Ridding Homes of Asbestos Can Result in Heavy Emotional Costs

Nancy Dyck recalls the loss that she felt last December when she walked into her Long Beach home that was stripped of its furnishings. Gone were the carpets, drapes and sofa. Gone, too, were her son’s favorite toy--a stuffed lion--and all of her family’s clothing, even her wedding dress.

Everything made of fabric that she, her husband and two children owned was gone for good. It had been bundled into an airtight container by workers in spacesuit garb and trucked to a toxic waste dump in Arizona.

The reason was that Dyck’s home, which had undergone some remodeling, accidentally had been contaminated with asbestos, the potentially cancer-causing material commonly used in houses and other buildings constructed before 1979.

“We lived and ate and slept in it, and it makes my skin crawl,” Dyck said.

Dyck’s experience is extreme, but not unusual. While much of the concern about asbestos exposure has focused on schools, airports, office buildings and other public places, environmental experts say many homeowners are unaware of the pollution danger lurking where they live.

Awareness of the problem is growing as more homeowners remodel homes built in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Sometimes these do-it-yourself handymen, or the contractors they hire, do not realize--or deliberately ignore--the possibility that the textured ceiling they scrape contains asbestos, or that the vinyl floor they rip up is composed of or bonded with asbestos material, or that the old heating ducts they replace are wrapped in asbestos insulation.

Such ignorance can lead to disaster, resulting in exposure to airborne asbestos--which can be inhaled and ultimately cause health problems--and requiring a costly cleanup by professional asbestos abatement crews.

Government agencies are slowly coming to recognize the problem of asbestos in the home. As of Jan. 1, California law requires sellers of property to provide a written disclosure of known toxic hazards, including asbestos, to home buyers. An asbestos inspection may cost between $125 and $150. A few mortgage lenders are also beginning to require professional asbestos inspections in single-family homes. Ian Campbell, senior vice president of Great Western Bank, said the Los Angeles institution is developing a new policy that may include a check for asbestos in its appraisals of residential property.

So far, however, asbestos abatement contractors say they get the vast majority of their homeowner referrals not from lenders or brokers but from heating system installers and other contractors who discover asbestos in the course of their work.

Even so, licensed abatement contractors contend that a great many unqualified contractors are working with asbestos out of ignorance or because they don’t want to forfeit potential income.

Under another new state law, all home renovations in which the amount of asbestos being removed is greater than 100 square feet must be reported to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which inspects job sites. Also, a contractor removing asbestos from residences must be certified by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

A contractor without proper certification who removes asbestos is subject to fines of up to $25,000 a day.

“I would say 10% of contractors in California are actually complying with the law,” said Joseph McLean Jr., vice president of P. W. Stephens, an asbestos abatement contractor based in City of Industry.

The proper removal of asbestos “is not cheap,” McLean observed. Removing heating ducts in a 1,500-square-foot home might run $2,000, he said, and removing a sprayed-on asbestos ceiling for “a smooth look” can cost an additional $5,000.

But asbestos experts note that a homeowner who gets his property inspected for asbestos before remodeling can avoid a much greater financial burden and health hazard. And in many instances, the best choice is to leave the asbestos where it is.

Dyck wishes that she had known more when she hired a company to put a new roof on her home last August. The roofers, she said, dislodged sand, gravel and fiberglass that fell through slats into the house.

As a result, she hired an industrial cleaning crew to clean up the mess. They ran a vacuum on the asbestos-laden acoustical ceiling of the family room, causing a cloud of dust to fill the air and migrate through the entire three-bedroom house.

After the cleaning, Dyck said, her baby daughter broke out in welts and her husband Lionel, a computer systems adviser for Rockwell International in Seal Beach, had continuous asthma attacks. They had the material tested and learned that it was asbestos.

Decontaminating the house took four months, during which the family lived in a hotel. Cleanup and restoration costs so far are about $64,000. But worse is the emotional toll that it has taken on the family.

“Ten to 15 years from now, the four of us may not be alive,” she said.