Local News in Brief : Prison in Asbestos Case
A New York man was sentenced to five years in prison Monday for lying to the government to hide the fact that underpaid, untrained workers were removing cancer-causing asbestos from a Long Beach hospital.
Thomas Garbett, 47, vice president of American Combustion and Industrial Service Corp., was ordered by U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois Jr. to spend five years in prison, serve five years’ probation and perform 500 hours of community service.
He pleaded guilty to falsifying documents to conceal the botched job workers were doing on the asbestos removal at the Long Beach Veterans Administration Medical Center in 1983 and 1984. Garbett admitted hiring workers who had no training in asbestos removal to perform the dangerous work and paying them only $12 to $15 an hour. Government regulations require that they be trained, certified and paid at least $25.12 an hour.
Without proper training, the workers inhaled dangerous levels of asbestos and released it into the air, said the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Atty. David Katz.
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