Criminal Asbestos Removal

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March 13, 2008

Many of the people who are now suffering from asbestos-caused mesothelioma came into contact with the potentially lethal substance while removing it from buildings or industrial sites. Over the years, the EPA and other agencies have developed a protocol for asbestos removal that recognizes the danger from exposure to asbestos for workers who are charged with cleaning buildings contaminated with it.

Those safety guidelines, developed to avoid further asbestos-related disease, are also built into state and local laws. Recently a New Jersey school maintenance superintendent was convicted of a felony and a misdemeanor for providing false information to a federal agent and preparing a false report involving asbestos in district buildings.

The superintendent admitted he told investigators last year he had never removed asbestos from any school district buildings while serving as an employee. It was found he had engaged in numerous illegal asbestos removal actions at one of the district’s elementary schools. He also pleaded guilty to preparing a false report relating to asbestos inside a district building in 2006.

According to the Asst. U.S. Attorney who prosecuted, investigators found areas where asbestos had been removed and gone unreported. In those areas, there was still evidence of ‘friable’ asbestos, meaning that those areas of the school were still a health threat. Mesothelioma and asbestosis are such a foreboding threat that a case of a sloppy maintenance work can become a felony.

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