Colleges’ Promptness in Fixing Asbestos Perils Disputed

When officials at Los Angeles City College learned that bits of asbestos pipe insulation were falling on a work bench in a chemistry lab, the material was cleaned up and the rest of the frayed insulation was stripped from the pipes.

Los Angeles Community College District officials recently cited the episode, which took place early last year, as proof of their prompt response to asbestos problems.

But the response really was not so quick. Three years earlier, the worn insulation in the lab had been identified as a safety risk by a consultant who surveyed the district’s buildings for asbestos dangers.

Like other institutions with many older buildings, the financially strapped district faces the burden of safely managing large amounts of deteriorating asbestos insulation that would be prohibitively expensive to remove all at once. For the most part, the asbestos is in attics, boiler rooms, crawl spaces and similar areas where students and teachers seldom go.

But Cal/OSHA, the state job safety agency, and some of the district’s own workers say the district has neglected its duty to adequately protect workers who must go into these areas for maintenance and repairs.

Cal/OSHA has cited the district seven times in the last three years for asbestos violations at Valley College, City College and East Los Angeles College. Some violations found by Cal/OSHA were discovered again during follow-up inspections a year or two later. Private firms in the same position could pay large financial penalties, but the district is immune because it is a public agency.

Threat of Prosecution

However, in a letter last December, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner put the district’s trustees on notice that such “widespread violations” of job safety rules could result in “civil or criminal prosecution.”

Although “severe economic constraints” may prevent removal of the asbestos, the letter said, the district must “properly protect personnel involved in routine maintenance work on boilers, pipes, and other materials containing asbestos.”

Monroe F. Richman, president of the trustees for the nine-college district, called Reiner’s criticism “unfounded and unsubstantiated,” and said the trustees had been “at the forefront” in showing concern for employees.

In response to Cal/OSHA citations, the district has given workers training in asbestos safety and respirator use.

District officials, who estimate it would cost $7 million to remove all damaged asbestos, said they will have spent $730,000 on asbestos removal projects by the end of this year.

“Our view is that we’re being as aggressive as we can given the resources we have,” Norm Schneider, communications director for the district, said.

But some workers disagree. “If this was a private industry and Cal/OSHA came down and gave us violations, it would be corrected in weeks. It took us years,” said a worker at City College who asked not to be identified.

Some employees said that, until the last couple of years, they routinely cut into asbestos while making repairs and swept up fallen debris without wetting it to hold down dust. They said the first warnings that such practices were unsafe came not from district administrators but from co-workers who were labeled troublemakers for sounding the alarm.

“That’s what disturbed us,” said George Thompson, 60, a heating and air conditioning technician at Valley College. “We expected more from a place of learning than some unscrupulous business . . . where they would try to cut corners to make a profit.”

Alert From Co-Worker

Both Thompson and Dwight Trimble, a heating technician at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, credited Ray Blumhorst, a fellow tradesman at Valley College, with alerting them to asbestos risks.

Trimble said that when he got to East Los Angeles two years ago, “I found out they had plumbers and others tearing into asbestos without any sort of proper attire. . . . I was asked to do some jobs like that and would have done it if it hadn’t been for the knowledge that Ray Blumhorst has.”

Asbestos, which has outstanding insulating properties, is perfectly safe when intact. But when asbestos material is cut or broken, microscopic fibers can be released by the touch of a hand or even moving air. These brittle, buoyant fibers can scar the lungs when inhaled.

Prolonged asbestos exposure can cause asbestosis, a lung disorder that can be mild but in advanced cases results in severely restricted breathing.

Asbestos also can cause cancer of the lung and other organs as long as 40 years after initial exposure. Although most victims of asbestos disease were heavily exposed and also smoked, some people with light or brief exposure also have been stricken, leading most experts to conclude that even small exposure carries some risk.

Medical examinations required by Cal/OSHA for employees who work around asbestos so far have shown seven cases of asbestosis among 117 district plumbers, carpenters and other workers. Some of the seven victims may also have been exposed in previous jobs. The medical surveillance does not cover former district workers who may have had high exposure and little protection.

Topic for the ‘80s

William B. Green, safety and occupational health specialist for the district, said the district’s awareness of asbestos is fairly recent. Although the hazards of asbestos have been well-publicized for more than a decade, Green claimed that the substance “did not become popular as a hazardous material really until the 1980s.”

Cal/OSHA regulations require that spilled asbestos material be quickly cleaned up, and that workers who could have significant exposure be given asbestos safety training and be “fit tested” to assure that their respirators make a tight seal around the nose and mouth.

In February, 1984, the safety agency cited East Los Angeles College for asbestos violations, including failure to promptly clean up asbestos spills.

The college also was cited in July of that year for respirator training and fit test violations. The school was given one month to make corrections, but Cal/OSHA records show that five extensions were granted before compliance was achieved in early 1985.

Valley College was cited by Cal/OSHA in May, 1984, for failing to clean up spilled asbestos and for inadequate respirator training and fit tests.

Slow Response Cited

The college again was cited in July, 1985, for respirator violations and for failing to clean up asbestos spills in six areas. In his report, the state inspector said school officials “had a generally good attitude toward safety in theory. In practice, however, they seem slow to realize the seriousness of asbestos exposure, however small.”

City College, 855 N. Vermont Ave., was cited by Cal/OSHA in July, 1983, for several asbestos violations, including failure to clean up spills in a crawl space under the cafeteria and a narrow steam tunnel where thousands of square feet of deteriorating asbestos was falling off pipes. “Employees . . . were exposed to asbestos dust as they walked on, brushed against and trampled waste littered on floor,” the inspector wrote.

Cal/OSHA termed this a “willful” violation because the college was aware of the spills but did not try to clean them up.

The district appealed the citations, contending the “willful” tag was unfair because it had taken protective steps, such as restricting worker access to the steam tunnel.

The case was settled without a hearing in July, 1984, when Cal/OSHA agreed to drop the “willful” claim.

Instances of Delay

But having won this point, the district proceeded to leave the spills for yet another year.

In March, 1985, the state issued more asbestos citations, including one for failure to clean up the same debris that was found almost two years before.

The inspector’s report said: “Confirmation was made with management and employees interviewed that the residue on the ground in these areas had not been cleaned up or touched since the last OSHA inspection” in 1983.

By the end of 1985, an asbestos contractor had removed damaged insulation from the steam tunnels and cleaned up the fallen debris.

Last month, City College was cited for an asbestos spill in a different area--an equipment storage basement in an administration building.

Despite its scrapes with Cal/OSHA, the district--according to Green, its safety chief--has done “a fairly good job or even a great job” in protecting workers.

Misunderstanding Seen

He said some citations, such as those involving respirator fit tests, stemmed from disagreement or misunderstanding about what Cal/OSHA requires. “As soon as we find out we make a mistake because of their interpretation of the rules, we change it,” Green said.

Asked why the district waited more than two years to clean up spills that supposedly did not warrant the “willful” tag, Green blamed delays in getting money for the removal work that took place late in 1985.

Green said it would have made little sense beforehand to clean up the spills, because more material was falling off pipes all the time.

Even so, when faced with an inquiry from trustees about the controversy, district officials pointedly avoided mentioning the spills in an explanatory memo.

The January memo said the 1985 citations at City College “primarily concerned asbestos in an abandoned pipe and an improperly labelled disposal bag”--which were among the more trivial findings. The citation for spills first noted in 1983 was not mentioned.

‘Breakdown in System’

As for the July, 1985, citations at Valley College, Green said he might have appealed them had he known about them. Asked how, as head of safety, he could have been unaware of the citations, Green blamed “a breakdown in the system” that he said has been corrected.

Perhaps the sternest critic has been Blumhorst, 38, a heating and air conditioning technician at Valley College whose prodding, co-workers say, has made the district treat asbestos with more respect.

As a result of his intervention, Blumhorst said, he has had to endure “snide innuendoes” about his work performance and motives.

“Ray Blumhorst was the one that found out (about asbestos) and drew all our attention to it,” George Thompson said. “They have a lot of stories go around that he’s a trouble-maker and stuff like that.”

Blumhorst said that one supervisor has suggested that one so worried about asbestos should quit.

“You know, ‘kill the messenger,’ ” Blumhorst said. “This is not a good thing, in a career sense, to sort of blow the whistle on your employer.”

Harassment Denied

Schneider, the district’s chief spokesman, said he has “absolute confidence” that workers who raise safety concerns have never been harassed.

Mary Ann Breckell, vice president for administration at Valley College, called Blumhorst “a good technician” who is “on a crusade.”

Despite his complaints, she said, “he’s not harassed here at all. Whenever Ray has brought something to my attention I have listened and I have looked into it and we have tried to do something about it.”

Although several workers said they are grateful to Blumhorst for sticking his neck out, not all agreed that his concerns are warranted.

‘He’s a Radical’

“He’s a radical,” said Mike Tomlinson, a plumber at Valley College. “It’s a thing with him.”

Blumhorst said his involvement began in 1983, after he saw a television documentary about victims of asbestos disease.

He was concerned, he said, not only because of his own past exposure, but because he had once taught courses in his trade without stressing asbestos safety.

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have spent more time covering it,” Blumhorst said. “You might say class isn’t over.”

Blumhorst, who has distributed asbestos literature to workers and school administrators, said he feels “a moral obligation to give this information to people so they can protect themselves.”