This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

August 30, 2006

EPA finds asbestos, coal dust at Marsh Fork grade school

By Anna L. Mallory
Staff writer

Federal investigators will continue looking into potential health risks at a Raleigh County elementary school adjacent to a coal facility, but they say no one should be overly concerned now.

Bill Steuteville, multimedia enforcement coordinator with the Environmental Protection Agency, said Tuesday that officials plan to research how much harm the coal dust at Marsh Fork Elementary can cause students.

“Based on what we found, somebody may need to go out and do further work, but right now, we are focused on what are the effects of coal dust,” he said. “There’s nothing in the literature that indicates it is toxic in small quantities.”

An EPA team examined the 40-year-old building two weeks before it opened and did find dust present, as well as asbestos. However, no asbestos was found in air-quality samples.

For the past few years, a watchdog group has criticized school and state officials over nearby coal production, which its members say is making kids sick.

Now, they say the asbestos is the last straw.

“Parents are concerned about their children’s safety and getting the runaround when they try to transfer them to a safer school,” said Bo Webb, a coordinator of the Coal River Mountain Watch. “No one knew about this and they should have been made aware, even though it may have been abated.”

Webb does not have students at the school, but works closely with Ed Wiley, who is walking to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness and money to build a new school.

Raleigh schools Superintendent Caroline Hutchens said the asbestos found in pipe insulation in a school crawl space is nothing new.

And it’s likely nothing new in most schools that students entered this week.

Marsh Fork, and all schools, are required to have a public asbestos removal plan that can be reviewed anytime, said Tony Turner, assistant director of the state’s indoor-air-quality program.

Turner said schools are better than most public buildings at keeping asbestos in check, but there is no law that requires the material to be removed, he said.

“Anything from the mid-’80s back is going to have asbestos,” he said. “They still have about 1,500 products made every day with asbestos in it.

“We need to live with it because it’s probably impossible to find all the asbestos-containing materials,” Turner said.

As long as it doesn’t crumble or get into the air, asbestos is not harmful, he said.

Hutchens said she’s more wary because they’re dealing with children. She gives little credence to the group’s assertion that children are getting sick. In June, she did write a letter requesting the EPA examine Marsh Fork.

It was two years after the citizens asked for the same.

The asbestos-laden area had been sealed off for years before the investigation, Hutchens said. EPA and school officials decided it would be impossible to remove the insulation and clean up by the time school started, so crews resealed it and will wait until school is on break. They also resealed vents leading in and out of the school.

Steuteville said officials in his office weren’t concerned that children would be exposed, either.

Regardless of how insignificant officials believe the instance to be, Webb said this should be the tipping point for Gov. Joe Manchin to step in and halt simple “monitoring of the situation.”

“They need to be taken out of that school, they need to bring trailers in and let the kids be there,” he said. “You can talk about procedure and process all you want. Monitoring doesn’t mean anything, we need action.”

To contact staff writer Anna L. Mallory, use e-mail or call 348-5163.