Indictment Says Homeless Duped to Strip Asbestos

It began in a soup kitchen with a tantalizing offer to homeless men to do construction work.

It ended, according to a criminal indictment unsealed Friday, in the rubble of an asbestos-poisoned building--an uncompleted job for which the workers received neither training nor protective equipment.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno called the saga “the tip of the iceberg” of a nationwide trend in which the destitute are hired to remove asbestos, one of the most hazardous jobs in the construction business.

In the case disclosed Friday, three men were indicted earlier this month for allegedly conspiring to illegally remove asbestos from an aging Wisconsin factory. Their alleged scheme involved recruiting 13 men from Chattanooga, Tenn.--most of them homeless--to go to the small, central Wisconsin town of Marshfield to remove nearly two miles’ worth of asbestos insulation from the Weyerhaeuser Door & Stile factory.

When they began work in the autumn of 1996, according to the indictment, they were assigned false names and Social Security numbers to obtain identification cards permitting them to do the work. But they were given little else: They lacked sufficient training, protective clothing, respirators or masks to do the job safely. By the time the work ended several weeks later, they also had not been paid, prosecutors said.

Over the past two years, prosecutors have uncovered more than half a dozen such cases from Pennsylvania to Alaska, according to the Justice Department. One involved the alleged hiring of high school students by a school supervisor to remove asbestos from a school; another involved hiring other untrained young men to perform the difficult and dangerous work.

Asbestos was widely used as insulation and fireproofing despite knowledge of its toxic properties. It is now regulated under the Clean Air Act as a hazardous air pollutant, and thousands of projects are undertaken each year to remove it from buildings. Studies have connected it to asbestosis, a fatal lung disease, as well as lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the thin membrane lining of the lungs, chest, abdomen and heart.

“Knowingly removing asbestos improperly is criminal. Exploiting the homeless and other vulnerable people to do this work is simply cruel,” Reno said Friday. “To those who are improperly removing asbestos and then threatening our health for a few dollars, we say this: We’re looking for you, we’re going to find you and we’re going to prosecute you.”

In addition to endangering the workers who come into contact with asbestos, improper handling of the toxic material can result in the release of asbestos fibers into the atmosphere, endangering anyone in the community who encounters it in the air and water.

Proper handling includes sealing work sites before removing the fibers, keeping the fibers wet so they don’t scatter, and immediately placing the asbestos in closed bags once it is stripped from walls and ceilings.

“Its fibers are sharp. When it becomes inhaled, when it enters your lungs, they work their way deep into your lungs, and they stay there over a long period of time, in some instances 20, 30, 40 years,” said Carol Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Browner said nine other such cases have been discovered, involving about 50 workers.

Among the other cases cited by the Justice Department:

* The operations manager of a Sitka, Alaska, aviation company pleaded guilty April 6 to improperly removing asbestos, after hiring untrained teenagers to clean up asbestos debris. He has not been sentenced.

* Last October, a West Virginia contractor was sentenced to 15 months in prison for hiring three untrained teenagers to demolish an apartment building without first removing the asbestos.

* In February 1996, a New Jersey real estate developer was given an 18-month prison sentence for recruiting workers from a homeless shelter to illegally remove asbestos from a 14-story commercial building in Philadelphia.

Workers can be trained in 32 hours, and at a cost of $1,000, to perform the risky tasks properly, Browner said at a Justice Department news conference with Reno.

“There is just no reason why any untrained worker should be sent into a building to remove asbestos,” the environmental chief said.

Of particular concern in the case disclosed Friday, said Steven Herman, the environmental agency’s assistant administrator for enforcement, is the transportation of the workers 880 miles from Tennessee to Wisconsin, “which indicates a level of sophistication that’s very troubling.”

The Chattanooga soup kitchen at which the workers were found, the Community Kitchen, serves as many as 400 people a day, not quite half the homeless population of the area, said its executive director, Mark Cardwell.

Cardwell and Justice Department officials said that not all of those hired could be located, but several were brought recently to Wisconsin to testify before a grand jury.

Most are still unemployed and have no permanent address, said Peggy A. Lautenschlager, the U.S. attorney in Madison, Wis.

The three men who were indicted, Buddy V. Frazier, Chance C. Gaines and James E. Bragg, were arrested in Tennessee and Georgia, charged, and released, Justice Department officials said. They face a May 6 court appearance in Madison.

If convicted, they face at least five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.

“When people do not have enough income to afford housing, they are particularly susceptible to the unconscionable scams perpetrated by individuals such as those who have pursued illegal asbestos activities,” said Mary Ann Gleason, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.