Asbestos Remains in Buildings : Health: A year after a survey demanded removal of asbestos from county buildings, the material remains. Official says it presents “no health risk.”

A year after they were found to contain cancer-causing asbestos, four public buildings in Orange County--including the John Wayne Airport security office--still have the material present, city and county officials acknowledged Friday.

Jack Leaning, manager of facilities operations for the county’s General Services Agency, said the county took steps to assess possible health risks outlined in a 1988 state asbestos survey. But based on an analysis by a county consultant, he said the asbestos presents “no health risk.”

“We do know asbestos is in the (airport) terminal building,” Leaning said. “But in the state that it is in, it’s not a health hazard” because no asbestos fibers are being released into the air.

In 1988, the survey said ceiling tiles in the security office pose a possible danger to public health and should be removed immediately. “Any construction work which may disturb this material should be halted,” the survey said.

Leaning said no health risks are present at the three other county buildings identified in the survey: the Orange County Health Care Agency, 1725 West 17th St. and the Orange County Hall of Records, 601 North Ross St., both in Santa Ana, and at Irvine Regional Park, 21501 E. Chapman Ave., in Orange.

“I can absolutely assure you we don’t have any health hazards not attended to right now,” Leaning said.

In all, the survey--performed under contract to the Department of Health Services by Diagnostic Engineering Inc. of Arcadia--found asbestos that needed to be taken out immediately from seven of 19 Orange County buildings examined. They included offices in Garden Grove City Hall, the Buena Park City Council chambers and the Anaheim police station, in addition to the county facilities.

Officials in Buena Park, Garden Grove and Anaheim said Friday that they have taken steps to remove the asbestos. In Anaheim, more than 20,000 square feet of asbestos--the largest amount found in a public building in the county--was discovered in a first floor ceiling cavity at police headquarters. But some of that has already been removed as part of a major, multimillion-dollar expansion and remodeling project, said Charles G. Robinson, Anaheim safety manager.

“They have to remove the asbestos, and it just so happens we were planning on remodeling the building anyway,” Robinson said.

The removal cost has been estimated at more than $500,000, Robinson said.

In Garden Grove, where the spray-applied acoustic wall and ceiling material was found in the insurance program administrator’s office at City Hall, removal is scheduled to begin Tuesday. Greg Brown, Garden Grove’s facilities and grounds manager, said the city is also removing asbestos from a second-floor corridor.

“Considering the nature of the building and the fact that we get a lot of public traffic in there, we felt it was important to address,” Brown said, adding that the asbestos removal will take seven days and cost the city $13,500.

In Buena Park, city officials hired a consultant to review all seven of the city’s buildings--not just the one examined by the state, said Don Kemp, director of public works. Kemp said the City Council agreed last July to pay about $120,000 for the removal.

250 Statewide Probe

The 19 structures in Orange County were part of a statewide inspection of 250 public buildings conducted by the Department of Health Services and other state agencies to gauge the level of potentially harmful asbestos in government-owned facilities.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered a near total ban on the manufacture or import of asbestos-containing products by 1996. Among the items affected by the ban are automobile brakes, concrete pipes and roofing material.

Asbestos is one of a relatively small number of substances proven to cause cancer in laboratory animals and in humans. It can also cause chronic, debilitating lung disease among those exposed to the microscopic fibers.

The Times, which obtained a copy of the report, reported in September that the sampling of 250 public buildings shows a massive amount of asbestos and may cost taxpayers as much as $660 million to remove or stabilize. It also reported that the state agencies recommended removing the asbestos within one year from 42% of the buildings sampled.

At that time, Orange County officials said some of their buildings, such as John Wayne Airport, were identified as having asbestos. But none of the local buildings was found to have severe problems that required immediate action, they said.