Should asbestos in buildings be regulated on an environmental or occupational basis?

Our plain-English summary of Should asbestos in buildings be regulated on an environmental or occupational basis?, by D.M. Hashimoto, T.A. Brennan, D.C. Christiani (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1991).

The study

• Authors: D.M. Hashimoto, T.A. Brennan, D.C. Christiani
• Journal: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Published: 1991;643:609-13
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 004482).

In plain English

This article was a policy commentary, not a study. It reported no new data on exposure or disease. The authors compared two ways of regulating hazardous substances and asked which should apply to asbestos in buildings, using US schools as the example. The environmental approach focuses on cleaning up property damage. The occupational approach focuses on lowering exposure levels and compensating injured workers. The authors argued that asbestos in schools is a hybrid problem: schoolchildren's exposures are usually low-level, while custodians and other school employees have higher-level exposures. They described difficulties with the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA). The EPA estimated compliance would cost more than $3 billion, but less than $150 million was made available to local education agencies. There was no compensation based on strict liability for people harmed by asbestos in schools. Schools also received contradictory messages from scientists. The authors concluded that a hybrid approach was needed, including more consistent Federal funding for abatement, more objective EPA criteria for abatement, and a stronger scientific consensus on health risks.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Policy commentary comparing environmental and occupational approaches to regulating asbestos in buildings; no original data
• Who was studied: No study population; the article discusses asbestos in US elementary and secondary school buildings regulated by the EPA under AHERA
• Exposure: Asbestos in school buildings: usually low-level exposures for schoolchildren and higher-level exposures for custodians and other school employees (no fiber types or doses given)
• Main results:
  • The authors stated that only a tiny fraction of the EPA's more-than-$3-billion estimated cost of complying with AHERA was made available to local education agencies by the Federal government
  • According to the authors, less than $150 million was made available, and many local education agencies went to court seeking funds through product liability suits
  • The authors argued that, unlike workers' compensation, AHERA offers no strict-liability compensation to people harmed by asbestos in schools
  • The authors stated that local education agencies face contradictory messages from scientists about how to deal with asbestos in buildings
  • The authors argued that local education agencies get the worst of both regulatory approaches
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that asbestos in school buildings requires a hybrid regulatory approach: more consistent Federal funding for abatement, more objective EPA criteria for abatement, and a stronger scientific consensus on health effects

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