Asbestos discovered; safety of staff, students forces Health Science classes to move for removal
April 17, 2019
In the midst of the HVAC installation, the crew for Leuder Construction found Asbestos in the Health Science classroom.
Health instructor Jennifer Carda was surprised to walk into room J-04 and found a sign on the closet door where the Asbestos was found; however, no students or staff were affected by the chemical.
“It’s not a danger to anybody,” head custodian John Dengel said. “What it is, the glue that they put the tile down, the mastic, it has some kind of agent in it. We always have to make sure that everybody’s safe, so when you break it up, that’s when it starts to become a problem. It’s from the old glue from the tiles.”
According to Carda, none of the students had any strong reactions or opinions concerning the chemical as no student mentioned any issues they had. Senior Alyssa Sailer, however, did not know about the Asbestos.
“I’m not like, ‘that’s bad’ or anything because that’s what they had when it was built,” Salier said, “but I mean I guess you can see why it’s dangerous for us now since there’s a ton of kids probably going in there every single day.”
Asbestos is most hazardous when broken into particles. It can cause Asbestosis, lung cancer, mesothelioma, and other cancers, according to Oregon State University. According to Dengel, the biggest concern is the safety of the staff and students.
A main priority was to remove it as fast and efficiently as possible, and to remove it entirely.
“If it does happen to break up and we all get sick that’s be a huge problem because then the kids wouldn’t be able to come to school,” Salier said. “It’d just be a big risk.”
Leuder Construction is not allowed to handle those types of chemicals, so other professionals had to be called in for a safe removal and avoid breaking up the Asbestos. The removal is as simple as bagging up the material and carrying it off to the dump.
“[The removal took only] minutes,” Project Superintendent Gary Beyersdorf said. “The whole stigma of that is people see that and is like ‘oh my gosh, I’m gonna die.’ Unless it’s a dust, in a dust form, and you inhale it that’s where it is.”
According to Beyersdorf, the reason behind using Asbestos for buildings in the past was because it was the best insulator and wouldn’t burn, and could be combined with water or another binding material to be molded around other objects.
“Given the construction, again an older building, I’m not shocked that we would have that and those types of things in our building, but I just thought I would’ve gotten an email,” Carda said. “When you’re trying to do things on a timeline, sometimes it doesn’t always happen that way.”
According to Carda, she and her students were given a couple of days to transition to an open classroom in the B-wing in order for the construction crew to remove the Asbestos, and make sure there was adequate time for the room to be cleaned up.
“The space was great. I think they’ve been using those couple of rooms in the B-wing as many teachers transition,” Carda said. “I think overall it’s been pretty smooth.”
The hardest part about the transition to Carda was not knowing exactly what she was going to need for her classes, forgetting materials she needed, and getting back in to her classroom to grab those necessary items.
“The construction staff was really good about making sure that they were able to help us move things if we needed to get stuff, and the custodial staff has been really good at helping us with that, as well,” Carda said.