Toxic Substances

Airborne asbestos fibers have been shown to cause lung cancer and other serious respiratory diseases. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that about 30,000 schools could be exposing as many as 15 million children and 1.4 million employees to asbestos. This fact sheet presents information on federal requirements to ensure that school children and employees are not exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos fibers during asbestos removal. In addition, on the basis of a sample of 15 school districts in five states--Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania--GAO discusses actions that school districts have taken to deal with asbestos problems, including (1) whether the schools are removing asbestos material or managing it in place; (2) what it costs to schools and how much financial assistance they have received to abate asbestos; and (3) whether the school districts are using the same firms to develop asbestos management plans and do the abatement work, which raises questions about conflicts of interest.

GAO found that: (1) because improper removal of asbestos-containing materials can cause health problems, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires asbestos removal only during building demolition or major renovation when the asbestos would be substantially disturbed if not removed first; (2) EPA recommends that schools manage asbestos in place through periodic inspection and surveillance and various abatement actions; (3) EPA reported in June 1991 that 90 percent of the response actions recommended in schools' management plans involved managing asbestos in place, while the remaining 10 percent involved removals; (4) the 15 school districts reviewed had removed some asbestos; (5) 13 districts removed asbestos because their management plans recommended removal, asbestos was an imminent hazard, or renovations or demolitions were being performed, and the remaining districts removed asbestos because they did not want to manage it in place; (6) there were no data available to determine the complete and current cost to address asbestos in schools, but in a 1987 analysis, EPA estimated that it would cost schools $3.1 billion over a 30-year period to comply with asbestos management requirements; (7) the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act requires initial inspection, development of a management plan, periodic surveillance and reinspection, special operation and maintenance procedures, and abatement response actions; (8) 14 of the 15 school districts employed a different contractor to prepare asbestos management plans and to perform the abatement work, and the district that used the same contractor for both functions used competitive bidding to award the contracts; and (9) the 15 school districts received $142,000 in federal assistance for asbestos abatement.