Parents, Officials Clash Over School Asbestos Removal

GARDEN GROVE — After the Garden Grove school district was cited last year for failing to properly remove classroom tiles possibly contaminated with asbestos, teachers and parents are questioning whether continued construction work is being handled legally.

“I am not happy with what happened,” said Pam Calderon, an angry Garden Grove parent. “Our children’s safety is at stake here.”

A state agency continues to investigate the Garden Grove Unified School District after parents and teachers paid for their own test of the tiles removed, a test that found apparently illegal levels of asbestos in the tile.

Trying to assuage concerns, school administrators admit that their failure to discard the material in a proper manner was a “regrettable mistake.” However, they added, as the district tears down walls and rips out floors at 33 elementary schools to create more 20-student classrooms, the work is being closely supervised and won’t involve any asbestos removal.

“We can’t undo what was done incorrectly before,” Garden Grove Unified business manager Art Becker said. “But that was a different situation. Making more classes available for the class-size reduction program requires different procedures, and we certainly haven’t and don’t anticipate on disturbing any materials that may have asbestos.”

It started at Ethel M. Evans Elementary in December when the district peeled off almost 400 square feet of tattered carpeting and floor tiles to replace it with new coverings. After the refurbishment, teachers said that they spent five hours cleaning the debris from the classrooms and that the old floor materials were dumped into a trash bin near the school playground.

Under state regulations, any asbestos must be treated like hazardous waste, which involves disposing of it in thick plastic containers that must be buried at a special landfill. Removal of the carcinogenic material, which is usually found in floor and ceiling tiles and around pipes, must be completed by certified workers who wear protective gear and designate decontamination areas.

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Becker said the district maintenance workers who threw out the materials in the school bins were reprimanded. He also conceded that it was unsafe to discard the waste in such a manner. But he contended that there was no evidence that the materials had been mishandled in a way that released asbestos fibers.

According to asbestos experts, asbestos-contaminated materials are only dangerous when they are friable, or the materials are broken and its toxic fibers become airborne.

“I’m not going to say there’s no asbestos in our facilities,” Becker said. “But as long as it’s encapsulated and remains untouched, it’s not a problem.”

Stuart Muller, a South Coast Air Quality Management District inspector who visited Evans Elementary in December to check out a complaint, said there were no signs of asbestos disturbance. But Muller conceded that he never saw the remains of the old flooring that was dumped in the school trash because it had already been hauled away when he arrived.

He nonetheless ticketed the school, ordering administrators to send information on how they handled the situation and warning them that they might have violated asbestos regulations.

In a letter responding to AQMD, district director of maintenance Ron Suttle wrote: “Although we strive to follow proper procedures regarding all health and safety codes, it appears that in an effort to complete a job, we may have violated a rule.”

That didn’t satisfy parents and teachers, who found a sample of the broken tile and had it analyzed by a Garden Grove laboratory, Asbestos Inc. The results were surprising: the sample tile was 8% to 10% asbestos, exceeding the 1% permitted by federal regulations.

Even though the evidence was presented to AQMD, inspectors said they could no longer investigate because the evidence had been obtained privately, not by inspectors.

The state Occupational Safety and Health Administration, however, is still probing the matter. Cal-OSHA accepted the teachers’ sample test of the removed school tiles, saying the results present significant information.

“This is a very fair citizen complaint,” said Tom Hanley, Cal-OSHA regional director. “We’re still talking to all involved parties.”

Cal-OSHA also tested samples of the walls that had been torn down during the recent remodeling efforts. Those analyses showed no significant amounts of asbestos, Hanley said.

Unlike the December construction, in which the flooring work was completed by district maintenance workers, the summer projects are being conducted by a contractor Cal-OSHA officials deem as competent and qualified to remove any asbestos they might find.

Concerned parents and school faculty question whether the teachers and children who returned to the classrooms immediately after the December renovation were exposed to asbestos fibers. The district has agreed to have air quality tests administered in these classrooms before the school year begins.

Teachers and parents continue to visit schools that are under reconstruction to collect and test samples of the demolished material. They said they will not take this issue lightly because exposure to asbestos is known to cause cancer and lung diseases.

“I’m definitely concerned, and this something I’m going to watch,” said Calderon, who is president of the Parent-Teacher Assn. at Evans Elementary. “We demand the district keep the parents informed, too.”