Off-road aficionados who frequent the 31,000-acre area known as Clear Creek, located near Hollister, Calif., are angry that the state has closed their favorite recreation spot.

California’s Bureau of Land Management closed about half the Clear Creek Management Area in the Diablo Range last week following a report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) noting that asbestos in the area posed a serious cancer risk to those who work, hike, camp, hunt, collect gems and ride dirt bikes there. Officials will explain their findings tonight at a meeting at the Santa Clara Convention Center, notes an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Clear Creek contains the largest deposits of asbestos in the United States because of its unique combination of faults and volcanic rock,” said Arnold Den, a senior science adviser for the EPA. Though no studies have been conducted among those who frequently dirt bike there, a 2005 University of California (Davis) study found that people living near naturally-occurring asbestos had a significantly higher cancer rate than those who don’t. Asbestos can cause a fatal, aggressive form of cancer known as malignant mesothelioma. The disease is common among tradesmen who worked with asbestos on a regular basis.

The article notes that hundreds of off-road enthusiasts head to Clear Creek each weekend when the weather is pleasant. Most think the type of asbestos found at the recreation area is not toxic and they can’t understand why the state would deny them access to Clear Creek.
“The recreation community is in a state of shock,” said Don Amador, a frequent visitor to Clear Creek and the Western representative for the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an off-road advocacy group.
“It’s unprecedented, as far as public land issues go. We’re going to want to fight it, either administratively or in court.”
No “Clear Creek regulars” have become sick because of asbestos exposure, Amador added.
“We’re asked our friends and family in the off-road community if they’ve heard of anyone getting mesothelioma, and we haven’t found one case,” he said.

In response to myriad reports published in December noting the presence of asbestos in a number of popular holiday toys, the state senate of Connecticut has passed a key bill that would remove lead and asbestos from children’s toys starting as early as the middle of next year. Now that the bill has passed the Senate, it will go to Gov. M. Jodi Rell for her signature.

According to an article in The Courant, the bill would limit the amount of lead in products manufactured or sold after July 1, 2009. On the same date, it would become illegal to use asbestos in children’s toys, and paint that is sprayed on children’s products would need to meet certain standards.

“Now that the science has been allowed to emerge, policy makers have a responsibility to take immediate action to phase out bisphenol A and phthalates from common, everyday products like food and beverage containers,” said Sarah Uhl, coordinator of the Coalition for a Safe and Healthy Connecticut.

The presence of asbestos in toys like the CSI Fingerprinting Kit, which came under fire just before Christmas, has also been a huge issue for the state senate. As a matter of fact, senate members note that the issue was one of the most heavily lobbied of the year.

In a scenario not often staged in the courtroom, the family of a deceased man is suing 73 corporations, alleging that he died of an asbestos-related disease after being exposed to the mineral dust from the clothes of his wife, who worked in the asbestos industry. Similar secondhand asbestos cases generally center on the wife as plaintiff, usually sickened from exposure to her husband’s asbestos-covered clothes.

According to the complaint, Paul Bowen of Ohio, was employed from 1951 to 2004 as a laborer, truck driver, kiln operator, miner and mechanic at various locations. However, Bowen’s wife was employed as a machine operator, maintenance worker, finisher and striper at various locations, including in jobs that involved direct exposure to asbestos.

”Dust created by working with and around asbestos and asbestos-containing products would permeate the person and clothing of the decedent’s wife,” the complaint states.

Bowen was diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma last October and died a little more than two months later. According to an article in the Madison-St. Clair Record, the suit names 73 defendants that include Bondex International, CBS, ConocoPhillips, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Goodyear, John Crane, Owens-Illinois, Pharmacia, Shell Chemical and Yarway Corp.

The estate claims “the defendants knew or should have known that the asbestos fibers contained in their products had a toxic, poisonous and highly deleterious effect upon the health of people.”

Bowen’s estate also alleges that “the defendants included asbestos in their products even when adequate substitutes were available and failed to provide any or adequate instructions concerning the safe methods of working with and around asbestos.”

A landfill owner in Carlsbad, New Mexico is being fined more than $1 million for illegally accepting asbestos waste and other hazardous substances at his site, which is licensed only for non-hazardous industrial waste.

According to an article in the New Mexico Business Weekly, the New Mexico Environment Department has issued a compliance order with a $1.3 million penalty to Lea Land Inc. for solid waste violations at its landfill. Purportedly, the company allowed 137 truckloads of hazardous waste, including coated metal siding containing lead and 144 truckloads of regulated asbestos waste, to be dumped at the landfill.
The Environmental Department was tipped off by a concerned citizen who observed the presence of asbestos waste at the landfill. The department found that both regulated and hazardous asbestos waste was generated during the demolition of several facilities belonging to a company known as Intrepid Potash - New Mexico LLC. The waste was transported to the landfill by Tripod Inc.
“The Solid Waste Bureau of the department found that the landfill denied department staff entry to the facility to inspect, failed to properly cover and compact solid waste and failed, on numerous occasions, to conduct required groundwater monitoring,” the article notes.
The owners of the landfill have 30 days to respond to the allegations.

A Jefferson, Wisconsin man was sentenced to 20 days in jail last week for failing to remove asbestos from several buildings he owned before he had them demolished.

According to an article in the Watertown Daily Times, Brian S. Johnson was sentenced to 20 days in jail after Judge Jackie Rohloff Erwin accepted a plea agreement in a Jefferson County Circuit Court.

The article notes that Johnson purchased the old Jefferson County farm and nursing home from the county in March 2005. He hired contractors to renovate, demolish, and burn buildings on the site. However, several agricultural buildings were demolished without first removing asbestos from the structures. Johnson then burned the buildings, a move that was also in violation of Wisconsin’s asbestos and burning regulations.

The violations were detected by the Watertown Health inspector performing asbestos inspections for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

After the violations occurred, Johnson lost the property to foreclosure. The new buyer is now responsible for the clean-up and is currently tending to that task.

The violations were detected by the Watertown Health inspector performing asbestos inspections for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the article notes.

An unscheduled vacation has ended for students at the North Kossuth Elementary School in Bancroft, Iowa after their school was closed for a week due to asbestos concerns.

According to a story aired by KIMT-TV, the most recent tests of the school’s air quality found no more traces of asbestos after initial findings showed that there were indeed asbestos particles in the air.

Nevertheless, parents and staff were still worried about exposure and raised concerns during a meeting on Monday night. Asbestos experts were on hand to answer their questions and allay their fears.

“So you checked the same areas of the building that you checked before?” asked one parent.

“We have a clean environment over there; its healthy, I’m not gonna make it worse than what it is, I would not put your kids in a bad situation,” answered North Kossuth Superintendent Mike Landstrum.

“If they’re comfortable enough with the results that they would send their own child, then that’s comfortable enough for me,” said Ed Spencer, who has two children at the aging school, which was built in 1962, more than 15 years before asbestos regulations were issued by the government.

Iowa state laws as well as federal mandates require the asbestos to be removed from schools. However, North Kossuth Elementary School falls under different rules because it’s leased from nearby St John’s Catholic School, administrators explained.

When firefighters set an old commercial building on fire at a controlled burn site in Westbrook, Maine last week, they found a huge surprise when the smoke had cleared – asbestos.

According to a story aired on WCSH – TV6, volunteer firefighters who were practicing firefighting techniques and participating in other training exercises at the old building were shocked to find asbestos in the basement of the structure. The discovery indicated not only a danger to the firefighters but also the need to clean up the site after the fire had been put out.

City officials said the clean up would require the services of a professional environmental company licensed in asbestos abatement. They contacted the owner of local Biosafe Company, who agreed to foot the $4000 to $5000 bill for the cleanup.

“Being in Westbrook and being a business in Westbrook, I’ve never really never done anything for the city in the past, but being here I thought it would be a gesture of goodwill being a business owner in a local community, helping a local community out,” said Mark Coleman from Biosafe.

A similar problem occurred at a training site in Massachusetts earlier this year. During that exercise, firefighters were not wearing respirators and may have inhaled dangerous asbestos fibers, which can cause mesothelioma cancer and other similar lung diseases.

Administrators at a North Iowa school believe the risk of asbestos exposure inside their building is reason enough to keep students out until the concern is addressed and the problem solved.

According to a story on KIMT-TV, North Kossuth Elementary School in the town of Bancroft will close just three weeks before school is scheduled to end, displacing about 145 students for the remainder of the school year. But the administration believes the closure is more than necessary, citing alarming health risks to those who are inside the building each day.

Asbestos test results from recent air quality testing came back late Monday afternoon. They show asbestos levels are ten times higher than what is considered safe in one classroom and levels are an alarming thousand times greater in a second floor hallway. Given those results, North Kossuth administrators saw no option but to close the school.

“We’re not wanting to do this, at all, but we have some people that are pretty concerned about it, and like I said, we didn’t want to take any chances,” said Superintendent Mike Landstrum.

In the meantime, parents are scrambling to accommodate the move and any changes in before and after school plans. But all believe that the school is doing the right thing in protecting the students, faculty, and staff.

“I think it’s a good idea if it’s that dangerous that they go ahead and move their students,” said Sandra Teachout, whose child is a special education student at the school.

The superintendent is hoping to have the kids moved to Swea City Elementary School by Thursday. They plan to rearrange the school there to handle the extra students. There is also a church available in case they need more space, the story noted.

Naturally-occurring asbestos will need to be removed from the site of a new Napa Valley high school before construction can commence, report school officials with the Napa Valley Unified School District.

According to an article in the Napa Valley Register, there is hope that the clean-up will be completed in a reasonable amount of time and not delay the building of the $123 million high school, scheduled to open in the fall of 2010.

“The mineral comes from serpentine rock commonly found in northern California,” explained Don Evans, director of school planning and construction for the NVUSD. Removal of asbestos is a common occurrence when building in this portion of the state, officials said.

About 1,800 cubic yards of the gravel-like material that contains the naturally-occurring asbestos will be stockpiled temporarily on an adjacent site where the district plans to build a middle school, said Evans, who assured residents and others nearby that the Department of Toxic Substances Control will closely monitor the process to be sure no asbestos dust is spread. Plans will then be made to permanently dispose of the material.

District officials told concerned parents that they were not aware of the presence of naturally-occurring asbestos when the purchased the land and designated it for the high school and middle school. The asbestos was found about a year ago.

An office of the Australian federal government has admitted to “potentially losing” more than 1,000 files that detail asbestos-related disease cases from about 20 years ago. The files are required by experts to better understand exposure risk, notes an article in The Sydney Morning Herald.

According to the article, the records were a compilation of details collected in the 1980s for one of the world’s most comprehensive surveys on mesothelioma. Just recently, a Sydney geologist requested the records, which were originally used in order to determine the number of Australians exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos at little-known, naturally-occurring asbestos “hot spots”.

However, the Office of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, part of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), came up empty handed when issued the request.
Marc Hendrickx from Macquarie University said the records from the old Mesothelioma Surveillance Program are essential for the new study.
“It is certainly not our policy to discard records such as these,” said DEEWR director Julie Hill. “We regret the potential loss of these important records to the research community and are still attempting to locate them.”
According to Hendrickx, the missing records contain full occupational and environmental histories of about 1,000 mesothelioma cases reported in the early 1980s.
Currently, about 600 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in Australia each year. However, the article notes, about 10 percent of all cases occur in people with no known exposure and at least some are believed to be caused by hidden deposits of naturally-occurring asbestos. Hendrickx planned to map these natural deposits using the data from the Mesothelioma Surveillance Program as well as new data collected recently.
The study also hoped to reduce the risk of housing developments accidentally disturbing the asbestos deposits and exposing residents, says the article.
“The potential permanent loss of these records would be a great loss to mesothelioma research in Australia and raises questions about the federal government’s policies surrounding long-term storage and archiving of nationally significant scientific research datasets,” says Hendrickx, who believes the map will no longer be possible without this data.