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Mesothelioma: A Killer
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Builder wants strict asbestos rules
By Sara Hooker Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Thursday, September 23, 2004
Glen Ellyn is exploring whether stricter controls on teardowns are necessary to protect residents from asbestos that could become airborne when the structures are razed.
The village is one of the suburbs' leaders in teardowns, with 358 occurring from 1998 to this August.
That's why builder and resident Mike Wilson thinks it's so important to control asbestos, a building fiber common in the mid-1900s but later found harmful if inhaled or ingested.
"When you take (358) of these things being torn down, evenly spread through the village ... you can see there's a tremendous exposure to all the residents," he said. "I think it's because of the amount of teardowns that it's important, and I think that I wouldn't personally want my kids around one of them, not even one of them."
Wilson recently provided village trustees with a video of a local building being razed and showing dust and possible asbestos particles being released into the air and drifting into a neighboring park.
While he admits he doesn't know if the building had asbestos, he said it likely did based on its age and the type of objects visible inside, such as water heater insulation and floor tiles.
Glen Ellyn doesn't regulate asbestos removal in single-family home demolitions, nor does the state, said Assistant Village Manager Curt Barrett.
He said the village follows state guidelines that mandate special removal from buildings like schools and commercial structures. Village regulation also requires builders to saturate homes before they are demolished to control dust.
"We're looking into what level of threat might be occurring in those situations," Barrett said. "I can surmise that the state has not established that link, and that's why it is where it is."
He said the village has not received any previous complaints or found research supporting the notion that teardowns can jeopardize residents' health.
The village hopes, if possible, to quantify the amount of asbestos that could potentially be released into the air during the teardown process.
Building and zoning official Dale Wilson equated the discussion to that of politics and religion: There's a lot of information out there, but consensus is not easy to come by.
For example, asbestos exposure is dangerous, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency information distributed at a village board workshop Monday, but the amount of asbestos exposure considered harmful is unclear.
"Scientists have not been able to develop a 'safe' or threshold level for exposure to airborne asbestos," according to the EPA. "Ingesting asbestos may be harmful, but the consequences of this type of exposure have not been clearly documented. Although asbestos is hazardous, human risk of asbestos disease depends on exposure."
The EPA only requires removal "in order to prevent significant public exposure ... such as during building renovation or demolition."
Wilson said he doesn't understand why there's strict regulations for removing asbestos from schools, but not from the houses next door.
"Why do we as a village care about how our kids are in a school building and don't care about how they are when they're walking around on the streets in the town?" he said.
Wilson feels so strongly that he paid $400 to have a house tested for asbestos. When the results were positive, he paid $2,500 to have it removed by professionals before demolishing the home.
While tougher regulations would come with a price, he said builders turn large enough profits to afford taking extra safety measures.
The board plans to compile a list of questions on the topic to be addressed by the Environmental Commission, a local panel that deals with environmental issues. The matter could then become the subject of public discussion.
"We certainly want to follow all of the state's rules and what guidelines scientific research shows us, and our current ordinance does that," Barrett said. "The question is how much further should a municipality be involved in government regulation."
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