The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News March 18, 2005

Inspector fears for asbestos danger
Asbestos present in Jones
 
It’s no stranger: Asbestos exposed in the Jones Field House has local health and safety inspectors concerned. The College has allegedly been slow to remedy the situation.
 

Exposed asbestos in the Jones Field House could pose a significant health risk to the employees and students who use the facilities according to Art Fruner, an Oberlin health and safety inspector. According to him, the College’s facilities department has done little to address the problem in the last year.

“To not do anything about this is just negligent,” said Fruner, who has also worked as an electrician at Oberlin for five years.

The problem first came to the attention of the College last May, shortly before commencement week, when employees noticed that the cloth insulation around the ceiling pipes had begun to tear, exposing asbestos insulation to the air.

“The asbestos became exposed after wind blew some windows in during a storm,” said Eric McMillion, the associate executive director of facilities.

The Jones Field House is an athletics facility commonly used by the soccer and lacrosse teams for practices.

Asbestos is a fire repellent that was commonly used in construction until the 1980s. It has been proven to cause two types of lung cancer in workers who breath in the dust it causes when exposed to air.

“There’s asbestos in many of our buildings and it’s completely safe,” said Mike Will, director of facilities and acting director of environmental health and safety. “When it becomes exposed appropriate steps are taken to abate it.”

When the exposed insulation tested positive for asbestos containing material, the College took the necessary steps to address the problem.

“Some of the asbestos around the pipe elbows had been disturbed by wind damage and needed to be abated,” McMillion said. “Some of the fabric in other areas has torn but an asbestos consultant came out to review the site and said that because of the location of the pipes it was not a danger.”

Fruner is not satisfied by this explanation.

“There’s still asbestos exposed in several places,” he said. “They keep telling me that it’s in the next budget but nothing ever gets done.”

Will acknowledged these complaints but did not believe the College had avoided any action.

“We had the consultant come here and we abated around the elbows,” he said. “We didn’t feel, based on the consultant’s direction, that we needed to do anything with it. If we were told that we needed to abate it we would have. However, [Fruner] feels that it is a safety issue and continues to be.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandates that certain actions be taken when exposed or “friable” asbestos is discovered.

“Whenever there is friable asbestos, the minimum you’re required to do is post about it,” said former safety inspector Cheryl Wolff-Cragin.

In light of this, Fruner took the steps of putting up signs himself. According to him, all the signs but one have been taken down. He does not know by whom.

“Those signs should never have been there in the first place,” said McMillion. “There is no danger.”

Neither McMillion nor Will had any knowledge of the signs being removed.

OSHA regulations also require that workers who have been exposed to asbestos be tested for lung damage.

“I got tested for asbestos at my last job,” said Fruner, who worked in construction before coming to Oberlin, “but I haven’t been tested since I came here.”

Fruner feels the asbestos issue is indicative of a larger disregard for worker safety at Oberlin.

“It seems like this administration just doesn’t care about health and safety,” he said. “Asbestos is very basic knowledge for this field.”

A large part of Fruner’s criticism is the fact that Will has been acting director of safety for three years in addition to his duties as facilities director.

“There has been discussion of hiring someone permanent but we are currently under a hiring freeze,” Will said. “What I do in the acting position is follow OSHA compliance. Of course I’m not always up on everything in the health and safety area.”

Will also defended the College’s commitment to worker safety.

“Anything dealing with employee health or safety we take seriously,” he said. “We don’t play around with the health and safety of people both because of their personal protection as well as liability for the College.”

But to Fruner, who says he only went public with his concerns after several attempts to bring them to the attention of his department, the insulation hanging down off the pipes in the Field House represents a larger failure of College governance.

“This really shouldn’t be my responsibility,” he said.
 
 

   


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