Patchogue-Medford Oregon Schools Asbestos Scare

On May 29, a second school in the Patchogue-Medford School District closed off a classroom as a safeguard against potential asbestos contamination, with state officials confirming that an investigation is underway.

The announcement, posted to the school district's website in the form of a letter from Oregon Middle School's principal, Timothy Mundell, said that classroom 119 had been closed for repairs after a staff member reported holes in floor tiles.

This, after the closure of a classroom at Eagle Elementary on May 21, as anxious parents kept their children away from school after a Cablevision's News 12 channel mid-May broadcast of the asbestos danger at Eagle - programming which led to a 35-percent absentee rate and caused Superintendent Michael Mostow to call the programming an incitement to hysteria.

The station, owned by Newsday, has since defended its coverage. The reporting is based on a November 2008 visit from an inspector with the Asbestos Control Bureau of the NYS Department of Labor, as well as pictures and samples of asbestos insulation.

The inspector's visit was in response to a renovation that took place earlier in November, when a worker removed loose floor tiles - a remediation effort that the U.S. Department of Labor's OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which regulates asbestos remediation) - deemed improper, primarily because the worker was not certified to handle asbestos remediation.

The parents' chief complaint was the lag time between the original inspection and the time the information was relayed by the school district - a delay that some school board trustees called reprehensible in view of the potential risks and the fact that a television station was the first to alert parents to those risks.

Asbestos, a mineral found in natural rock formations, is not dangerous unless it becomes friable, or broken. Asbestos was used in many insulation and tile applications, including tile glues, up to the 1970s, when health officials began to recognize its dangers.

Asbestos containing materials, when broken, can release asbestos particles which, airborne, get lodged in the mesothelial tissues of the lung and digestive tract, causing a number of illness or diseases, including asbestosis, lung and digestive cancers, and mesothelioma, a form of cancer that commonly lies dormant for about three decades before producing symptoms. Once mesothelioma is diagnosed, patients are commonly given 18 months or less to live.

In spite of the November report and the television broadcast, school and state officials have declared the building safe, based on air quality tests conducted from May 22 through May 24 over the Memorial Day weekend. The district also brought in licensed firms to handle a cleanup in April.

Mostow has since urged parents to return their children to school, and a parents' committee meeting on May 31 reviewed the results of the most recent air quality tests.

Meanwhile, whistleblower Eugene Roos, who was arrested for trespassing when he took pictures and samples of asbestos insulation which supported the Cablevision News 12 report, has been released on $200 bail. Roos's attorney, Ruth Pollack, insists her client is not guilty, and was simply trying to document the hazards at various Patchogue-Medford schools. If Roos is found guilty, he faces up to three months in jail.

In response to the news report, the school board says it will retest the air quality in all 11 district schools - a move which should certainly reassure parents if done in a more timely fashion than last November.

Source: Newsday

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