Asbestos Contamination Adds to Risks and Costs of Cleanup : Damage: Business is booming for removal firms. Some homeowners do it themselves or ignore problem.

As president of an environmental testing firm, Michael Uziel usually deals with the toxic worries of others. But he’s had serious ones of his own since last month’s earthquake battered his Northridge home--cracking the cottage-cheese-like ceiling and scattering asbestos dust over furnishings and carpets.

“It’s devastating. . . . I have to throw (away) almost all my belongings,” said Uziel, 50, who evacuated his house and may not have enough insurance to cover both the structural repairs and asbestos cleanup.

Jolted by an asbestos aftershock, hundreds of building owners and occupants are scrambling to deal with the risk of contamination from asbestos, a leading environmental cause of lung cancer, along with extra cleanup costs and delays.

Because of its widespread use in building materials, asbestos “is always an issue of concern whenever there’s an event that damages structures,” said Kathleen Shimman, regional director of the office of health and emergency planning for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. When earthquakes or hurricanes knock buildings around, asbestos “can be shredded and broken and . . . the fibers of asbestos can be inhaled.”

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In one form or another, asbestos is present in more than half of all buildings that are at least 15 years old, authorities say. Although many uses of asbestos have been banned, some continued into the 1980s.

Health officials and asbestos consultants have been flooded with calls from those who are concerned about the problem. But officials said many building owners and occupants probably are unaware of quake-related damage to asbestos materials.

Some homeowners who are unwilling or unable to hire licensed asbestos contractors are cleaning up asbestos debris themselves--with or without proper equipment and dust prevention methods.

Even so, business is booming for the asbestos abatement industry in the wake of the Jan. 17 quake.

“Everybody in this industry--consultant and contractor included--have been taxed and maximized to the extent of capacity and beyond to cover all . . . work that’s going on,” said Thomas A. Jordan, vice president of Gale/Jordan Associates, an environmental consulting firm.

In a number of large office buildings in the quake area, asbestos fireproofing on steel beams dropped through dislodged ceiling tiles to settle on floors and desks, Jordan said. In several offices where his firm ran air tests, he said, the spills temporarily created significant airborne levels of asbestos.

The quake and its aftershocks also triggered asbestos spills at about 100 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Richard F. Henry, the district’s asbestos technical supervisor, said that in preparing the schools for the return of students and staff, cleanup crews had to remove fallen asbestos soundproofing and pipe wrap and broken asbestos floor tiles.

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In some areas, the problem has defied a quick fix. In the theater area at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, asbestos debris from broken acoustical material is so extensive that the area has been temporarily sealed, Henry said.

At Cal State Northridge, pulverized asbestos littered so much of the engineering building that officials were forced to order a massive cleanup before they could get in to assess quake damage, said Bill Chatham, CSUN associate vice president for facilities and operations.

Then, with the cleanup nearly complete after 10 days of wiping and vacuuming, a big aftershock Jan. 29, created a second asbestos blizzard.

Many problems in homes and apartments have involved “cottage-cheese” or “popcorn” ceilings--some of which contain at least a small percentage of asbestos, experts said. In some cases, the earthquake cracked or shattered these ceilings, dusting carpets and furniture.

Asbestos is safe when intact. But when asbestos materials are pulverized or broken, they can release microscopic fibers that float like water vapor and are dangerous to inhale.

Long considered a leading environmental cause of lung cancer, asbestos also has been linked to mesothelioma, a rare and nearly always fatal cancer that may appear up to 40 years after initial exposure.

Low levels of asbestos are always present in the air, due to construction and demolition work and erosion from automobile brake linings and clutches.

The vast bulk of asbestos disease has afflicted heavily exposed workers who labored for years in dusty conditions with minimal protection. But asbestos illness occasionally is reported in people thought to have been minimally exposed, prompting many experts to say no level is safe to breathe.

Regulations designed to prevent creation of asbestos dust have also fallen victim to the need to clear quake rubble.

In normal times, the federal Clean Air Act and South Coast Air Quality Management District rules require precautions to keep asbestos from becoming airborne during building repairs or demolition--including removal and disposal of asbestos before building work occurs.

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But many quake-damaged buildings are too unstable for asbestos crews to enter--and thus are being cleared with the minimal safeguard of keeping the rubble wet to reduce dust. This also means that rubble containing at least small amounts of asbestos is going to area landfills normally not allowed to accept it.

Air district spokesman Bill Kelly said: “You have to make a trade-off between the problem of asbestos and the imminent public safety concern from these unstable structures. . . . So we’re looking at providing these minimum standards for health protection of wetting and wrapping and then landfilling it.”

Unlike commercial and apartment building owners, homeowners even in normal times are exempt from requirements that asbestos removal be done only by licensed abatement contractors. Some owners of quake-damaged homes are doing asbestos cleanup and removal themselves--although most experts caution against it.

Los Angeles County health officials are responding to questions from homeowners on simple asbestos cleanups. “Usually people lack the funds to (hire a contractor) so we would tell them how to get literature to properly clean up asbestos,” said Don Thompson, an industrial hygienist with the county’s health/hazardous materials control program.

There is nothing simple about the work required at Uziel’s Northridge home. Lab tests not only confirmed the presence of asbestos in the ceilings of the house, built in 1977, but in plaster from cracked walls. Uziel, who has two children, moved out, and alerted neighbors with similar homes.

A couple of the neighbors also moved out, but some “just shrugged it off,” Uziel said.

“I knew my responsibility to other people,” he said. “Sometimes you happen to know things that the average man doesn’t.”

What Uziel does not know, however, is how he will take care of structural repair and cleanup costs well in excess of his $100,000 earthquake insurance policy.