If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

We thought asbestos was a miracle mineral. It protected from fire, served as thermal and electrical insulation and was great as a binding agent to keep concrete and plasters and plastics from crumbling. It was impervious to acids and alkali.

Asbestos was used with abandon. As recently as the 1970s a company inspecting school buildings in the Smethport School District, with an eye to having some closed and a new elementary school built, noted that some of them did not have enough asbestos.

The homes of the wealthy had lots of asbestos in them. Not everyone could afford so much safety, but those who could wanted asbestos put around furnaces and ductwork and in plaster. It was even incorporated in Celotex, and mixed into concrete to make construction board..

There was asbestos in floor tile, asbestos around wiring, asbestos in caulk, asbestos in mastic, asbestos in linoleum, asbestos in chalk board, asbestos in brakes, asbestos in roofing, asbestos in siding.

While the Arnold School was still a high school, fire walls were installed in a number of areas, around the furnaces and in stair wells. Later I observed similar precautions being taken in Portville and Friendship, Olean and Wellsville.

I was working as a reporter, and had no idea I’d ever be involved in asbestos hazard control. I didn’t know it was a hazard! Then I began to read the serialized version of Paul Brodeur’s “Expendable Americans.” It was running in the “New Yorker.”

It was about Pittsburgh Corning’s ill fated adventure with Unibestos, here and in Tyler, Texas.  Turns out that it was not universally known that asbestos was, literally, a killer. It was known in the industry. It was known in South Africa where mining it paid well but doomed the miners. It was known at Cape Asbestos, near London, England, and known by NIOSH and by Johns Manville and other companies , but there was a lot of denial, and protracted stonewalling.

I read Brodeur’s detailed, meticulously researched exposé with growing horror. Living and working in western New York, I was not near the industry. But Port Allegany was my home town, and I had family and friends here.

Little did I know that I would become involved in asbestos hazard control. But some years later I married another former resident of the Port Allegany area, and he and I and Ed and Loraine Harrington formed an asbestos consulting company.

When I was getting my training at Temple University School of Engineering, I was something of a curiosity. A clinically blind building inspector—yeah, right! She walks into walls, for goodness sakes.

But, I pointed out, I also have poor balance, and with one thing and another, I touch a lot, getting my bearings and finding my way around. The test for friability is hand pressure, isn’t it?

A blind person doing oversight. Great idea, huh! But, I argued, my white cane would go with my white Tyvek outfit. Besides, oversee, overlook, aren’t those about the same thing?

There was nothing in the regs saying asbestos building inspectors, management planners and  project designers had to have good eyesight. So for quite a few years that was the kind of work I was involved in, ably assisted by my sister. Her husband also obtained the requisite licenses and worked for the company, Thuro-Care Consulting.  The company had clients in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Texas. We did some asbestos hazard control in this area, too, with clients including Cameron County School District, IU9’s scattered instructional spaces and Bradford Children’s Home.

We did not do the asbestos consulting and abatement work in Port Allegany schools and in the McKean County old jail and the Court House. We did assist with getting the lab work done that showed there was asbestos there, while some school and county officials were insisting there wasn’t.

The best thing to do then would have been to find and get rid of all the asbestos. Sometimes it was all found, but the removal was done in phases, as opportunity and money were available. Sometimes part of the asbestos inventory was just kept on record, to be dealt with later, and maybe it was almost forgotten. But as long as asbestos is there, it can become a problem.

Thus asbestos over the auditorium ceiling keeps maintenance workers from servicing the ventilation fans, and no one wants noisy fans in the aud unless they are highly enthusiastic audience members applauding and cheering. Asbestos keeps other work from being done, such as upgrading sound and lighting systems, or even installing air conditioning. In order to perform those upgrades, asbestos abatement would have to be handled. Too costly. Those bids were rejected, two summers back.

When all the asbestos was supposed to be found, in the Court House, it wasn’t. Now when some HVAC upgrades are about to be commenced, for comfort and efficiency, in much of the building accessed by the public and worked in by our elected and appointed officials, asbestos thermal insulation has been discovered on about 1,000 feet of pipes.

Talk about unintended consequences! At some time in the distant past, county officials decided that there really should be insulation on those pipes, and they wanted something effective and durable. I picture them saying with satisfaction, “This costs quite a lot, but it is a good investment. This asbestos will last forever!”

Well, it should be taken out. Just like the stuff over the auditorium ceiling. Why keep it? Someday there will be a necessity to breach that ceiling. A pipe failure will occur between the Court House stories, a fire may affect part of the building, a tree limb may come crashing down.

Overwrapping the asbestos is better than leaving it exposed, but not cheap at $29 a foot. Taking it the heck out of there would be much better. Removal, disposal, and replacing with 1,000 feet of something safe would cost more, but would be a permanent fix.

Peace.