Conclusions: A System to Protect Maine’s Workers and Citizens

From our review of myriad documents and the many examples of asbestos management presented within this report, it is clear that the current approach has not served either state workers or the citizens of Maine well. The 1986 crisis at the state library and the emergency exposure abatement responses that we have documented are not inevitabilities of an asbestos-ridden building; they are symptoms of an unhealthy approach to asbestos risk assessment and remediation which is in dire need of updating.

The key problematic features of the current approach are (1) it operates on an emergency-basis to minimize an existing exposure risk rather than to prevent an exposure risk from existing. This puts workers and the public in unnecessary danger and puts an unnecessary strain on government officials’ risk assessment capabilities, which, if inaccurate, can result in crisis (2) it encourages a pattern of problem-specific building renovations. These fixes do not address the problems at their roots and do not yield substantive improvement in the building’s asbestos health (3) its safe operation presumes an institutional memory that apparently does not exist. Although contractors and state officials overseeing the building made good faith efforts at abating and managing asbestos in place, the lack of any systematic recordkeeping repeatedly put contractors, state employees, and citizens who visited the Cultural Building in harm’s way.

Despite the magnitude of Maine’s asbestos contamination, a genuinely safe and proactive approach to asbestos management is achievable. The critical first step is the development of a tracking and monitoring system. This system would keep detailed records of all of the known locations and corresponding condition of asbestos in state buildings and the history of abatement and exposure in those buildings. It is imperative that this system would be well-advertised and publicly accessible to all workers who interact with state buildings.

First, and most importantly, this system will provide for the health and safety of all workers and the citizens that visit Maine state buildings each day. This is paramount and would constitute a significant improvement over current practice. Secondly, the development and launching of the tracking system would provide an opportunity to develop and deliver education to workers about their health and safety concerning asbestos and other hazardous materials. In this way the workers and their union could become partners in creating healthy and safe workplaces. Thirdly, the existence of systematic data would allow state officials and the legislature to move out of a reactive position of only responding to unexpected emergencies -— many the result of an informational deficiency — to a more proactive place where both short-term and long- term plans could be implemented to manage asbestos in state buildings. Finally, the acts of setting up and maintaining this system will create a newfound transparency in asbestos management that will encourage more trust and collaboration between state employees and bureaucrats.
From our research it is clear that the development of a tracking and monitoring system is highly feasible. Within the FOAA data we reviewed, dozens of project reports detail — via annotated floor plans, verbal description, and photo logs — the location and condition of asbestos in every room of the Cultural Building. This information would form the core for building a tracking and monitoring system.³⁸ Additionally, it is clear that there are a number of highly-trained and knowledgeable employees who possess great technical and specific knowledge of the asbestos in Maine’s Cultural Building, but that currently no mechanism exists for them to systematically share this knowledge.
There is no doubt that the combination of personal knowledge from employees and existing asbestos records could be organized into a tracking and monitoring system to the benefit of all.

³⁸ We will be happy to share with any interested parties the rudimentary database that we constructed in the process of researching this report