RPS to comply with EPA standards

IU is putting together a formal asbestos management plan, said Mike Jenson, associate director of the Office of Environmental, Health and Safety Management.\nA formal plan would make the University comply with the suggested guidelines for asbestos in public buildings published by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990 titled "Managing Asbestos in Place -- A Building Owner's Guide to Operations and Maintenance Programs for Asbestos-Containing Material."\nCeilings in some dorms and common rooms in Forest, Briscoe and McNutt Quads and Tulip Tree Apartments contain asbestos with the potential to be damaged by water leaks and students themselves, Jenson said. IU recently began conducting biannual inspections and repairs on the buildings.\nAsbestos, an insulation material used in most buildings prior to 1980 when it was identified as a carcinogen, is harmless when intact but poses a potential risk of exposure when damaged. Exposure to damaged asbestos has been known to cause lung complications. \nWhile there are no laws governing the management of asbestos at universities, IU is required to comply with laws regarding asbestos abatement, which is the removal or encapsulation of the material.\n"If it's going to be abated, then the University must use licensed people by the state of Indiana to do the work," said John Clevenger, an asbestos inspector for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.\nThe University currently staffs 61 employees with various levels of asbestos licenses, Jenson said, and has spent about $9 million on abatement in the last five years, not including the salaries of the workers.\n"Any one of these 61 people is going to be able to identify when they see asbestos," Jenson said.\nThe staff is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week but can only be used for small abatement jobs, Jenson said. Large abatement work is contracted.\n"The minute you've damaged it and broken the seal, there's a potential for exposure," said Pat Connor, director of Residential Programs and Services. "But if we have (the) Physical Plant take care of it, then we totally eliminate the risk of it being a problem."\nAs a university, IU is not governed by the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act of 1986, which required the EPA to form regulations on asbestos maintenance in all nonprofit private and public K-12 schools. These regulations required the development of a formal asbestos management plan for these schools, which the EPA also recommended for all public buildings in 1990.\n"If the state mandated that all offices have to do something differently, we would," Connor said. "This material is in all sorts of other buildings."\nJenson previously told the Indiana Daily Student he didn't see liability for any potential health problems as likely because the difficulty a person would face pinpointing exactly where the exposure came from.\n"There's asbestos in just about every building built before 1980," he said in the Oct. 24 article. "It would be very, very difficult to prove."\nAll four dorms are scheduled for renovation within the next 10 years, during which all asbestos will be removed from the ceilings.