Environmental Protection Agency
July 1990
Executive summary
Foreword
In Febraury 1988, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended to Congress that the Agency work during the next three years to enhance the nation's technical capability in asbestos by helping building owners better select and pply appropriate asbestos control and abatement actions in their buildings. The publication of this guidance document is EPA's most extensive effort to date to carry out that recommendation. In fact, Managing Asbestos in Place is the most comprehensive asbestos guide published by EPA since the Agency expanded and updated Guidance for Controlling Asbestos-Containing Materials in Buidlings (also known as the Purple Book) in June 1985. Based on the insights and recommendations of nationally recognized asbestos experts, this new guide, along with a new operations and maintenance work practices manual expected to be available in 1991, provides "state-of-the-art" instruction to building owners to help them successfully manage asbestos-containing materials in place.
Managing Asbestos in Place does not supplant the 1985 Purple Book as EPA's principal asbestos guidance document. Rather, based on our experience since 1985, it expands and refines the Purple Book's guidance for a special operations and maintenance (O&M) program. In particular, the guide more strongly emphasizes the importance of in-place management. The guide's purpose is two-fold. FIrst, it offers building owners the more detailed and up-to-date instruction they need to carry out a successful O&M program. Second, it informs building owners, lenders, and insurers that a properly conducted O&M program can in many cases be as appropriate an asbestos control strategy as removal. Furthermore, in some cases, an O&M program is more appropriate than other asbestos control strategies, including removal.
Emphasizing the importance and effectiveness of a good O&M program is a critical element of EPA's broader effort to put the potential hazard and risk of asbestos expsoure in proper perspective. That effort centers around communicating the following five facts which EPA hopes will help calm the unwarranted fears that a number of people seem to have about the mere presence of asbestos in their buildings and discourage the spontaneous decisions by some building owners to remove all asbestos-containing material regardless of its condition.
FACT ONE:
Although asbestos is hazardous, the risk of asbestos-related disease depends upon exposure to airborne asbestos fibres.
In other words, an individual must breathe, asbestos fibres in order to incur any chance of developing an asbestos-related disease. How many fibres a person must breathe to develop disease is uncertain. However, at very low exposure levels, the risk may be negligible or zero.
FACT TWO:
Based upon available data, the average airborne asbestos levels in buidlings seem to be very low. Accordingly, the health risk to most building occupants also appears to be very low.
A 1987 EPA study found asbestos air levels in a small segment of Federal buildings to be essentially the same as levels outside these buildings. Based on that limited data, most building occupants (i.e., those unlikely to disturb asbestos-containing building materials) appear to face only a very slight risk, if any, of developing an asbestos-related disease.
FACT THREE:
Removal is often not a building owner's best course of action to reduce asbestos exposure. In fact, an improper removal can create a dangerous situation where none previously existed.
By their nature, asbestos removals tend to elevate the airborne level of asbestos fibres. Unless all safeguards are properly applied, a removal operation can actually increase rather than decrease the risk of asbestos-related disease.
FACT FOUR:
EPA only requires asbestos removal in order to prevent significant public exposure to airborne asbestos fibres during buidling demolition or renovation activities.
Asbestos removal before the wrecking ball swings into action is appropriate to protect public health. At other times, EPA believes that asbestos removal projects, unless well-designed and properly performed, can actually increase health risk.
FACT FIVE:
EPA does recommend a proactive, in-place management program whenever asbestos-containing material is discovered.
As this guide will explain in some detail, in-place management does not mean "do nothing." It means having a program to ensure that the day-to-day management of the building is carried out in a manner that minimizes release of asbestos fibres into the air, and ensures that when asbestos fibres are released, either accidentally or intentionally, proper control and cleanup procedures are implemented. As such, it may be all that until the asbestos-containing material in a building is scheduled to be disturbed by renovation or demolition activities.