Federal officials will reexamine long-contaminated locations across California, Arizona, and Nevada as part of a renewed push to prioritize environmental cleanup.

Officials plan to inspect twenty-seven Superfund sites in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii “to ensure that cleanup efforts, some of which were completed years ago, continue to be protective of public health and the environment,” the agency stated in a press release.

Legacy asbestos is still an environmental and local issue in many places.

The review includes the South Bay Asbestos Area in Alviso, California. This site includes former landfills, a ring levee, and truck yards. Two of these landfills, Marshland and Santos, accepted asbestos containing material from an asbestos-cement pipe manufacturing plant from 1953 to 1982. During that time period, wind and rain moved asbestos from the ring levee into Alviso, one of the most densely populated parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, which included several unimproved truck yards.

In response, EPA and the United States Army Corps of Engineers removed the ring levee, installed landfill caps, paved truck yards, and restored wetlands. These projects are closed, but the landfill caps require ongoing maintenance and inspection.

Cleanup efforts have generated mixed results. Although the City of San Jose must no longer wet-sweep the streets to control asbestos in street dust, ongoing deed restrictions limit property use at America Center and Gold Street Tech Center.

Asbestos Poisoning

Similar places around the country have similar issues as the South Bay Asbestos Area. The saga of the Globe, Arizona asbestos mill is a good example. 

After an asbestos mill closed in the early 1980s, a developer bought the land and turned it into a mobile home park. The residents didn’t know they were living on a toxic waste site until the EPA designated the area as a Superfund site in the late 1980s. The EPA, with some assistance from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, paid millions of taxpayer dollars to clean up the old site and relocate the new residents.

Contamination at the South Bay Asbestos Area illustrates three major asbestos poisoning issues (direct contamination, indirect contamination, and widespread contamination).

Direct Contamination

After 1971, when the EPA declared that asbestos was a hazardous substance, these California landfills probably did not accept raw asbestos. However, these landfills almost certainly accepted asbestos-containing construction materials, such as:

  • Drywall,
  • Attic insulation, 
  • Flooring and carpet,
  • Electrical insulation,
  • Roof tiles, and
  • Plumbing insulation.

Most of these materials contained chrysotile (white) asbestos. This thin, crumbly form of refined asbestos is easy to work with and also breaks down quickly. So, by the time these materials arrived at landfills, they most likely radiated toxic fibers and dust.

Many workers at these landfills were unaware that they were handling toxic materials. Until around 1980, the asbestos industry carefully hid both the risks of asbestos exposure and the widespread use of asbestos in building materials, manufactured parts, and many other items.

As a result, landfill workers usually didn’t wear personal protective equipment (PPE) which would shield them from these toxic particles. Most landfill companies either didn’t furnish such equipment or didn’t encourage workers to use it.

Making matters worse, California experienced a significant population boom between 1953 and 1982. As authorities rushed to construct schools and other public buildings, cheap and fireproof asbestos seemed to be an ideal solution. But the short-term shortcut created a long-term environmental and health catastrophe.

Indirect Contamination

As EPA officials noted, rain and wind usually scatter asbestos dust and fiber all over the surrounding area. Rain breaks down insulation, drywall, and other headed-to-the-landfill objects that were about ready to fall apart anyway. As for wind, asbestos fibers are only slightly heavier than air. Therefore, they usually float for at least seventy-two hours before they come to rest.

Once they land, since these microscopic fibers have microscopic spikes, they usually stick to whatever surface they land on. More on that below.

Landfill workers probably didn’t know they handled hazardous materials. People in Alviso and other parts of San Jose almost certainly didn’t know that the floating dust and other particles put them at risk for:

  • Pleural Mesothelioma: Asbestos exposure is the near-exclusive cause of this rare and aggressive form of lung cancer. Tumors form and grow undetected in the dense membranes of the meso layer, which separates the heart and lungs. Since doctors often don’t catch mesothelioma until it’s in Stage II or III, treatment options are often limited or nonexistent.
  • Asbestosis: Toxic asbestos fibers also burn the insides of narrow airways in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue eventually blocks these airways. As a result, the oxygen saturation level in the bloodstream drops significantly, especially since asbestosis victims have near-constant trouble breathing. Some treatments are available, but in many cases, the cure is worse than the disease.
  • Peritoneal Mesothelioma: Inhaled fibers often cause pleural mesothelioma or asbestosis. Swallowed particles often cause peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive form of abdominal cancer. If doctors test for mesothelioma and detect it early, some peritoneal mesothelioma treatments are available. However, they’re very expensive.

If you lived in the San Jose area between 1953 and 1982, and you developed an asbestos exposure illness, an asbestos exposure lawyer should at least evaluate your case and determine what legal options you have.

Widespread Contamination

As mentioned, asbestos particles often settle onto surfaces, like trucks and truckers, and cling to those surfaces. The trucks that passed through the lots near Alviso roamed all over the country, spreading deadly asbestos wherever they went.

Direct and indirect contamination have largely ended, but widespread contamination remains, mostly in the form of talc-asbestos cross-contamination. SInce talc and asbestos mines often overlapped, asbestos particles often snuck into bottles of talcum powder. Tens of thousands of these victims have already come forward in what, according to many observers, is simply the first wave of asbestos-talc litigation.

Asbestos Remediation

The issues at the South Bay Asbestos Area involve three major contamination problems and several asbestos remediation issues.

Two developments in the early 2020s transformed asbestos remediation from an attractive option into an expensive requirement. The SUpreme Court held that landowners could be liable for asbestos poisoning damages, even if they didn’t know the property was contaminated. Furthermore, owners must remediate asbestos to comply with a 2024 ban.

Asbestos remediation is not amateur hour. Only certified professionals should remove asbestos from old buildings and dispose of it. Officials in Albuquerque recently learned this lesson the hard way.

The city hired a cheap, fly-by-night contractor to remove asbestos from a homeless shelter. Twelve victims filed asbestos exposure lawsuits because the contractor didn’t provide adequate PPE. A related action claims that workers who cooperated with state workplace investigators were summarily fired.

Property owners only get one chance to get it right when they remediate legacy asbestos from old buildings. To avoid substantial liability issues further down the road, they must get it right.