Asbestos on Campus: Part 1

Medicine bottle containing asbestos

Medicine bottle containing asbestos

Part 2  |  Part 3

Texas Tech University owns a large number of currently occupied buildings that are built with or contain the once-popular, but now problematic, building material asbestos, according to documents obtained under the Texas Public Information Act.

As stated by documents provided by Ronny Wall, Texas Tech associate general counsel, 97 of the 252 buildings on Texas Tech property contain asbestos, and only two of these buildings are not occupied by faculty, staff or students.

The only two buildings that have asbestos but are unoccupied are the abandoned Weeks Hall on the east side of campus and the disused Grantham Plant in north Lubbock County. The old Mass Communications building also requires asbestos abatement and is closed to the public, but it is currently being used for storage. Doak Hall and Weeks Hall will be furthered discussed in Parts 2 and 3.

Lon Mirll, the energy manager in the Operations Division at Tech, said Tech uses almost 200 structures, 75 of which are significantly sized.

But having a campus where almost half of the property contains asbestos is not as high a percentage as it may appear.

A letter from the University of Texas at Austin Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Assistant Margo Iwanski, emailed in accordance with Texas Public Information Act, stated the institution believes a vast majority of buildings on campus contain asbestos in one location or another with the exception of newer buildings. The documents obtained under the TPIA lists over 600 asbestos-containing buildings owned by UT Austin around Texas.

According to Rhonda Bartling, a senior legal assistant and public information coordinator at Texas State University in San Marcos, its facilities department has identified 126 buildings on the school’s campus as either having or had asbestos in them.

Asbestos is widely known for its use on spray insulation, but every student surveyed on the Hub’s asbestos awareness quiz knew the tiny, fibrous material has other uses too.

Lid of a container containing insulation that is 80-90% asbestos

Lid of a container containing insulation that is 80-90% asbestos

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral and is widely used to produce a variety of building materials, many of which are used today in buildings on campus and other Tech-owned property, as stated in documents accessed by The Hub.

Once known as the “material of a thousand uses,” asbestos was widely used in buildings and structures around the country, according to materials provided at an asbestos awareness training hosted by Tech’s Environmental Health & Safety department.

Paul Cotter, the asbestos compliance manager for EH&S, said asbestos is present in many buildings on campus but does not necessarily pose a threat to those occupying the buildings, depending on the variation of asbestos used in building materials. The threat level depends on whether the asbestos is “friable.”

As stated in the Texas Tech University Operating Policy and Procedure for the Asbestos Compliance and Abatement Program, the definition of friability is asbestos-containing materials that “can be crumbled with hand pressure and, therefore, is likely to emit fibers when disturbed.”

Non-friable asbestos, according to asbestos awareness training materials, poses less danger to building occupants because its bonding agent, or matrix, prevents the asbestos fibers from being released into the air and inhaled.

“We have some sprayed on asbestos – the friable type. The greater majority is, of course, the non-friable material, the materials that can’t be broken or crushed with hand pressure.” Cotter said. “Friable means you can take it and put it in your hand and crush it. When you open your hand up, dust and powder come out, as opposed to non-friable materials, which, when you put them in your hand and squeeze them, you can’t break them down, and an example would be floor tile.”

According to Cotter, asbestos is still widely used in buildings today, but it is strictly regulated by no less than eight state and federal regulatory agencies – including agencies that oversee the licensing of abatement specialists, the transport and disposal of friable asbestos and the surveying of asbestos abatement worksites.

Cotter also said new structures around campus follow state and federal guidelines for the use of asbestos, and  Texas Tech runs an aggressive asbestos management program.

“We survey all the buildings, even if it’s a brand-new building, the state requires you to do a survey of it to see if there’s asbestos containing materials in it,” Cotter said. “The state department of health services, they read the same websites I read.”

sample of friable asbestos

Sample of friable asbestos

Mike Toombs, a Tech asbestos compliance specialist, said restoration of buildings on campus that are found to be “hot”, or contain potentially hazardous asbestos, endure an expensive and careful abatement procedure. Before initiating a project that could potentially cause asbestos to become friable and airborne, his department will put up warning signs in advance to ensure civilian safety.

According to the asbestos awareness program, inhaling tiny asbestos particles can cause asbestosis or a form of cancer called malignant mesothilioma.

Mark McVay, the unit associate director for Tech housing facilities, said the lengthy and tedious process required to safely contain fibers and clean up an asbestos-containing renovation is expensive. He said asbestos abatement can add as much as 33-percent more cost to a project and usually adds an extra three weeks to the project.

McVay said his department recently paid $1.3 million to renovate about 460 windows in the Hulen/Clement residence halls.

Materials containing asbestos can find their way into the United States under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Materials containing asbestos are commonly produced in Canada and Mexico and can be labeled under other names in hardware stores, Cotter said.

“That’s why we survey buildings, and we talk about doing asbestos surveys here at the Tech campus. We not only include the old buildings that we have,” he said, “we also include the new buildings. You can go down to any Home Depot, or you can go online, and you can find products that still contain asbestos. A lot of the manufacturers are pretty sharp. They’ll put stuff on their labels like ‘encapsulated chrysotile’, which chrysotile is a form of asbestos, but they don’t put ‘asbestos’ on the label.”

About Abbie Arroyos and Alicia Keene