken down, scarring the tissues and blocking their abil ity to absorb oxygen. The re sulting difficulty in breathing is a result of a.condltioncallea asbestosis, which is incurable and can be fatal.' According to Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, director of the En vironmental Sciences Labora tory at Mount Sinai Medical Center here, people exposed to asbestos have much higher rate of lung and intestinal can cer than those never exposed to it. Smoldng, Dr. Sdikoff says, drastically increases the risk: people who smoke ciga rettes and are exposed to the dust have a lung cancer rate 92 times higher man the sta tistical norm. Even the wives of men who work with asbestos are endan? gered' by the dust their hus bands bring home on their clothes, according to Milton Goldberg, an -environmental field engineer In the Allegheny County. Department of Health inpittsburgh. , I `Tipu'. can walk down a street*'where asbestos has been sprayed," he said, "and it may not affect you for 20 or 25 years." Dr. Selikoff, probably the foremost national health au thority on asbestos) said that as long ago as 1924 It was discovered that people who worked with asbestos devel oped scarred lungs. It took al most 30 more years of study, he said, to link it with cancer. Boston and Chicago last May became the first ernes in the country to ban the spraying of asbestos totally. .. New York banned it from city projects a month later, and has severely restricted its use, as have Los Angeles, De troit and Philadelphia. Other areas throughout the country are considering bans or regu lations on spraying. The regulations of the cities enforced by fines and punish ment, are basically similar. They call for enclosing the yrork area in a tarpaulin and installation of adequate venti lation systems or th e use of effective respirator face masks. Hie entire area, including walls and ceilings, must be vacuumcleaned afterward to remove any dust that is left over. In Los Angeles, John N. Jepson, state senior safety engi neer, said that on occasion it has been necessary to shut down a construction job for a few days when the regulations were not followed. "A few shutdowns on a big job brings the picture into dear focus and they geaeraly refrain from any further vio lations," he said; The Chicago ordinance, the most stringent, totally bans as bestos spraying and calls for penalties,,including six-month jalTterms. ' . . Also causing worry is the practice of lining the inside of air-conditioning ducts with as bestos to prevent the spread of tire. Dust, picked up by the moving air, is borne through out the building. ,,While there a ' as yet no regulations lit this field, contractors are be ginning to put the asbestos on the outside of the ducts or to! use specially coated asbestos that locks the dust in. Substitutes for asbestos are ;being found in cement and fi berglass products. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.