The Trouble with Asbestos Disposal

Hailed as a miracle mineral because of its superior fire resistance and tensile strength, asbestos was installed abundantly into our built environment for over 200 years. However, once it was established that this undeniably useful resource was a dangerous carcinogen, Australia and many other countries enacted strict regulations for handling asbestos and asbestos containing material (ACM). There regulations created an asbestos abatement industry worth billions of dollars worldwide annually, and which will continue to generate millions of ton of asbestos waste long into the future.

Corporations and insurance companies have paid out billions of dollars in asbestos claims and have increased their reserves by billions of dollars to cover present and future incalculable loses pertaining to asbestos lawsuits. Much of the cement board that permeates Australian residential, commercial, school, and government buildings is a prominent example of such a product.

The installation and presence of these building products has caused many construction trade workers – including plumbers, pipefitters, boilermakers, carpenters and installers – to contract mesothelioma and other asbestos related diseases. Besides the construction trades, the people who live and work in buildings containing asbestos are potentially exposed to toxic forms of asbestos. Consequently, the ACM mining, manufacturing and installation industries have created great liability issues for the producers, installers, end users and their associated insurance companies.

From 1950 to 1970, Australia was the highest per capita user of asbestos in the world, and vast numbers of domestic dwellings built before 1982 contained – or still contain – asbestos.

Whereas most countries banned the use of asbestos in building products by 1980, Australia’s relatively late bans are likely to lead to more asbestos related exposures and diseases many years into the future. Australia already has one of the world’s highest rates of mesothelioma deaths, as well as many other asbestos related cancers. There late bans will feed the asbestos abatement industry and the disposal of asbestos and ACMs, as well as contribute strongly to ongoing contraction of asbestos diseases.

In Tasmania, the Australian Workers Union has developed a plan to remove all the ACM by 2030, 17 years from now. But this raises difficult questions. Will all ACM on substrates be removed? Where will the ACM be stored (nothing that asbestos never really goes away, even when landfilled).

US laws make the owner or generator asbestos or ACM a “Potential Responsible Part”, who is responsible for the cradle-to-grave liability for asbestos stored in a landfill through perpetuity. This means that when the landfill fails and must be cleaned up, the Potential Responsible Party or Parties, become responsible to pay for clean-up. In Australia there is no such regulation, with taxpayers meeting much of the financial burden for clean-up.

Let us explore the disposal options presently available for asbestos and ACMs.

Landfilling

Eventually, all landfills will fail. Modern day landfills liners last around 30 years. What happens when the liners are punctured or deteriorate?

Although landfilling is the cheapest and most convenient disposal option for asbestos or ACM, it is not the most cost effective – in the long run someone will have to pay to re-abate the asbestos from the landfill before it pollutes the surrounding area.

So what happens to asbestos or ACM when it is landfilled? By regulation, asbestos and ACM must be wrapped in plastic or a double polythene bag. Every package of asbestos must be clearly marked with a proper shipping name, including UN number, packaging group number, hazchem code and class label. The polythene bags are loaded on to a bin or trailer and driven to the landfill. The vehicle carting the ACM to the landfill must display a placard that is placed at the front and rear of the vehicle stating “Miscellaneous Dangerous Goods”. Next, the polythene bags are dumped from the height of a trailer or container into the landfill. The dumped asbestos polythene bags must then be covered with 15 to 30 cm of non-asbestos covering pushed over by heavy construction equipment.

What are the possible consequences of this method of disposal? Bags can break, allowing asbestos fibers to become airborne and migrate to the water table. An example of problems encountered in Australia with landfilling asbestos is Wyong Council’s landfill at Shelly Beach, New South Wales. Because ACMs have surfaced above its cover due to erosion and weather conditions, it will cost $12 million to clean up the asbestos dumped into the landfill during the 1970s. Also, there is no way to tell how many people who live and work around Shelly Beach have been exposed to the surfaced asbestos.

Thermal Options

There are presently three thermal options to destroy and permanently rid asbestos from our environment: vitrification, plasma torch, and Asbestos Recycling, Inc.’s hearth oven.

All thermal processes require high heat and high energy to destroy asbestos, because they need to run at 1500 to 2000 °C to glassify the asbestos. The asbestos is fed into the thermal unit for a required residence time. Following this, the end product must be cooled before testing. If no asbestos is detected by transmission electron microscopy, the end product can be recycled or sent to a non-regulated landfill. If asbestos is detected, then the whole previously treated batch must be put back through the thermal unit.

The high temperatures require substantial electricity at high cost, along with high maintenance costs on the refractory – the inner brick lining of furnace, which over time cracks and wears out due to the high temperature required to destroy the asbestos – which causes approximately 25 to 30% down time. Furthermore, the thermal unit must have an extensive and efficient scrubber system that prevents the escape of potentially harmful byproducts (e.g. furans, dioxins and nitrogen oxides).

Chemical Options

There are several chemical options for the permanent disposal for asbestos.

Soaking chrysotile asbestos in sulfuric acid for an extended period of time destroys the chrysotile, but is slow in its destruction reaction time. Once the reaction is complete, the acid is neutralized with a base, such as lime or baking soda.

W.R. Grace, Inc. developed an in situ non-thermal chemical process to destroy asbestos containing spray-on fireproofing containing chrysotile. The spray-on fireproofing (trade name Monokote) was developed and sold by Grace when asbestos was still permitted in building materials. When asbestos was banned, Grace developed an in situ chemical asbestos destruction process that destroyed only chrysotile. The process requires full negative air containment with four air changes per hour, but not high electrical use. Ultimately, Grace encountered two problems: 1) for a building with hundreds or thousands of square feet of sprayed-on fireproofing, it was difficult and costly to prove that all the asbestos was destroyed; 2) the process did not fall under the relevant US Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation; therefore Grace could not secure EPA approval for the process. (The aforementioned thermal options are EPA approved, because they do fall under the relevant regulation).

The ABCOV®  Method of asbestos destruction is a non-thermal; EPA approved mixing process that chemically and physically destroys all forms of asbestos in all ACM. The process is performed under negative air containment and employs size reduction of the ACM and high speed dispersion mixing with ABCOV®  chemicals, which are contained in a mild acidic solution.

The asbestos destruction is able to best tested, using polarized light microscopy, as the asbestos is being destroyed, allowing no asbestos to leave the process equipment until completely inert.

The process requires the negative air containment to have six air changes per hour. There is minimal electrical usage and a negative air scrubber system that includes an activated carbon filter and a high-efficiency particulate air filter that will provide six air changes per hour (as opposed to the four air changes per hour that is required for a typical asbestos abatement project performed under negative air containment.

Innovative waste treatment technologies are the future of the waste industry – not only for asbestos, but for all hazardous wastes that cannot be recycled.

Australian bans on asbestos:

1967 - crocidolite (blue asbestos) - considered the most dangerous of the asbestos minerals.

1989 - amosite (brown asbestos) - banned from building products (and from other products in 2003).

2003 - chrysotile (white asbestos).

2004 - the remaining asbestos minerals, tremolite, actinolite and anthophyllite.

Sources: Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization; Australian Council of Trade Unions

Further reading

• www.asbestos.com
• Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org)
• United States Federal Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov)
• Australian Industrial Waste Resource Guidelines: Asbestos Transport and Disposal (http://bit.ly/12EwRvY)

References

1. NSW Government: Cabinet Office 2004. Report of the special commission of inquiry into the medical research and compensation foundation. ‘Asbestos and James Hardie’, Annexure J., p.117.
2. National Occupational Health & Safety Commission 2005. Code of Practice for the Safe Removal of Asbestos 2nd Edition [NOHSC:2002 (2005)].

Disclaimer: Tony Nocito works for ABCOV®; Description of proprietary technologies does not imply endorsement by Remediation Australasia.

We would like to thank Australian Remediation Industry Cluster for giving us this great opportunity to publish our content in their quarterly magazine "Remediation Australasia."  Remediation Australasia, Issue 13.

Understanding price and cost of hazardous wastes

The first line of defense for companies is they don't have any hazardous, toxic or regulated wastes. And if they do, it is minimal, gets cleaned up and sent to a safe landfill (if there is such a thing). So they believe they are safe.

You may be safe, but our environment is not and our children for sure are not and your future stockholders definitely are not.

I have knowledge of asbestos problems, because that is my business. I am gaining knowledge of Hexavalent Chromium problems, a new business for me. I am also somewhat knowledgeable about other toxic and hazardous wastes, but these wastes are not as well publicized as asbestos due to mesothelioma litigator's barrage of constant advertisements.

The Wall Street Journal took a look at asbestos trust's fraudulent claims on March 11. Fact: Where there's money, there will always be fraud. Who knows better than the Wall Street Journal, they cover Wall Street.
With the trusts paying out $100 million a year, "There is growing concerns that the trusts will run out of money before America runs out of asbestos victims," the article reports. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.

One litigator claims that asbestos "victims are the worst corporate mass genocide in history," a very true statement.

Hazardous, toxic and regulated wastes must be dealt with now! They must be taken out of our environment -- permanently -- or the genocide will continue!

It doesn't make sense that companies wouldn't be interested in using available positive environmental technologies to permanently rid these dangerous wastes. I think corporations think the price of landfilling is cheaper than treatment. Please keep in mind that price and cost are two totally different numbers.

What happens when asbestos is landfilled: the driver who takes asbestos to the landfill must suit-up in asbestos protective clothing with respirator before the load can be dumped. When dumped, inevitably containers are going to break, allowing asbestos to become airborne. This holds true for other hazards. I sure hope you don't live around one of these landfills.

Where the cells asbestos and other hazardous and toxic wastes are stored (I used the word stored, because the waste eternally belongs to the generator) cannot be used for any other purpose. They can't be used for waste-to-energy, recyclables recovery, installation of wind farms or solar panels or to capture methane gases. The cells cannot be disturbed forever except by the inevitable wear and tear, causing exposure to hazards long into the future.

The fact is the generator's name is listed on the landfill manifest, container the waste is stored in and, in some cases, on the waste material itself.

Why do the generators keep landfilling hazards when asbestos has proven that the cost will be much greater than the price?

Zero waste, circular economy, sustainability impact the bottom line

What is zero waste? In manufacturing zero waste's goal is to reuse left over materials from the manufacturing of products, putting them back into the process to manufacture new products. Zero waste can also be carried out when a manufacturer of a product that is recyclable takes it back to its facility to reuse recycled product in the production of a new similar product. This closely resembles circular economy, but not completely, because all older products cannot be brought back for feed for reproduction, due to possible hazardous and toxic contaminants, asbestos being one.

The construction industry is continuously toiling to bring construction and demolition debris to zero waste to reduce, reuse, recycle, and salvage, but the construction industry is only accomplishing a 95% recycling rate. Again, hazardous and toxic wastes, like asbestos, are one of the problems standing in the way of 100% recycling.

Although recycling and zero waste are becoming a way of life, to get to zero waste takes hard work and constant diligent-awareness of how to avoid creating waste.

Recycling will continue to eliminate waste to the landfill, especially in the construction debris area. This was proven to me when I met the chief environmental engineer for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), Thomas Abdallah, who is faced with a herculean challenge of dealing daily with a subway system that is more than 100 years old. How Abdallah sleeps at night, I haven't been able to figure out. As I got to know Abdallah, I found him to be a "in the present thinker" but always looking to the future of how to improve the system and how to eliminate wastes, like asbestos, that are a constant pain. Abdallah recently told me that in the last renovation project he recycled 95% of the construction debris.

But the MTA doesn't manufacture; it provides transportation. So when improvements are made to the 100-year-old system, recycling becomes of great importance.

Our future is to think in terms of how nature works, i.e. re-fertilize to create a new crop, thus a circular economy.

A circular economy is going to take persistence and time to create, but it will be our environmental savior once created.

I recently met with the Armstrong flooring and tile company's Andy Lake, recycling infrastructure processing specialist, in charge of bringing used ceiling tile back into the manufacturing system. Lake arranged the meeting with his ceiling group and Armstrong's floor tile group headed by Lisa Y. Cavataio.

My observation of these two groups was that they are diligently working to develop Armstrong into a circular economy company by bringing back ceiling and floor tile to its birth for fertilizer for a new crop of building materials.

Lake and Cavataio, like Abdullah, are present and future thinkers.

The examples above are people who are environmentally conscious and are aware of the importance of sustainability, understanding what it means to the future of our environment and to the company's bottom line.

Utilities will be forced to figure out tough environmental issues

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal, a fairly reliable publication, titled "U.S. Electricity Use on Wane."

The article cites the fact that although we have more electronic gadgets than ever before "electricity use is barely growing," challenging our nation's utilities.

I am sure that we all feel sorry for the utilities, because they now have to rethink how they can find a new way to hold us hostage.

To help solve this financial problem, most of the large utilities will invest in transmission of electricity, abandoning electrical generation. This will allow them to see higher returns, because they no longer have to maintain the generating stations.

I would bet a dollar that solar panels, wind farms and waste-to-energy facilities played a role in the aforementioned reduction in profits, besides the economy and the movement of manufacturing to other countries.

But what are going to be the consequences of utilities investing in the transmission of electricity as opposed to generating it?

The utility industry is in an evolution period, it is slowly evolving from generator to transmitter (think manufacturing of electricity to landlord, renting us their transmission lines, in part, because the growth and use of new cleaner technologies, such as solar, wind and WTE). All of these technologies will grow in use and become a necessity, helping us lessen our carbon footprint, making it imminent to put them to use.

WTE is coming into its own. Because of diminishing landfill space and the problems with siting new landfills, it will become a necessity just as landfill mining will. We will eventually put a WTE facility on every landfill allowing the generation of power and the digging up of recyclables for reuse. This will lessen our carbon footprint and strengthen our reuse of recyclable resources.

Utilities are slow to change and only move when they are forced to, because they don't have to, they are our utilities. Also, they have proven to be the financial staple that pays better than average dividends. Now financial stability is threatened. Although the utilities' challenge is to generate more income, they will be faced with larger and more onerous definitive financial and environmental issue that they must figure out a way to solve by answering the following questions:

How does the utility clean-up all of their retired generating stations with their toxic, hazardous and regulated waste contamination?

Where does the utility find the money to clean-up these retired assets?

Is there enough landfill space to take the amount of hazardous, toxic and regulated wastes the retired assets will generate?

How do we head off the disaster that is going to happen if we don't find and use technology to take these wastes permanently out of our environment?

I understand that the utilities have to scramble to keep ahead of the financial curve, but the looming disaster will do worse damage. If they don't act now, they will be buried by their own toxins.

The only four things we are given in life

I teach my children that we only have four things in this world.

The four things are:

*Our health. If you don't take care of your health it won't take care of you.

*Time. If you don't spend your time constructively, it is a waste of time.

*People. If you are not good to other people, they will not be good to you.

*Our Earth, the ground and water.

Let's explore these four things.

We know if we eat right and exercise regularly the chances of staying healthy are good, but on the other hand, if we smoke, drink excessively, and over eat, especially fatty foods, we pay for it with sickness and an early death.

We know that wasting time accomplishes nothing, but if we spend our time constructively, it generally pays off.

We know that if we are polite, kind and express good will toward people, and help those in need, they will always be grateful and kind to us.

We know that the Earth is our survival. We cultivate it for food, so we can be nourished; it is the land we live on. It is our life's blood. Without it, we would not exist. A good part of the Earth is our water, ocean, lakes and our reservoirs, from which we get the pure water we drink.

Like our health, we must treat Earth with the best physical ability we can: nurture and cultivate the soil, treat it with nutrients to maintain the soils rich content, irrigate the soil with non-polluted water and not abuse or over-use the soil by draining it of its nutrients or polluting it with hazardous, toxic or regulated substances.

When we abuse our body, waste our time, or mistreat other people, the abuse of the body makes us ill with heart disease or cancer or maybe both, the waste of time catches up to us as we age, because we see what we could have done, but didn't and when we mistreat other people, we have no friends to be there when we need them, because we were not there when they needed us.

It is difficult to overcome the aforementioned, but not impossible. The key, to build back our health, this is possible with technology and modern medicine, which gives us enough time to overcome our shortcomings and be kind to other people, giving us sustainable living.

We are now in the difficult period of taking care of our earth, but not impossible. We are over-landfilled; over-polluted; have an ocean full of garbage; and global warming causing disastrous hurricanes.

Therefore, our New Year's resolution must be to stop our earth's deterioration, reduce, reuse and recycle; make sustainability a priority and develop technology that stops hazardous pollutants.

This will all give us good health, more time, and a chance to be good to others.

Waste is a perpetual and eternal problem

We all agree that waste has become a Herculean issue.

We do it every day -- throw garbage in the waste basket (if we recycle we should have no waste basket), send it to a garbage dump (an evil necessity) or to the waste-to-energy facility (best available technology for now), and send hazardous and regulated waste to a regulated landfill (not a good thing at all).

Waste, easily thrown away, is a very complex issue that is not so easily dealt with in its travel to its final destination, the landfill, which should be avoided at all costs. Waste has been around as long as man, but we are only at the inception of the desire to create a zero waste society. A great accomplishment -- when we accomplish it.

We see that waste problems, garbage, C&D, hazardous and regulated; they are quickly escalating with population growth. When it comes to waste, are we and the companies we deal with overwhelmed because technologies are not developed and used (most important word) fast enough? Are we a society of "throw it in a landfill" the easiest and cheapest way, especially with hazardous and regulated wastes? Why do we take waste from one Superfund Site and eventually create another? Does someone know the answer?

Companies are obligated by federal laws. If a public company, they are mandated by federal laws and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to deal with hazardous and regulated waste to eliminate the creation of future liabilities that their stockholders and, inevitably, us taxpayers will be forced to bear the burden of the costly financial clean-up.

I live in New York City. Sandy put my power out for five days, nothing compared to the havoc and devastation that it caused on the waterfronts of the outer boroughs. Gov. Andrew Cuomo stated that hurricanes are becoming a way of life and we must start to protect ourselves.

When power was on and I was able to get back into my office, I received a call from the largest asbestos litigation law firms in New York, asking how much and where did I think the asbestos was in homes and buildings that had been destroyed by Sandy. I figure once he knew the answer, he would contact the home and building owners to tell them they were exposed to asbestos and his firm could get them compensation (pre-ambulance chasing). I put him off to Mark Drozdov, knowledgeable asbestos consultant.

That afternoon I read an article in Waste Connections stating that Steve Last, waste management engineer and expert on landfills, said the region affected by Sandy has the largest concentrations of old abandon landfill sites in the world. Because of the amount of moisture and erosion created by Sandy, landfills could start to emit methane and explode causing injury and death.

Now you have to ask yourself, if the aforementioned is correct, what happens to the hazardous waste and regulated wastes, such as asbestos, when these landfills explode?

Corporate Leaders: Don’t Allow the Landfilling of Hazardous and Regulated Waste Haunt Us!

The holiday season is coming: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s.

I am asking the corporate leaders who claim aggressive recycling programs and zero waste to landfills to think during this holiday season in terms of zero hazardous waste and zero regulated waste to landfills.

I would bet my Halloween pumpkin that no corporation wants to admit the extent of their hazardous or regulated waste environmental liabilities or even the fact that they have asbestos or any other hazardous or regulated wastes in their facilities and/or stored in landfills, a huge negative to the corporate bottom line!

I give presentations and demonstrations of my process that stops asbestos cradle-to-grave liability and I thought you might be interested in some of the corporate feedback I received.

Environmental Manager, Major City Utility: “Our CEO will be retired by the time this comes back to haunt us.”

Senior Vice President Legal and General Council of one of the largest oil and refinery companies in the world: “I spoke to our environmental department and they said it’s not necessary to destroy our asbestos, we landfill it.” Not a wise decision.

Head Environmental Attorney for a major Fortune 500 company: “The next building we buy with asbestos, we’ll call you.” I walked away and asked myself what about all the asbestos you presently have in all your many facilities around the world?

My favorite: I was asked to speak at an Asbestos Litigation Conference. Asbestos litigation is a multibillion dollar industry that the legal profession possibly spends more money on advertisement than Coca Cola. Why in God’s name would asbestos litigation lawyers want to hear from me, when maybe I can start to solve the asbestos problem? They really didn’t. It was my turn to speak, the moderator, an attorney, purposely used up my time leaving me two minutes. I saw this coming so I rapped off all the positives about ridding our environment of asbestos. He then made this brilliant remark: “I suppose you can turn water into gold?”

 Don’t get me totally wrong, the corporate environment concerning hazardous and regulated wastes is starting to change --- slowly--- but changing.

Thus the holidays:

Halloween: If you think of hazardous and regulated wastes as Halloween with forever haunting ghosts make no mistake about it, the ghosts of these hazardous and regulated wastes will haunt the corporations through eternity unless these corporations do something about it.

Thanksgiving: It will be a great Thanksgiving in a new world when these wastes are out of our environment by aggressive corporate initiatives

Christmas and Hanukkah:  The gift of Christmas and Hanukkah to all will be technological solutions to the hazardous and regulated waste problems with rigorous implementation of these technologies mandated by corporate leaders.

The New Year: Solving these problems will provide a myriad of New Years with corporate sustainability and corporate financial stability through many generations, and most importantly, a glorious future of a healthy environment for our families, our children and our grandchildren.