Asbestos News

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that was commonly used in the construction industry due to its resistance to fire and utility as an insulator. However, by the mid-1960s, it became well-known that exposure to the dangerous material could cause a range of serious illnesses including malignant mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer.

As such consequences of asbestos exposure have become more clear, state regulators and health officials have taken more steps to prevent such exposure from occurring, particularly in the workplace.

According to the Des Moines Register, a developer from Iowa recently agreed to plead guilty to charges related to the improper removal of asbestos during renovation work on a building in downtown Des Moines.

Bob Knapp, 62, has been accused in a federal indictment of overseeing the improper removal of asbestos from the building, which he purchased in 2005. The asbestos abatement project allegedly took place between 2006 and 2008 while the construction of condominiums and retail space occurred at the Equitable Building in Des Moines, according to the news provider.

The maximum penalty faced by Knapp for the asbestos violations is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the 11 charges against him, the news source said.

In addition to Knapp, a California man recently pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act's asbestos workplace regulations when he was renovating a building in the town of Winnetka in 2006.

According to a release from the U.S. Department of Justice, the violations occurred when John Bostick and his "co-conspirators" allegedly hired workers who had not been trained to properly handle asbestos and told them to scrape the ceilings of the building, which contained the deadly mineral.

The workers, who reportedly did not know that they were scraping asbestos, allegedly caused the dangerous mineral fibers to be released into the air, making them easily inhaled. The inhalation of these fibers can, in turn, lead to the development of the many asbestos-related diseases.

After an inspector from the California South Coast Air Quality Management District decided to shut down the asbestos abatement project, the dangerous material was reportedly cleaned up at a cost of approximately $1.2 million, according to the release.

In the most recent case of asbestos violations in the U.S., a company from Puyallup, Washington, was fined more than $400,000 for severe workplace safety violations associated with the removal of asbestos from a former high school and a Transportation Department building in the state.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Washington Department of Labor and Industries claims that employees of Spenser Abatement Services Inc. were exposed to unsafe amounts of asbestos. The state contends that one worker at the former high school building in Lynnwood, Washington, sought medical care because he developed breathing problems due to the asbestos dust particles.

Additionally, the workers allegedly did not have water, which was necessary to wet the asbestos materials, or a designated area to shower or change their clothes after working with the material.

In total, the state fined the asbestos abatement company $256,900 for its serious violations at the Lynnwood school and $180,400 for the problems at the Transportation Department's administrative facility in the state capital of Olympia.

The state's Department of Labor and Industries defines serious violations as those that include a significant chance of injury or death. Also levied at the abatement company were willful violations, which occur when injury or death are possible and the employer breaks a rule knowingly, according to the news provider.

These violations are particularly troublesome as the World Health Organization estimates that 107,000 people around the world die each year as a result of asbestos-related diseases.