The New York City’s Manhattan Transit Authority’s recent denial of having asbestos in its Brooklyn Bus Depot is due to the high cost of asbestos abatement; the higher cost of asbestos liability, but these are not the highest cost of asbestos abatement. The highest costs will come with landfilling asbestos.
Asbestos was so widely used in our built environment for over 150 years that there is simply not enough budgetary money to meet the high costs of asbestos abatement, even though asbestos abatement is not the highest cost related to asbestos contamination. A higher cost is the never-ending asbestos litigation that pays millions of dollars in cash awards to the victims infected with asbestos cancers. But the highest cost is yet to come. What happens when asbestos is trucked to the landfill? Before the asbestos filled bags can be offloaded, the driver is required to put on a Tyvek suit, Tyvek boots and a High Efficiency Particulate Air Respirator for protection, because when offloaded, the asbestos filled bags could break, and asbestos could become airborne and eventually leak into the water table. Further exacerbating the problem of asbestos filled bags breaking is the regulation that these bags must be covered within 24 hours with 6 in. to 1 foot of landfill cover that is installed by heavy equipment. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency states: “all landfills will leak”, causing leachate and other hazardous contaminants into the water table.
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), or Superfund Act requires the owner of a hazardous waste to use methods that permanently and significantly reduces volume, mobility and most importantly, the toxicity of hazardous substances. The use of technologies that turn asbestos into non-asbestos recyclable end products are readily available and meet the requirements of the Superfund Act. Because the present cost of the use of these technologies is slightly higher than the cost of landfilling asbestos waste, the owner of the asbestos waste takes the current cheapest waste option: storage in a landfill. Yes, storage not disposal. Under the Superfund Act the owner of the hazardous waste is responsible through perpetuity for the unpredictable costs of cleanup when the landfill becomes a Superfund site.
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It is a fact that no amount of asbestos exposure is safe! Research estimates that 100,000 people will die from asbestos related illnesses each year; by 2030 there will be 5 to10 million deaths worldwide from asbestos related diseases, 125 million people are exposed to asbestos in the workplace yearly, and every year more people are killed by asbestos than road accidents.
Asbestos liability and diseases will never end until we can permanently eliminate asbestos contamination from our built environment. Only asbestos destruction technologies can do this.