Posted on 07/02/2005 3:36:46 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. (AP) - A huge cloud of construction dust blowing across the field where his son played Little League signaled to Lance McMahan it was time to get out of this fast-growing suburb above Sacramento.
Watching from a lawn chair as bulldozers reshaped a nearby hillside into another setting for high-priced homes, McMahan knew that the ground getting torn up and carried by the wind over the baseball diamond contained natural veins of asbestos.
"That was like the last straw." said McMahan, recalling the day six years ago when he decided his family's health was more important than staying in their foothills home of five years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently confirmed the fears of McMahan and many other people in El Dorado Hills, but also created a dust-up over property values and the pace of development in this wealthy community of 31,000 residents, where the median home price in May was $566,000.
In tests completed last October, the agency found elevated levels of a naturally occurring but particularly dangerous type of asbestos fiber at playing fields, a popular bike trail and a playground for toddlers. But the agency hasn't been able to quantify the risk to residents.
"It's bad, we just don't know how bad," said Jere Johnson, EPA's assessment manager for the site.
While the findings have led some to consider leaving, most folks are staying put for now. Some are angry at EPA for singling out their community without explaining the chances of getting cancer from inhaling invisible airborne asbestos fibers, which has led to finger-pointing and charges of fear-mongering.
"We're not concerned about it," said Tom Ellenburg, who lives in a neighborhood near where the testing was done. "We don't sit around and breathe asbestos dust. We could go out in the street and dig around in it and sniff it up, but we don't do that."
Danger from asbestos has lurked over communities worldwide for generations, largely as a byproduct of mining or industry. It was once widely used in many household products, including home insulation.
If inhaled, the needle-like asbestos fibers can cause life-threatening asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the chest lining.
Asbestos is found in 44 of California's 58 counties, usually in serpentine, the state rock. In its natural form it's considered harmless unless disturbed.
But the situation in El Dorado Hills is considered a greater threat by EPA because a more toxic form of asbestos, tremolite, is present and can be found close to the surface or even exposed.
Because it can take 20 to 40 years to develop an asbestos-related ailment, children are at a higher risk of exposure during their lifetime. In El Dorado Hills, a community planned a little more than a quarter century ago, that fact has been greeted with gallows humor.
Middle-aged residents joke that they needn't worry: they'll be dead before any disease is detected. Even their children have displayed a macabre outlook.
Some seniors sported T-shirts last year bearing the slogan, "I survived Oak Ridge High School asbestos," on the front. The back read, "Or did I?"
Terry Trent, a construction consultant who was the first to draw widespread attention to the problem, offers informal asbestos tours, getting wary looks from homeowners as he combs back tall grass looking for the culprit in the eroded embankments beyond their driveways.
"You can see how flaky this is," he said as a piece of the silvery white fiber corroded in his hand. "This whole hillside is shot through with tremolite."
The hill is above the high school and adjacent to the community center.
The EPA's Superfund unit, charged with cleaning up life-threatening hazardous waste, performed the testing after spending $1.2 million to clean up asbestos on the grounds of Oak Ridge High School.
In October, contractors in white suits and respirators spent a week simulating child's play to measure exposure. In the name of science, they slid into the bases on the ball field, pedaled and jogged along a popular trail, played basketball and soccer and gardened behind an elementary school.
Compared to areas where no activity took place, cyclists created enough dust to be exposed to up to 43 times more asbestos; baseball stirred up as much as 22 times more asbestos; and soccer kicked up 16 times more asbestos.
While the EPA is confident about its findings, it's working on a way to explain the significance of the numbers.
Dr. Bruce Case an epidemiology, pathology and occupational health professor at McGill University in Montreal who has studied asbestos for 25 years, said the huge exposure levels during exercise are enough to trigger serious concern.
Levels of tremolite measured by the EPA without any activity were similar to those found in the air of active mining towns in Quebec where blasting went on for a century, Case said.
"Anybody who's not worried about it is in complete denial. You can certainly say people are going to die and there are going to be increased cases of cancer," Case said. "I wouldn't live there, I wouldn't want my family to live there."
Before the EPA even released its findings publicly, Jon Morgan, the county's top environmental officer, issued a press release warning residents that the sloppy report "may unnecessarily scare the daylights out of every man, woman and child in El Dorado County."
The EPA fired back, saying Morgan's claims were false, irresponsible and he lacked an understanding of the problem.
Morgan went on a local cable television station to further shoot down the results before they were released. Michael Dennis, owner of Foothills 7 Television, said he ran with the program because the scope of the problem was unknown.
"Let's be reasonable here and get the truth out before we start freaking out," Dennis said. "It was really annoying that (the EPA) kept coming out with information that was scaring the living crap out of people without the science."
Dennis said he felt he achieved his goal when the EPA held its first public meeting in the community in early May. More than 1,000 people showed up, many openly hostile toward the EPA and many not knowing whom to believe.
El Dorado County is working on tougher dust control standards, but already requires developers to water down construction sites and wash tainted soils from truck tires so they don't track asbestos through town.
Some residents, however, complain the county has been slow to act on complaints of dust from construction that usually dissipates before one of the five employees certified to issue a citation can respond.
Marcella McTaggart, the county's air pollution control officer, defended enforcement efforts. In the first half of the month, the department received 13 complaints, stopping work twice until water trucks arrived to douse construction sites.
Despite suggestions from experts such as Case to halt construction, some plans call for a city of 80,000 people in 20 years.
As Vicki Summers, a mother of two, decides how she's going to cope with the intersecting realities of development and asbestos, she's taking several precautions.
She plans to have carpets that can hold asbestos fibers torn out of her house. She no longer runs fans. And she only vacuums when her boys aren't home.
On a recent night, she attended a meeting at the community pavilion, where she entered the building past a sign warning: "Tests have determined that this facility contains naturally occurring asbestos."
During the meeting she scrawled "Should I move?" on a folder and pushed it in front of Gerald Hiatt, an EPA toxicologist.
It's a question on the minds of many residents. Summers wouldn't reveal what Hiatt told her, and the EPA is not publicly advising residents what to do.
When pressed by The Associated Press on a conference call, three EPA officials would not reveal what precautions they would take if they lived in El Dorado Hills.
Would they play baseball or softball on those fields? Would they let their children play there? Would they pedal a bike along the New York Creek trail.
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
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On the Net:
EPA's report: http://www.epa.gov/region09/toxic/noa/
Bush's Fault???
Sure, why not?
Everything else is his fault.
Do a search on Libby, MT. That should tell these people all they want to know about asbestosis and the way the Gov't deals with it.
Hey, it's natural!
So is death.
But, but the ad sez' that tremolite has 1/2 the calories of a regular tremo!
With asbestos, as with free silica it isn't just it's presence, rather it is the CONCENTRATION in the air. Most people who develop asbestosis or silicosisis get it INDOORS or in work areas which can otherwise trap and concentrate it. In this case they may find no real threat because the atmosphere prvents it from concentrating.
Also the body has some defenses against it. One of them is mucus and I suspect that smoking may make it harder for silica or asbestoes fiber to get an anchor hold in the lining of the pulmonary system. (That permanent anchor hold is how they kill over long periods of time)In stone carving there are guys who are in their 70's who do nothing all day but sit outside in a hazy cloud of deadly free silica WITH A MASSIVE STOGIE CLAMPED IN THEIR TEETH TO BOOT! No symptoms of anything after 50 years of this. Other guys (who didn't smoke) but worked in a shed with a fairish concentration of dust alwys slightly visible in the air and they're dead after 20 years.
FWIW according to medical references the avarage victim of silicoses is "young, muscular male".
It was mined in Libby, it's naturally outcropping here. Construction companies alowing the dust to blow free during grading and site preparation are in direct violation of CARB (California Air Resources Board) mitigation requirements.
Once the houses are put in with lawns and pavement the remaining areas of concern can be covered with topsoil or shot-creted and the problem is then a non issue.
Ironically, the method CARB requires for analysis of NOA (Naturally Occuring Asbestos), CARB 435, requires grinding of the sample to fine powder. NOA in areas with non-friable naturally occuring asbestos now show up as hazardous and you have to use the same mitigation methods in every area of the state as in the places where the friable nasty stuff is (El Dorado Co).
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