Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

East Hampton Middle School students and staff may have been exposed to unsafe levels of asbestos.  That’s what a third-party testing agency owned and operated by Brendan Broderick (J.C. Broderick & Associates, Inc.) announced to the school board at a recent meeting. 

The Happaugue-based environmental testing agency found asbestos containing materials (ACMs) in a basement room of the school after removing a portion of the wall to search for mold.  The New York State department of labor had asked Broderick’s agency to assess the mold situation after water was discovered in one wall after a rainstorm.  In addition to mold, Roderick found asbestos as well.

However, Broderick was quick to point out that the exact origin of the asbestos has yet to be determined.  He suspects that a patching material used in a maintenance project sometime after the school was built could be the culprit.  Asbestos was used in hundreds of building materials until the 1980s because the fibers added strength and fire resistance to the materials.

Many schools constructed before and during the 1970s contain such building materials.  While the EPA notes that intact, contained asbestos poses little health threat, airborne asbestos fibers have been known to cause mesothelioma, a type of cancer that kills roughly 3,000 people in the United States every year. 

When ACMs get damaged or deteriorate, as in this case, they can become friable, making them more easily inhalable and creating a greater risk of exposure.  The unidentified material discovered in the school was found to contain 2.6 percent asbestos. 

The school is now faced with a difficult and costly abatement project as it was recommended that the material be removed rather than left in place. 

The East Hampton School District does have a comprehensive Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Plan—as recommended by the EPA—which includes inspections every six months and a comprehensive re-inspection every three years, but superintendent Gualtierri said that was impossible to check every repair made in the school for asbestos. 

That may be true but at least one school board member is worried that proper procedures were not followed during the testing and students and staff could have potentially been unnecessarily put at risk for exposure to unsafe levels of the carcinogen.  Alison Anderson questioned whether the wall should have been opened with students and faculty present. 

However, Broderick’s hole was not the only one that had been cut into the walls and ceilings.  An ongoing repair and renovations project in the school involves rewiring of certain portions, requiring walls to be open and new cables and conduit to be run behind the wallboard.  This, Anderson worries, could potentially expose students to even more asbestos.

Broderick said testing of the entire building is not required in such cases; however, the state of New York may have the final say on the issue.  New York is one of the most heavily regulated when it comes to the handling of hazardous materials such as asbestos. 

At least one parent has kept her children at home until further testing is done to determine whether or not the school is a safe environment for students and staff.  The school board’s vice-president, Dr. Laura Anker-Grossman, partially agreed with the sentiment and proposed that the basement rooms be made off limits until further testing is conducted to find out the true extent of the asbestos contamination.

The school has already used approximately $1 million of the funds acquired for the renovation project on asbestos testing and abatement.  If more hazardous materials are found that price tag could be much higher.