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Asbestos level raises concern at SOU By Amber Fossen and Sean Wolfe Ashland Daily Tidings Maintenance workers at Southern Oregon University claim the university failed to notify them of asbestos hazards in two campus buildings, and as a result may have been exposed to the toxic substance. According to Physical Plant Department employee Curtis Smolen, while the university knew two sites - the Education-Psychology Building, and the SOU Library - posed potential health hazards to workers, they failed to inform physical plant employees who work in areas that contain asbestos. Smolen is part of SOU's crew that works on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, and his job takes him into the guts of many of the university's buildings. As a result, he is worried about his exposure, and that of his men. "Our own employees were never notified that what they were working on was asbestos," Smolen said. "It worries me that I probably went home with this stuff on my clothes." Bruce Moats, director of SOU's Physical Plant, said the notification process needs improvement, but denied that workers were completely uninformed. "We may have over-looked some of the people who have been here for a while in terms of direct notification process," Moats said. "I think it's a little disingenuous to say nobody told us - we didn't know anything." University officials denied Wednesday that students and campus faculty could have been exposed to the substance. According to Ron Bolstad, SOU vice president of administration and finance, tests of the air within the buildings came back negative for asbestos. "We've taken steps to ensure that none of our personnel, including employees, students and guests are endangered," Bolstad said. The university has long been aware that the majority of its buildings contain asbestos. In the early 1990s, a state-funded inspection revealed the presence of asbestos in 32 of the university's 35 buildings. Two buildings of particular concern in the report - the Education-Psychology building and the SOU Library - were reported to contain asbestos, and asbestos-containing materials (called ACMs). In the Ed-Psych building, these materials were found in the ceiling and in the rooftop mechanical penthouse. The mechanical room of the library also contained the substance. At the time, the university did not have sufficient funds to conduct wholesale asbestos removal of the buildings, and decided instead to monitor the situation by conducting semi-annual air tests in the higher-risk buildings, according to Moats. In the Ed-Psych building, ACM was found in sprayed-on fire-proofing materials above the top floor ceilings and in the penthouse above, both of which serve as air ducts for the total building ventilation system. On March 14, the university shut off two large fans that distribute air through the building's ventilation system, and on March 15 supervised random air samplings were taken throughout the Ed-Psych building under the guidance of environmental consultant Terry Baker of Baker Environmental located in Medford. Test results again came back negative for asbestos. However, it was determined that the best course of action would be to keep the fans off, and develop an asbestos-abatement project for the Ed-Psych building, Moats said the fans will remain idle throughout spring term and into summer - when the university hopes to vacate the building and remove the asbestos. That project comes with a hefty price tag. "It's probably going to cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars to do," Moats said. "It's a fairly labor-intensive, time-consuming and challenging process." Last fall, university officials realized they did not have a complete asbestos report on file until a law firm handling a class action lawsuit against a manufacturer of ACMs requested information on SOU's asbestos situation. According to Moats, the law firm's inquiry helped uncover some of the university's missing files. "I don't know why we didn't have a complete copy of the report in our files when the lawsuit inquiry of last fall caused us to look for it. We were only missing two or three buildings and Ed-Psych just happened to be one of them. The law firm saw to it that we received the several portions we couldn't find," Moats said. "We obviously had information on the particular situation in Ed-Psych which led to the semi-annual air sampling, which again, never indicated the presence of asbestos fibers in the building's atmosphere. When the lawsuit re-focused our attention to the details in the report, we were reminded of the higher level of concern, so we invited our consultant - who was working with us on the library project - to evaluate the Ed-Psych situation." While the class action lawsuit - of which SOU is not a part - prompted the university to review the reports on the Ed-Psych building, the library expansion project unearthed asbestos concerns. "In the mechanical room, which is not a finished space, they sprayed asbestos upon the structure as to attenuate sound from escaping from that space into the rest of the building," Moats said, noting the university was aware it was a concern but did not realize the material was fraying. Workers reconnecting pipes discovered that materials from the ceiling fell off readily, according to school officials. The university contracted with White City-based Global Pacific Environmental to abate the asbestos problem in the mechanical room. According to Global's Manager Mike Ragan, SOU is not alone in its asbestos problem, but added that students are not at risk. "There's a lot of schools in the Rogue Valley that have asbestos issues. It becomes a problem when it becomes friable, disturbed and airborne," Ragan said. "If kids are in the library and we're doing our abatement work, there's no risk to them at all." The $100,000 removal of asbestos from the mechanical room was only the beginning. "As they worked their way over this big fan unit, it was noticed the material in there was different than (was) built in the vertical air ducts. As far as we knew, the plan called for one-inch fiberglass bats for sound attenuation," Moats said. "We had that tested and discovered that was also asbestos containing material." Moats said the university would work with Portland-based Emerick Construction Company to devise a plan to address the asbestos problem in the library's vertical and lateral air ducts during the expansion project. 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