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Pennsylvania Residents Want Asbestos Waste Removed

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

By WADE RAWLINS
Residents of a Pennsylvania community would like for federal environmental investigators to remove asbestos waste from their community rather than bury it. In April, the BoRit site joined the national Superfund list, a tally by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of the nation’s most polluted sites in need of cleanup.

EPA officials listed the site because it’s in a densely populated area near Philadelphia, and nearby residents could potentially be exposed to airborne asbestos and to asbestos contamination along Tannery Run, Rose Valley Creek and Wissahickon Creek. Microscopic asbestos fibers can be inhaled when airborne and lodge in the lungs, causing respiratory problems and various forms of cancer, including mesothelioma, decades after the initial exposure.

In a June 11 letter, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania urged the EPA to give strong consideration to complete removal, destruction or recycling of the asbestos at the site, according to the Ambler Gazette newspaper.

“It is my understanding that EPA is in the process of shipping dirt to the BoRit site,” Specter wrote, according to the newspaper. “My constituents are understandably concerned that this dirt will be used to cap the site and have advised me that previous capping attempts have not been successful.”

Specter said it was critical that EPA carried out a cleanup plan that provided permanent protection to residents’ health and the environment.

Specter’s letter followed a petition drive organized by Citizens for a Better Ambler that gathered more than 2,000 signatures,

BoRit Site History

Starting in the early 1900s, the BoRit site was used to dispose of asbestos waste from the former Keasby and Mattison Company, Certainteed Corporation and Nicolet Industries, according to state and federal investigators. The industries produced asbestos products ranging from electrical insulation to brake linings, as well as piping, roofing shingles and laboratory tabletops. Asbestos manufacturing occurred on or near the site through the late 1980s, investigators said.

The 32-acre site includes three adjoining tracts: an asbestos waste pile, a 15-acre reservoir owned by Wissahickon Waterfowl Preserve and a former park and playground owned by Whitpain Township.

The waste pile covers about two acres and rises about 20 feet above the ground surface. The berm of the 15-acre reservoir was built of asbestos shingles, millboard and soil, and asbestos product waste such as piping and tiles is visible surrounding the reservoir and stream banks, the EPA said. The third disposal area, which covers 11 acres, was a depression that was filled and eventually used as a park and playground for a number of years. In the mid-1980s, it was closed and fenced off due to asbestos contamination.

In March, health investigators with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and federal Centers for Disease Control’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released a study of cancer incidence in communities near the BoRit site.

Looking at cancer cases reported in three zip codes closest to BoRit, they found an elevated rate of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs linked closely to asbestos exposure, as compared to the rest of Pennsylvania. But they said the difference was not statistically significant.

Investigators said the cases of mesothelioma were most likely due to exposures that occurred in the past when asbestos facilities were operating and exposing workers and their families. They said recent air tests near the site indicated that residents were not currently being exposed to asbestos at a level of health concern. Most cases of mesothelioma occur decades after the initial exposure to asbestos.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health said former plant workers are most at risk of asbestos-related disease. Family members who lived with workers also may have been exposed to asbestos, and residents who lived near the plant.

The BoRit site is a few hundred yards from another site where asbestos waste was dumped. The EPA cleaned it up in the early 1990s.

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posted by Your Attorney at 12:22 PM
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