Worcester, Massachusetts, School District Agrees to AHERA Planning

In a proactive move to prevent further asbestos violations at Vernon Hill School in Worcester, the city and the Worcester School District have agreed to develop and implement an environmental management plan for all of the city's public schools, as required by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) AHERA requirements.

In April of 2007, while school was closed for spring vacation, the school district reportedly used city employees to remove vinyl asbestos flooring from the school's auditorium.

Employees did not use protective equipment, seal off the auditorium, or use positive-pressure air filtering systems to insure that asbestos particles didn't get into the school's HVAC (heating, ventilating and air-conditioning) system. Nor did they subsequently clean the auditorium and impacted areas of the school to make sure asbestos fibers hadn't become airborne and drifted.

Employees also put the broken pieces of flooring - some of which contained as much as 42-percent asbestos by volume - in plastic drums and stored them under the stage between rows of lockers without marking the drums with asbestos hazard warnings, according to the complaint originally filed in Suffolk Superior Court.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, or MassDEP, learned of the problem during the same week as the violations occurred, and instituted measures to insure that the city restricted access to the work area, hired a licensed asbestos remediation contractor, disposed of the waste in a designated hazardous waste landfill, and also performed a complete decontamination of affected areas and a subsequent air quality check, which fortunately showed no asbestos residue, according to MassDEP Public Affairs Director Edmund J. Coletta Jr.

AHERA, or the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act of 1986, applies to all U.S. schools, whether public, private or parochial, and mandates that schools: professionally develop and consistently maintain an asbestos management plan, with one copy for the regional environmental agency and another at the school; perform initial and 3-year inspections of asbestos in the school by qualified asbestos professionals; provide yearly notification (to parents, teachers and employees) of the plan and any asbestos work planned or taken; designate a "go-to" person for plan implementation; and insure that janitorial and maintenance staff are provided with ongoing asbestos-awareness training.

As a result of the violations, and in response to a mandate by Massachusetts' Attorney General Martha Coakley, the city of Worcester will develop and implement an AHERA plan for all the city's schools. Failure to do so by July 1, 2010, will result in a $75,000 penalty.

AHERA is particularly important to protect American schoolchildren from the possibility of developing mesothelioma, a particularly lethal cancer of the mesothelial linings around the heart, lungs and abdominal organs which often lies dormant for three or more decades, resulting in such invasive tumors that patients are given a year to live.

The nation's asbestos legacy, from asbestos use during most of the last century, results in 10,000 deaths per year, but that rate is expected to fall dramatically after 2030 thanks to limited asbestos use after 1970 and 1989 legislation by the EPA which mandated no more than 1 percent of asbestos (by volume) in domestic product.

However, in order for that legacy to run its course and diminish, no large exposures to asbestos fibers must occur from 1970 forward - a scenario doomed to failure where licensed asbestos remediation techniques are not employed, especially among the nation's aging school buildings and their students, as has occurred at Vernon Hill High School and numerous other schools across the U.S.

Sources: Worcester Telegram, Massachusetts state website

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