Family Accused of “Overreacting” to Asbestos
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
When Sherene O’Hern of Minneapolis heard the banging of workmen in the basement of her apartment building, she didn’t think anything of it. She knew that her landlord had planned to replace the building’s old furnace.
The next day, a family friend named Dave Gross came for a visit and happened to see the basement. The friend, a contractor, was shocked to see exposed asbestos insulation in the basement and a trail of loose asbestos where the workmen had walked. The trail went up stairs to the first floor and out the back door. O’Hern’s apartment, which she shared with her fiance and 2-year-old son, was on the first floor.
Asbestos is a mineral long used in home insulation before people fully understood the dangers it poses. Exposure to asbestos leads to deadly diseases such as asbestosis and mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. Mesothelioma can take between 20 and 50 years to develop after the exposure to asbestos.
O’Hern told James Shiffer of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that she was especially concerned about her small son, Kieran, and couldn’t stop worrying that he had inhaled asbestos fibers. “The fact that he was here when it happened is horrible for us,” she said.
O’Hern and her family left the apartment that evening. When she returned a few days later, she wore a full body protective suit with goggles and a respirator. As a precaution, she stuffed 59 large plastic bags with clothes, bedding and soft toys — where asbestos fibers might easily be caught — and sent the bags to a landfill.
Meanwhile, state health inspectors confirmed that the workmen had released asbestos into the basement when they replaced the furnace. The apartment building became the site of an emergency asbestos cleanup. The state is still investigating exactly what happened.
O’Hern had her apartment tested, and when asbestos was found, the apartment was vacuumed and wet-wiped, a cleanup the landlord paid for. O’Hern also paid $800 out of her own pocket to a local company to clean the apartment further. With that cleanup, the replacement costs of discarded items and the temporary loss of their home, the asbestos emergency cost the family several thousand dollars.
However, at the moment it appears they will not be compensated for their loss. The family had no renter’s insurance. The landlord’s insurance company denied liability.
Most outrageous, the company responsible for the furnace replacement says O’Hern is “overreacting.” The owner of the company actually said, “My perspective is that those people are psychotic, and they’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” This man admits that he subcontracted the work, and the subcontractor lacked a permit to remove asbestos.
Dave Gross, the family friend who discovered the asbestos, had a different view. “For all we know, we all got exposed to asbestos,” Gross said. “It’s like getting shot with a bullet, only the bullet arrives 25 years later.”
Barbara O’Brien
