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Parents of 2 Teenagers Wage Lonely Fight With School Over Asbestos

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ruth Sheehan says her family moved to this isolated Upper Peninsula village near Lake Superior in search of peace, safety and neighborliness.

Now she says they are outcasts, targets of obscene taunts and cold stares. The reason: asbestos.

Sheehan and her husband, Michael, have filed a lawsuit alleging their teenage daughters were ordered to remove and reinstall asbestos ceiling tiles during a summer work project at the elementary school.

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“It’s stressing us out unbelievably,” Ruth Sheehan says, sifting through a stack of legal documents on her kitchen table. “This is a horrible time for this family.”

The Sheehans contend the girls were exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos fibers, which were widely used as insulation before they were linked to respiratory illnesses and even cancer.

Theirs is one of several recent cases nationwide involving allegations that teens, homeless people and others were used to remove asbestos without proper training or equipment. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno last year announced a federal crackdown on the practice.

The Sheehans sued the White Pine school district last summer. They notified state inspectors, who fined the district $5,875 for violations of asbestos regulations, none pertaining directly to the Sheehans’ daughters. Federal officials are investigating as well.

Critics believe the Sheehans are exaggerating the problem and causing even more trouble for White Pine, a one-time company town whose 800 people have struggled since the local copper mine closed in 1995, taking most of the jobs with it.

Girls’ Family May Leave Town

Ruth Sheehan contends the elementary school should be closed. She has withdrawn her children from the White Pine system and says the family may leave town. The pressure has caused her husband to leave his job doing demolition work at the former copper mine, she says; he now works for a scrap-recycling company in neighboring Wisconsin and comes home only on weekends.

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“Most people have been completely rude to us,” she said. “A lot of people think I’m lying, I’m greedy, I’m a rabble-rouser. Well, I didn’t make up one bit of this. It’s about schoolkids in danger.”

Chuck Blezek, who has operated the pharmacy in the village mall for 27 years, says: “They have a right to be concerned, certainly. But grounds for a lawsuit, no.”

The Sheehans say their daughters worked on orders from White Pine Supt. John Valesano. He would not discuss his role in detail but he denied wrongdoing. He said he believes the student workers were in no danger.

“I believe most people in the community feel that the school district would never do anything to harm a child in any way,” Valesano said.

The Sheehan family moved to White Pine from Denver six years ago. Ruth Sheehan says her daughter Christina, then 14, got a summer custodial job at the elementary school in 1996 under a state program for low-income youths. The next summer she was joined by her sister Jamie, a year younger.

Among their assigned chores, their mother says, was removing ceiling tiles from a storage area called the “cold room” and using them to mend leak-damaged areas elsewhere in the building. In some cases, that meant cutting the tiles.

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“They would come home and just be covered with dust and dirt, and they were making comments about when they were taking the ceiling tiles out, all this stuff coming down in their faces.”

Federal and State Agencies Levy Fines

Then one day, Ruth Sheehan says, someone mentioned that the tiles contained asbestos.

She rushed to examine the school’s asbestos management records, then contacted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Michigan’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Both sent inspectors to the elementary school and the nearby high school in July.

The state OSHA issues citations for regulatory violations that occur no more than six months before an investigation begins. In a Sept. 11 letter to Valesano, the agency said it was fining the school district for 10 such infractions. Others happened before the six-month period, it said.

Fines were levied for, among other things, inadequate training for asbestos workers; failure to provide them with respirators, protective clothing or a decontamination area; improper removal methods.

Inspectors did not confirm Ruth Sheehan’s allegations about her daughters, in part because Jamie was too upset to be interviewed, Bill DeLiefde, a regional OSHA supervisor, said. But they did confirm that one other student had worked with ceiling tiles in 1995, he said.

The investigation also found that Sheila Cottenham, head cook at the school, had done housekeeping work in the contaminated area without proper training, DeLiefde said.

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Cottenham said in a phone interview that she had worked with the Sheehans’ daughters at the school but declined further comment.

Kalmin Smith, deputy director of the Department of Consumer and Industry Services, which includes OSHA, says he knows of no similar case in the state and believes there was no willful negligence in the White Pine case.

“The conclusion of our people was that this was a mistake by people who didn’t know any better,” Smith said.

The school board is appealing the fines. The two sides are trying to negotiate a settlement, Smith said. “I can’t imagine school superintendents or any other competent adult plotting to expose children to some dangerous material.”

Elsewhere, though, a federal jury last year convicted a former school superintendent in New Bethlehem, Pa., of using students and other volunteers to dispose of asbestos tiles. He was put on probation.

In January three men were sentenced to prison in Madison, Wis., for hiring inadequately trained homeless workers to remove asbestos material from a factory.

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No date has been set for hearing the Sheehans’ lawsuit, which seeks more than $25,000 in damages.

Dea Zimmerman, a specialist with the EPA, says the federal investigation of White Pine continues.

Valesano says professionals were called in last August to remove all asbestos tiles from occupied areas of the school and to clean exposed areas.

Mike Sanders, a school board member with children in both buildings, says he’s confident they are safe. In a town that has lost so much, he says, people feel strongly about preserving the schools, where enrollment has dwindled from 600 in the 1970s to about 150 this year.

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