Asbestos and dismantling

January 14, 2013

(Jan. 14, 2013)

Asbestos safety measures lacking as workers dismantle buildings in disaster areas

A restaurant being dismantled, with sheets to stop the spread of asbestos, is seen in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Jan. 9. (Mainichi)

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130114p2a00m0na008000c.html

Work to remove asbestos when dismantling buildings in areas hard-hit by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake is not always being done properly, resulting in the spread of the harmful fibers.

At the site of a restaurant in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture -- a city where close to 4,000 people died or went missing in the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami -- dismantling work was forced to be halted for two months as the area was covered by sheets to prevent the spread of asbestos. Asbestos had originally been found to be exposed and to have spread at the site by Tokyo Occupational Safety & Health Center, an NPO, in December 2011. Dismantling work began in August 2012 after work to remove the asbestos, but a recheck by the NPO found that not all the asbestos had been removed, and it had spread to neighboring lots.

The company has been involved with over 100 asbestos removal projects, and it had taken all of the asbestos it could find from the inside of the building's walls. However, there was also asbestos on the exterior of pillars that it had failed to account for. Because it thought it had removed all the asbestos, its workers didn't wear adequate protection.

"There is no established method for asbestos removal. It's safe if you completely cover the building from the beginning, but customers try to keep down costs, so there are also difficulties on the cost side," said a representative of the firm.

A city representative said, "Building blueprints were washed away in the tsunami, and confirming whether or not there is asbestos is difficult." Based on waste from dismantling, the city estimates that since the quake there have been around 1,200 structure dismantling sites that had asbestos in them.

However, companies show little awareness about anti-asbestos measures. A survey in June and July by the Ishinomaki labor standards supervising body found that of 110 companies handling 122 sites, only around 59 percent said they had "correctly carried out" pre-dismantling checks for asbestos. Furthermore, only around 56 percent had people making sure that workers used safety masks.

In November 2011, asbestos levels up to 36 times the World Health Organization's safety limit of 10 strands per liter of air were found at the site of a hotel dismantling site in front of Sendai Station. According to city officials, workers had been opening holes in the floors to toss down waste materials, leading to the spread of asbestos that had been in the steel frames of the floor.

An official of the Ishinomaki Municipal Government said, "We have to rely on businesses without dismantling experience or without asbestos knowledge because of the high number of projects. Miyagi Prefecture has few asbestos-removing companies." The official also said that the city needed a new system of support from the national government.