Risk From Asbestos at School Minimal, District Official Says

Students and teachers at the Commonwealth Avenue Elementary School are at no greater risk from asbestos exposure than they would be standing “on any corner of any street in Los Angeles,” a school district official said Wednesday.

Initial indications that some plaster removed from a school ceiling during installation of an air-conditioning system had an asbestos content of up to 12% have been called into question by tests conducted this week, said Richard Henry, who heads the asbestos abatement program for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Nineteen new samples taken from the ceiling, located in the school’s main building, turned out to have asbestos contents of 1% or less, below the level considered dangerous by the federal government, Henry said.

In addition, Henry said, tests that simulated dust conditions during the construction project turned up no significant evidence of airborne asbestos fibers.

‘Not a Health Risk’

“Based on the . . . samples that have been taken, it appears that there really is not a health risk (from asbestos) in that building any greater than on any corner of any street in Los Angeles,” Henry said.

The school’s main building, which houses six classrooms, a library and administrative offices, was closed Nov. 3 after district officials detected asbestos traces in ceiling plaster that had been cut open during installation of air-conditioning ducts. Teachers had complained about eye and throat irritation that they suspected was caused by the construction project.

While the rest of the year-round school remains open, about 160 of Commonwealth’s 1,000 students are being bused to nearby Betty Plasencia Elementary School until work in the 50-year-old main structure is finished. Commonwealth, at 215 S. Commonwealth Ave., is near Lafayette Park, northwest of downtown.

Regarded by experts as second only to cigarettes as a cause of lung cancer, asbestos also has been linked to other types of cancer. While asbestos illness has shown up mainly in workers exposed over long periods of time, reports of disease in some people thought to have been only briefly exposed have prompted many experts to conclude that even minimal exposure carries some risk. The mineral was widely used as an insulator and fire retardant until its cancer risks became known.

Despite the assurances from Henry and another official, Jack C. Waldron, the school district’s chief safety officer, a spokeswoman for United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers union, said the district should have proceeded with more caution before permitting construction crews to cut into the ceiling.

“The classrooms were just layered with this (plaster) dust,” said Catherine Carey, the teachers union spokeswoman. “Testing should have been done on the materials before they went in and started working with them. If the teachers hadn’t screamed bloody murder, nothing would have been done.”

Teachers complained of eye and respiratory problems “for weeks” before district officials investigated, Carey said. But the principal of the school, Rosalyn Carlton, said she told her superiors of the complaints on Oct. 29, within a day or two after hearing from a teacher. Testing began the next day, the district officials said.

Henry, the district’s asbestos abatement officer, said the ceiling in Commonwealth’s main building was covered with tiles and was not recognized as being a possible source of asbestos contamination in a 1982-83 survey of district schools that was mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Intent of Survey

That survey was intended to identify sources of flaking or friable asbestos, Henry said, not asbestos that is sealed and, as a result, relatively harmless.

New federal legislation that took effect this month requires school districts to undertake new surveys to identify the presence of all asbestos in school buildings, Henry said.

In the last five years, Henry said, the Los Angeles school district has spent about $30 million cataloguing and removing asbestos from its 644 schools and 174 learning centers. Virtually all of the asbestos that remains in the buildings is sealed, he said.