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A Pennsylvania state representative believes that dozens of firefighters may have been exposed to asbestos during training exercises at a dilapidated shopping center in Levittown/Tullytown, a suburb of Philadelphia.

John T. Galloway told the Bucks County Courier Times that firefighters trained at the now defunct Levittown Town Center about four years ago, just about the same time that the EPA reported asbestos violations to the owner of the center, DLC Management Corporation.

An angry Galloway told DLC Management that they should offer “immediate health examinations” to firefighters who may have been exposed to the asbestos at the site of the former Levittown Shopping Center. In his letter, Galloway told developer Stephen Ifshin that he should “pay all medical costs” if the firefighters were exposed to asbestos at the partly-demolished center.

The newspaper noted that the training exercise, which was attended by several Bucks County fire companies, included drills that required firefighters to cut through the center’s roof and fight a blaze inside the building, therefore possibly exposing them to damaged asbestos. The EPA had just completed an inspection that month, fining DLC Management when they found asbestos “strewn throughout the site.” The state, county, and township officials were never informed of the violations.

“I also ask you to explain why you remained silent and allowed this training session to take place, even though you knew that your company was in the process of removing the asbestos from the building,” Galloway wrote to Ifshin. “This is another example of your blatant disregard for members of this community.”

Galloway told the newspaper that the firefighters were doing a service to their communities by taking part in the training, but were “deceived” by Ifshin when they were possibly exposed to cancer-causing asbestos.
The state EPA recently began re-testing the site to determine whether or not any asbestos remains.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.