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.

First responders who came to the aid of a gravely injured man at an Aspen, Colo. middle school on Wednesday never realized that they’d be facing the risk of exposure to asbestos during the rescue.

John Ruiz of Denver was part of a crew doing demolition and removing vermiculite (a naturally-occurring mineral that is often contaminated with asbestos) at the Aspen Middle School earlier this week when a cinder block wall fell on him.

According to an article in the Aspen Times, “rescuers trying to reach Ruiz rushed into a plastic-draped construction zone where crews from ESA of Denver were removing the material.”

Pitkin County Sheriff’s Investigator Ron Ryan said rescuers were concerned that another wall might fall at the demolition site. However, their fears increased when they noticed that construction workers were wearing disposable suits and breathing masks to protect themselves from inhaling asbestos. The rescuers had entered the scene unprotected, totally unaware that an asbestos hazard may have been present.

“We’re prepared for these types of scenarios,” Ryan said of potential hazards at an incident. “By the time we were into it, we saw that it was a possibly hazardous situation.”

Deputy Adam Crider, who ran in and out of the contaminated site to retrieve supplies, said he was coughing after the incident, but believed it was the effect of concrete dust in the air.

“The guys in paper suits and aspirators surprised us,” said Aspen officer Joe Holman. “But once you’re in it, you’re in it.”

Aspen’s environmental health director, Lee Cassin, told concerned parties that he believes the vermiculite found at the site is much less toxic than “straight asbestos”, which is often used as insulation inside a building or might be found wrapped around boilers or water pipes.

Yesterday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) abruptly closed the Clear Creek Management Area in San Benito County, Calif. after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a report stating that the area contains extremely high levels of toxic asbestos.

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the EPA labeled Clear Creek “a virtual death zone” where five visits a year over three decades could lead to lung cancer and other serious pulmonary diseases.

The 48-square-mile patch of land in the Diablo Mountains will be closed for the foreseeable future, said a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, the organization that oversees the Clear Creek area.

The EPA report notes that participation in any sort of recreational activity at Clear Creek presents a hazard, but the data was especially aimed at those who enjoy off-roading in the area. The EPA found that dangerous levels of asbestos dust were being stirred up by motorcycles and other off-road vehicles.

The report also added that other activities, such as hiking and camping, could be hazardous as well, especially to children, who tend to inhale toxic asbestos quicker and more easily. Previous studies over several decades found high levels of asbestos in the area, but the results were “not as conclusive” as in the new 160-page assessment, EPA officials said Thursday.

For the last three years, the BLM has closed the area from June to October, which are the driest and dustiest months in central California. Closing the site year-round was “an extremely tough decision,” said bureau Field Manager Rick Cooper. “But my first priority must be protecting the health of visitors and employees.”

Officials at a Baltimore City welfare office say reports of “active asbestos dust” in the aging building were unfounded and deemed that the report was merely retaliation by a disgruntled former employee.

Earlier this week, several Baltimore-area newspapers reported that members of AFSCME Maryland, the union representing state and higher education employees, made allegations as to the presence of asbestos after the building’s administration postponed and then canceled a meeting intended to address the asbestos claims with union members. The building has previously been plagued by rodents and other toxins, according to reports.

However, according to an article in The Examiner, it has been determined that an employee with a maintenance contractor who alerted EPA officials to the presence of “active asbestos” on pipes in the building wasn’t telling the truth.
The allegations “could be the result of a disgruntled employee and ex-partner of A&E Mechanical which were terminated during the course of this job,” company President Jay Austin wrote in the letter released to the media.
An inspector’s note also released to the media states that no asbestos was found on the pipes, only modern fiberglass insulation and “hard-mudded fittings”.
“I would not have any staff working in a building that is not safe,” said Brian Wilbon, interim director of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services.