If asbestos is discovered in the elementary school that my sons attend, I hope that, barring unusual conditions, it is left alone and the school is allowed to remain open. Not that asbestos is not dangerous. Indeed, the Ontario Royal Commission on Asbestos, an independent investigative body which I served as director of research for four years, concluded that the exposure of workers to high asbestos concentrations has resulted in an occupational health disaster. But the current exposures of school children and other building occupants do not begin to approach those of shipyard workers or building insulation workers in the 1940s and 1950s. More important, attempts to lessen these exposures may increase rather than reduce threats to health. These distinctions should be understood before the United States embarks on an asbestos-control program costing an estimated $600 million.
The Ontario Royal Commission report
The Ontario Royal Commission concluded in its report last May that building occupants are not exposed to significant levels of airborne asbestos fibers—even if the building has friable (crumbly) asbestos insulation—unless (1) they are in the vicinity of work that disturbs that asbestos; (2) they are within the range of air circulation of work that disturbs that asbestos; or (3) significant quantities of asbestos have fallen onto building surfaces and are being disturbed. Unless one of these three conditions occurs, building occupants generally are exposed to less than one one-thousandth of a fiber per cubic centimeter. The asbestos workers who have suffered an alarming toll of disease and death were exposed during the 1940s and 1950s to 5 or 10 fibers per cubic centimeter per day, five days per week, fifty weeks per year, for many years. Thus, most school children and other building occupants probably are exposed to less than one five-thousandth the concentration that asbestos workers experienced. In fact, because urban air generally contains some asbestos fibers, indoor exposures are sometimes less than those out-of-doors.
Since health risks probably are proportional to exposure, the health risk of most school children and other building occupants may be one five-thousandth that of asbestos workers in the past. There is general agreement on this point by the Ontario Royal Commission on Asbestos, the 1970 report of the United Kingdom Advisory Committee on Asbestos, the 1983 report of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Nonoccupational Health Risks of Asbestiform Fibers, and some EPA studies. Even if children face a greater risk than that of adults, their risk still is extremely small. Someone who commutes five miles each way to a building containing asbestos will face a risk of death on the road fifty times greater than that of death decades later from the asbestos exposure. The Royal Commission on Asbestos, like the U.K. Advisory Commission before it, concluded that this risk is insignificant.
Risks of asbestos removal
Even if this low level of risk causes concern, it is not clear that asbestos removal is warranted. Since outdoor concentrations can be as great or greater than those indoors, and since air conditioning does not trap fine asbestos fibers, removing asbestos insulation from urban buildings may not reduce indoor asbestos levels. Furthermore, if the removal is performed poorly, as is likely under a crash program, the asbestos may not all be removed, and airborne asbestos levels may be as high as before, or even higher. Even when the removal is performed well, airborne asbestos levels often are higher for a short time after removal than before. Finally, removal exposes the removal workers to concentrations near the occupational exposure limit, perhaps 1,000 times the exposure of building occupants. Thus, even when removal reduces occupant exposure, the reduction comes at the cost or increased risk for the control workers. A crash program of asbestos removal may cause increased worker exposure without assuring that the exposure of the occupants has been reduced.
Monitoring asbestos
This is not to imply that asbestos in buildings poses no problem. On the contrary, maintenance, renovation, or demolition work may disturb asbestos insulation and cause significant exposures and risks for those who perform this work. Precautions must be taken to protect those workers and ensure that the building remains safe for the occupants. Furthermore, both U.S. and Ontario regulations require that asbestos be removed before a building is demolished. The question is not whether to remove asbestos, but when.
The experience of other jurisdictions suggests that a crash program to remove all asbestos from schools, or from other buildings, is likely to waste money and reduce health risks for few occupants while increasing health risks for some occupants and workers. A wiser course would be to use the results of the asbestos surveys and inspections to target specific problems in schools and other buildings where conditions require immediate action to protect maintenance, renovation, or demolition workers, or occupants. Localized problems may be solved by localized solutions: repairing a torn covering on pipe insulation or removing a small patch of insulation that is vulnerable to disturbance. In the majority of other cases, a program should be set up to record the 'location of the asbestos so that it can be dealt with at such time in the future when renovation, maintenance, or demolition requires actions. The Report of the Ontario Royal Commission on Asbestos presents a framework for determining when corrective action in buildings is required, and when it is not, that may be useful to EPA critics who seek such guidance.
The current alarm in Washington and elsewhere over asbestos in buildings, and the resultant demands for action, are understandable. They repeat some of the events that led to the appointment of the Ontario Royal Commission on Asbestos. While hysteria is understandable, it is still likely to do more harm than good. The commission termed the resulting expenditure of $26 million for asbestos control in Ontario schools "an over-reaction, albeit well-intentioned, to public concern. . ." Some work was done needlessly, and some was poorly performed, raising risks for all concerned.
There are more effective ways to use $600 million to improve the health of school children than to spend it on a crash program of asbestos removal.
Author Donald N. Dewees, a professor of economics and of law at the University of Toronto, currently is a 1984-85 Gilbert F. White Fellow at Resources for the Future.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1985 issue of Resources magazine.
