The Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. reported that the agency itself has violated worker safety rules by allowing its crews to use unsafe methods in demolishing buildings containing asbestos.
Unsafe methods have been used more recently at the Hanford Superfund Site near Richland, Wash. to save time and money. The site is a former Department of Energy nuclear weapons production facility.
Only approved methods should be used during the demolition of asbestos-containing buildings from microscopic asbestos fibers, which can enter in the lungs and cause cancer and other serious diseases, the IG said.
The EPA is “finally shutting down an experiment that was based on shoddy science,” said Jim Hecker, a lawyer at Public Justice, a public-interest law firm. It dissuaded the EPA from using the shortcut at an abandoned motel in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2004. “For over seven years, [some EPA officials] have been pushing an asbestos removal method that endangers people and doesn’t work.”
“It’s been exposed for what it is, which is a dangerous method,”Hecker said.
An EPA spokesman said he had not read the report.
A 1973 EPA rule mandated that only specially trained technicians in protective gear can remove asbestos before buildings are demolished. Fibers must be contained carefully so they don’t leave the work site and threaten the public.
But in 1999, the EPA began studying quicker and cheaper ways. During tests, workers were allowed to ignore the 1973 rule, demolishing buildings with asbestos still in them in Fort Worth and at Fort Chaffee, Ark.
Terry Lynch, international vice president of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers union, said the EPA used unsafe demolition methods “to cut corners and save money” on urban redevelopment projects.
Public Justice and an environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency in June 2010. The EPA’s unresponsiveness compelled the groups to file a lawsuit earlier this year. Then they got more than 26,000 pages of documents in Nov. It shows that workers weren’t protected and warning signs weren’t posted, as required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
OSHA refused to comment.