California elementary students exposed to asbestos during cooking and music lessons
In June, Cal/OSHA (California Division of Occupational Safety and Health) responded to a report at Washington Elementary School in Berkeley, California and confirmed that crumbling floor tiles in a classroom that housed music and cooking classes contained friable asbestos and that students may have been exposed.
Cal/OSHA ordered the room closed, but documentation shows that a music teacher, Darwin Greenwell, reported the problem to school authorities in January. Since many schools cannot fund a full time music program, Greenwell teaches at several area schools in the Berkeley Unified School District and led classes twice a week at Washington Elementary last year. He noted the problem when the carpet runners were removed from the classroom, exposing a linoleum seam on the floor that was in deteriorated condition. Greenwell has construction experience and is a licensed California real estate broker. He recognized the tiles as potential asbestos-containing material and knew the risks of the dust that permeated the room.
Greenwell made repeated attempts to warn the school about the dangers, following the chain of command up to the school superintendent’s office. No action followed his reports, and each school authority informed him it was someone else’s responsibility.
The Environmental Protection Agency defines a “friable” material as a material that “when dry, may be crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder by hand pressure” and deems friable asbestos hazardous. The room used by the students for five months (and possibly years before the problem was reported) with knowledge of school officials was full of dust from friable asbestos tiling.
After the school year ended and asbestos was abated, Greenwell went back to the room with a reporter. The room and its contents (which should have been removed) were covered in dust and the old floor adhesive, a material that also contained asbestos, had not been removed before new flooring was installed. Greenwell asserts that the asbestos was not properly abated as required by law.
The heartbreaking truth is that the consequences of ignoring student health hazards in favor of cutting budget corners may become evident decades in the future. When students who attended music and cooking classes at Washington Elementary when they were 9 and 10 begin to contract asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma at 40 or 50 years of age, they may not remember being exposed to asbestos and may never discover that their suffering was caused by bureaucracy.
For the full story, go to The Berkeley Daily Planet.
