Removing asbestos is a complicated job, but Covid-19 makes it more complicated

To review this article, select My Profile and then View Recorded Stories.

Sofia Quaglia

To review this article, select My Profile and then View Recorded Stories.

This story gave Grist’s impression and is a component of Climate Desk’s collaboration.

Just before dawn, seven men in tracksuit T-shirts and trousers piled up a glass construction outdoors on New York’s Lexington Avenue, Marcelo Crespo, a 41-year-old man with bright green eyes and a passenger, beckoned the organization to pass. to a white corporate van, giving each man a pile of protective equipment: mask and respirators, full suit, shoe covers, helmets, duct tape.

Grabbing their boots, the men entered through the back door of the building, taking the application elevator up to 32 floors to the ceiling. The day before, they had sealed the workspace like a huge Ziploc bag, covering much of the roof with plastic. Before crossing the transparent canvas, Crespo shook the scaffolding, checking its stability, drew a cross sign on his chest, and whispered a prayer that God would help keep them all safe. Warning symptoms Revoked walls, boxes and improvised equipment. Warning. Personal danger only legal.

This may have been just one scene from the film Outbreak, but the paintings took a position several months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Manhattan. When they breathed, men were still at risk of serious physical condition disorders, or even death, due to microscopic remains of asbestos. swirling in the air.

Asbestos removal staff were thought to be essential long before the pandemic. Owners are legally required to use cleaning equipment to remove asbestos every time construction, renovation or modernization is completed. Related work has even accelerated, as several cities have benefited from closing public areas to plan renovations. The city’s largest buildings reduce their total emissions by up to 40% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050 by installing new windows, insulation and other renovations to be more energy efficient.

But if the time makes sense for cities, it’s not that smart for cleaning agents, whose occupational hazards make them vulnerable to Covid-19’s severe headaches.

Judging only by their physical homes, asbestos is a useful substance: the long fibrous crystals of the herbal mineral absorb sound and resist fire, heat and electricity. In Ancient Greek, the word “asbestos” means “inextinguishable”. At the end of the 19th century, corporations in Europe and North America competed for exploitation rights. Asbestos was discovered everywhere: in concrete, bricks, pipes, floors, ceilings and sofas; used as an insulator in schools, hospitals and two arms. used as snow in movie scenarios in the 1930s, covering Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

While lying down, doctors noticed that young asbestos miners had difficulty breathing and suffered from a condition called pulmonary fibrosis. When asbestos fibers are suspended in the air, small needle-shaped filaments can enter the frame through the lungs and skin, accumulating in internal organs and scar tissue for decades. When symptoms appear, others may already have permanent lung disease, genetic damage, or cancer growth.

In the United States, approximately 39,000 employees die each year from asbestos-related diseases. Approximately 3,000 of these deaths are due to mesothelioma, an evil form of cancer related to exposure to asbestos. And it doesn’t take much: “Mesothelioma can occur in low degrees of exposure,” said Victor Roggli, professor of pathology at Duke University.

The Covid-19 pandemic makes these personnel even more vulnerable. In recent weeks, Crespo’s Facebook feed has been riddled with photos of deceased colleagues. When the virus spread throughout the city in mid-April, he said his friends shared the news of the death. of a Covid-19 asbestos removal employee almost every day: a single task for several staff members, adding links to fundraising events to pay for the funeral.

“We regret being the sad news carriers, but our dear member and ‘Local78 Shopstward Elizabeth Transito Quinde died due to complications of ‘COVID19’ read a recent article. Union delegate Elizabeth Transito Quinde has died from COVID19 headaches.

So how do you get stuck in a task that can kill you?

Crespo, originally from Ecuador, began asbestos removal paintings in 2000, shortly after moving to Queens. One day, his landlord advised him to check the asbestos removal to pay the rent. He settled for the first task that was presented to him and stood with him. said that this type of output is typical of cleaning painters, many of whom are persuaded to settle for a task in the box through close contact before perceiving the consequences.

Like Crespo, most staff in the asbestos removal industry are immigrants, basically from Latin America or Eastern Europe. The complex nature of the task encourages cleaning corporations to rent undocumented immigrants, others who are unlikely to sue if there is a problem. Problem.

“We invented mesothelioma, we invented this crisis,” said David Rosner, historian with the Center for Public Health History and Ethics at Columbia University. And those who solve the crisis, he said, “are the ones with the least power.

Crespo, who naturalized 12 years ago, looked at his organization of Latino comrades and agreed, “Americans need to do this job. “

All that brings you to picture cleaning is the cash that helps you stay there. Today, in New York, the cleaning staff earns between $30 and $80 an hour. As an operations supervisor, Crespo now receives the most sensible payment in the end from Pero after 20 years of seeing his colleagues die from asbestos-related illnesses, he believes it is no longer enough to compensate for fitness risks.

“This task is killing us,” he says.

In October 2018, Crespo helped create Amigos x Siempre Club, an aid organization for New York City asbestos abatement handlers, whose primary goal: to help New York staff get out of the business alive. users with each other on Sunday in a member’s space or in the back room of a restaurant. They infrequently used instructors to help staff expand their leadership skills, English, economics, anything that helps staff embrace something new.

Since Covid-19, meetings have been published online. I attended one of the group’s first meetings, which included about 20 men and women, members took turns showing up, while some young men sitting at the back of the room play on their parents’ iPhones without headphones.

“Welcome companions to our family of workers,” said Jorge Roldan, a 46-year-old man dressed in a cancer survivor’s T-shirt adorned with pink ties. Roldan, the group’s president, came to the United States from undocumented Mexico as a child. In adulthood, he survived two episodes of peritoneal mesothelioma. He said doctors saved his life cutting infected parts of his intestine, as he used to cut asbestos-infected shingles on the roofs.

In the encounter, Roldán encouraged others to maintain a positive attitude about their lives: “Today is raining,” he said, pointing out, “and you can stay here and complos angelesin, I sew the rain angels. “Look at the rain. ” Or you might think, “Finally, the plos angelesnts bring some water. “

Roldán and Crespo see the approach of pollutants as an act of resistance and community. Even before the pandemic, the organization increased budget through Facebook and GoFundMe for staff who became ill or died. Today Crespo expects the paintings to double or even triple. they retire to care for all the families who have lost their family support to Covid-19.

“More people have died, ” he said. ” We want their families, their children, to find a new job. “

Crespo said the risk of contracting a coronavirus didn’t scare him too much because he used to worry about his physical condition because of exposure to asbestos, but it’s yet another incentive to help others leave the sector, the existing maximum unemployment rate makes it a trap: this line of paints can be lethal, but a normal salary is almost guaranteed.

However, the pandemic replaced Crespo’s own plans to escape. After 20 years of work, he tried to download a degree in monetary analysis, taking night categories while running full-time. He’d like to be a stockbroker on Wall Street, but his main target. is to avoid doing reduction work.

“Before it’s too late, ” he said.

In 1902, the British Plant Inspector classified asbestos as a destructive commercial substance. However, in the decades that followed, the foreign asbestos industry continued to prosper. In the 1930s, the US asbestos industry was able to oppose the government’s regulatory efforts, Gerald Markowitz, historian and professor of occupational protection and fitness at John Jay College, in 1973, the United States still used more than 804,000 tons of asbestos according to the risks of physical fitness. year.

Although the use of asbestos remained physically powerful in the United States, in the 1970s the Environmental Protection Agency began taking steps to restrict its use. Recognizing the threats it poses to human health, the EPA banned the use of asbestos in a handful of products such as insulating aerosols, anything the UK had already done in 1931. Finally, in 1986, the government followed the emergence of the threat of asbestos. such as structure sites, ruined infrastructure, old buildings, popcorn roofs or places where asbestos insulation had detached on a surface, curtains had to be removed through a team of specialists. Cleaning workers.

It was the beginning of a complicated business. According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, some of the industries most dangerous to occupational fitness in the United States involve exposure to asbestos. they call the “third wave” of asbestos deaths – the first two mining waves digging minerals used to make asbestos and personnel who isolate buildings and homes, and schools in the first place. While cleaning paints are dangerous, they can also help you avoid a fourth wave of asbestos deaths.

Not all staff need to leave the company either. Some simply need safer conditions: more equipment, greater ion for staff, and stricter defense regulations at moving sites. This is the official position of Local 78 of Workers, the New York Union of Asbestos, Lead Workers and Hazardous Waste: The group, also called LIUNA Local 78 (a reference to its club at the North American International Workers Union), has been pressuring the municipal, state and federal government for decades to tighten regulations for asbestos fiber personnel. .

In 2018, I met Johann García, then advertising director of LIUNA Local 78, to ask him about career conditions. When I walked into his office, he told me without delay that it was a bad day: he had just won a call from a colleague at the hospital with mesothelioma.

Garcia then came to his table and pulled out a box of porous polypropylene suits. He stared me in the eye. ” Use it,” he says, pointing to a pile.

At first, I think he’s joking. But it’s not. He waited while I put on three suits, one in the most sensible of the other, the same kind of overlapping strategy that was used through the relief agents. Then he made me run, with the notebook and the pen in my hand, three laps. in the room It’s a sweaty job. I used to laugh normally out of shame, but I temporarily learned that it was a very serious matter for him.

“Imagine running there, all day, regardless of the weather,” Garcia said. Then he asked me to check to rip the fabric. The paper curtains peeled off gently. “Imagine what it looks like when you pick up elements and paintings at the sites of the structure. . “

The problem is not only combinations, respiratory masks, key elements of general protection, they can be a danger to fitness by themselves. Respirators are of 3 types: partial mask, full mask or motorized air purifier. To use the type corresponding to the contamination point of a job, the more protective the mask, the harder it is to breathe. In fact, researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have discovered that this device can cause cardiorespiratory fatigue, expanding the central rate to the point of a central attack.

In other words, complying with regulations does not mean that staff are necessarily safe. In addition, Garcia said that many marketing specialists are intended to turn a blind eye to behaviors that end up expanding the dangers to staff in favor of the rapid execution of tasks. entire rooms go through cleaning without sealing any windows or openings, allowing debris to spill into adjacent streets and into the air. Accelerating responsibilities reduces costs. The practice of circumventing regulations to spend early with a full-day payment has its own name: “scratch and swipe”.

“Sometimes I see staff walking around with those little white medical masks,” said Regina Santella, a doctor specializing in occupational carcinogens at Columbia University, “but those probably don’t do anything. “

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection said it inspects the sites of the structures. “The DEP inspects active asbestos relief projects and responds to court cases 24 hours a day to ensure the security of the office,” said Edward Timbers, Director of Communications. “Wherever structure and cleaning corporations can reduce costs, they will, to save money,” Garcia said.

For his part, Crespo told me that in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic he would be running in small groups of professional workers, knowing that his peers do not see anyone outside their circles of trust. He said he knew many others, people who hadn’t accepted a task since the virus started. It almost feels like there’s more work, he said, but it’s just a lack of workers: some refuse to take chores out of fear.

On a social level, many jobs are harmful and necessary: doctors, nurses and agricultural staff, among others, but asbestos removal tables may not fall at this intersection. Some experts say the legal mandate for relief is not supported by science. and possibly even backfire, putting more people at risk.

Go back to the perception of exposure. The danger associated with living or running in an isolated construction with asbestos with walls intact (no water damage, homeless falling apart) is “almost zero,” said Duke’s professor Roggli. But insurance companies don’t like to secure constructions involving asbestos, and banks don’t like to fund the acquisition of constructions involving asbestos because of a possible responsibility (if a resident claims to have contracted cancer due to roof asbestos, for example). Because of these pressures, construction homeowners tend to need to over-reduce than reduce.

“At least if you slow down, it shows you’re trying, even if it’s not the right thing to do,” Rachel Maines of Asbestos and Fire said. “It’s not necessarily a clever explanation of why to do something, yet that may be angry with them. They’re being chased, so they have to calm down. “

Although asbestos is banned in more than 60 countries in the United States, asbestos can still be used in many products, such as car brake pads and seals, roofing products, and chimney retardant clothing. President Donald Trump has continually said that asbestos has been unfairly censored and is “100% safe. “Under his administration, the EPA continued to forget the precautionary symptoms provided by government scientists and refused to ban asbestos.

“America’s failure to ban the donkey reflects the enormous strength of the ace industry and its political allies,” Richard A writes. Lemen, of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, in a 2017 study paper. “Act against the interests of public aptitude and put short-term gains before human well-being. “

And that’s business: in the U. S. , asbestos removal prices are billions every year. Large buildings can multimillion-dollar projects: asbestos relief from the original World Trade Center has been estimated at $1 million for each of the 110 floors.

As New York City strives to achieve emissions under the city’s $14 billion Green New Deal, about 50,000 buildings will be modernized until 2024 By 2024 Elizabeth Beardsley, senior policy adviser to the US Green Building Council. The U. S. , he said the effort would result in more than 20,000 jobs for engineers, structure staff and cleaning specialists such as Crespo.

Back at the cleaning site, they had finished scraping the small portion of the roof of the skyscraper assigned to them between the sky and the ceiling.

They began cleaning, pushing the scraped asbestos and ceiling insulation layers into black plastic bags, which were then placed in other plastic bags and wrapped in duct tape. Respo saw his team mark all the “toxic” bags and take them to the application elevator. hours of paintings. The men loaded the boxes into giant trucks before returning to their general clothes. Five-day paintings are over.

Crespo and his men took to the streets and, for a few moments, stood still, filling their lungs with city air.

WIRED is where it is done. It is the essential source of data and concepts that give meaning to a constant global transformation Wired verbal exchange illustrates how generation is turning each and every facet of our lives: from culture to business, from science to design. The advances and inventions we notice lead to new thinking tactics, new connections and new industries.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply