The Online Asbestos, Asbestos Cancer, & Mesothelioma Authority
Asbestos News: March, 2008
Did the roof of the Point Fortin Area Hospital in Trinidad contain asbestos?
Nobody knows for sure.
There have been so many stories here about “asbestos schools” that they are hardly newsworthy anymore. However, this particular story about asbestos in our public schools involves behavior that is so egregious, so reprehensible, that after reading it, you may want to get out the torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers…
The U.S. and South Africa have over the years had many things in common, not all of them positive. Over the years, both countries have had to deal with similar social and economic issues. Arguably, the U.S. has made far more progress on a number of these issues, but South Africans are making efforts to catch up.
Like other housewives who washed the work clothing of their husbands who worked in various industrial occupations, Frances Barras suffered from what is known as “secondary exposure” to asbestos fibers. These fibers were lodged in the fabric of these work clothes as well as her husband’s hair. Louis Barras was employed at a DuPont refinery for 28 years between 1957 and 1985. Because of the exposure to the fibers in Louis’ clothing and hair during that time, Frances now suffers from pleural mesothelioma.
This begs the question as to why, if the fibers were so deadly, did Louis not contract an asbestos disease?
England’s historic Midlands district forms a broad belt across the middle of the country from the North to the Irish Seas. Before England was unified under King Aelfred (”The Great”) in the ninth century, it was an independent kingdom known as Mercia; during Norman times, its massive hardwood forests were the setting of the exploits of Saxon rebels, forming the basis of the “Robin Hood” legends. Over the centuries, the land has been also been invaded by Romans, Scots, Picts, Angles, Jutes, Norsemen, and Danes.
Today, the invader is Asbestos.
And now, we present this week’s Asbestos School: the Faulkner Career-Technical Center in Pritchard, Alabama.
At the Faulkner Center, students train for occupations that do not require college degrees, enabling them to qualify for more lucrative employment in a shorter time.
With today’s health costs. $7,500 would barely pay for a week’s worth of treatment for asbestos cancer.
Nonetheless, Ab and Mina Hashemi of Mountain View, California, are settling for the maximum amount that California state law allows in small claims court.
It’s not just in the U.S. that those who are suffering the debilitating effects of asbestos exposure have to fight not only corporations who all too often place profits ahead of people’s health and well-being, but also have to battle the very government which should be working to protect its working citizens.
In the U.S., the stated goal of “tort reform” is to make sure that monetary awards in asbestos lawsuits go only to those who are actually suffering from an asbestos disease.
This was apparently the reasoning when Great Britain’s House of Lords passed legislation in the U.K. that would bar those who had been exposed on the job but who hadn’t developed serious illness from filing claims. In past decades, British subjects who suffered from pleural plaques–not in themselves fatal, but possibly harbingers of asbestos illness to come–could collect up to 15,000 GBP (roughly US $30,000) from the government.
As regular readers of this column are aware, Japan has been slow to act in asbestos matters; a comprehensive ban was not passed until 2006, and recent discoveries in Tokyo buildings show that there is still a lot asbestos to deal with.
In the meantime, Japanese workers, like those in Australia, South Africa, and the U.K., suffer from abnormally high rates of mesothelioma. In Tokyo, 160 of those workers and the families they left behind are now planning to file suit against the government they say “failed to take due action to prevent health damage related to exposure to asbestos.”
In a day and age when corporate profits all too often take precedence over the health and safety of working people, it is refreshing when a federal agency actually does something for the good of working people.
Last month, regular readers of this column learned of an “asbestos school” in Broomfield, Colorado (one of the many on which we report here).
The short story is that students, faculties and maintenance workers may have suffered asbestos exposure last fall when a gasket in one of the building’s boilers malfunctioned, causing asbestos fibers to be released into the air. Over 30 percent of the air samples tested were found to contain “unacceptably high” levels of asbestos fibers.
We’ve had numerous stories here on this part of the Asbestos.net about contractors who were caught illegally removing asbestos when they had no training, no certification, and no real knowledge or protective equipment.
On the other hand, Cleve A. George and Dylan C. Starnes owned and operated their own licensed, certified asbestos removal companies–yet still managed to run afoul of the law.
What happened?
If you are a regular reader of this part of Asbestos.net, you by now have probably lost count of how many stories we have presented on the subject of asbestos contamination in the nation’s public, private, and parochial schools.
It has happened yet again, this time in the Maryland community of Bel Air.
It actually happened in a U.S. court, and one of the defendants was auto parts company Borg-Warner of Michigan.
Nonetheless, it is Asbestos Corporation Ltd. of Canada that will bear the brunt of a $30.3-million judgment recently awarded by a New Jersey court.
In 1792, a young French royalist named Eleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (whose first name ironically is derived from the Greek word for freedom) risked his life to defend the lives of two of the worst despots ever to rule over a country–King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette.
While many schools around the nation are wrestling with their own asbestos contamination problems, the State of Massachusetts–normally one of the most progressive states in the country outside the Pacific Northwest–seems determined to create one.
Regular readers of this column understand and appreciate the struggles of U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA). Since 2001, Senator Murray has been fighting for a complete and total ban on asbestos in the United States.
The opposition has been formidable. Corporate lobbyists and their bought-and-paid-for legislators in Congress put up one roadblock after another.
An asbestos settlement of $500 million on the part of the nation’s largest property and casualty carriers has been overturned on appeal by a New York judge. The settlement, which was intended to resolve some 600,000 asbestos claims against Johns-Manville, a company insured by Travelers, was originally sought in 2004 and granted in 2006. The settlement would have made $445 million available to the claimants while providing nearly $60 million for the coverage of legal fees, and would have barred all future asbestos claims against Travelers.
The land of Israel–both ancient and modern–has long been a bone of contention. In ancient times, the area was fought over by Hittites and Babylonians, among others; Greek and Roman occupiers often had their hands full with the rebellious natives of the country. Later, the land was part of the Byzantine, Ottoman, and ultimately, the British Empires.
Most regular visitors to Asbestos.net are well aware that veterans of the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine are among the most likely to suffer from asbestos-related diseases because of the extensive use of asbestos in the construction of sea-going vessels.
Paul Whitlock is one such veteran, having served aboard the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam conflict. In a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court in 2005, Whitlock alleged that his terminal mesothelioma was caused by exposure to asbestos in the boiler room of the guided-missile attack aircraft carrier.
From the many stories we have posted on this part of Asbestos.net, our regular readers are well aware that Canada’s asbestos industry is very powerful, despite the fact that most Canadians outside of Quebec (where the asbestos industry is located) want to see their government join the rest of the world in banning the substance for good.
One of the most bizarre asbestos cases in recent history seems destined to drag on a little longer.
Last October, we brought you the story of the renovations of a public building in upstate New York, which was being carried out by laborers from the local jail under the supervision of a county employee.
Earlier this month, we posted a story about firefighters in Everett, Washington who were exposed to asbestos fibers in the course of training exercises carried out in old and abandoned houses.
Unfortunately, the stories–and the irony–don’t end there.
Firefighters in North Bend, Washington, have discovered that they too are at risk from asbestos poisoning.
Recently, we brought you the story of how asbestos saved Spokane’s historic Davenport Hotel–a grand old building from the Golden Age of American Architecture.
If the Davenport can be compared to, say, a classic automobile like the 1932 Dusenberg, the Coachman Motel in Bloomington, Illinois, is a rusted-out 1981 Yugo–a squat, ugly building cheaply constructed from cinderblocks that few people, if any, will be sorry to see demolished.
Well over two years after Hurricane Katrina virtually destroyed New Orleans, one of the major–and expensive–problems that still exists is what to do with the remains of hundreds of demolished houses, virtually all of which contain asbestos materials.
When the New Jersey community of Monroe Township acquired the building formerly owned by telecom company Verizon, they got more than they bargained for.
The building has been undergoing renovation in order to serve as a new home for the community library. The structure’s interior was gutted last summer by demolition workers employed by the city. Earlier this month, an environmental study results show asbestos levels that are 200 percent above those considered “safe” under federal guidelines.
News By RSS