Asbestos danger on Illinois’ beaches

Nicodemus confirmed this with other officials who attended the meeting.

The same year, the state contracted Hanson Engineers, a private company, to conduct air, water, and soil testing along the beach. A few months later, they reported that, while they found asbestos in 23 of 200 samples taken, the concentration was under one percent, which, the public was told at the time, was within acceptable health standards.
The one percent level, also known as the “Grace Rule” was never meant as a health standard, and, in 2004, the EPA once and for all cleared this up in this report.
The ATSDR, however, used information from the Hanson report to produce this report in 2000, which once again claimed the beach was safe. And, although the EPA has since definitively stated that one percent is not a health standard, the ATSDR continues to cite these two studies as evidence of the beach’s safety.

In 2003, after reviewing the evidence Kakuris had shown him, Camplin wrote what has become known as the Camplin Report.
The report brought up a host of issues with the two previous studies. It points out that asbestos was being discharged from a drainage pipe coming from the former Manville Superfund site. In one instance, he points out that it released millions of asbestos fibers in May of 2002, shortly after beach season had begun.
He notes that no study had been done to determine how much of this asbestos washes ashore, dries in the sand, and becomes airborne.
In his report, Camplin uses a March 21, 2000 memo from U.S. EPA Region 5 Toxicologist Arunas K. Draugelis to Brad Bradley, the U.S. EPA Superfund Site project manager, to address several problems with how testing has been done at the park, problems that linger to this day.
In the memo, Draugelis writes, “In this area by Lake Michigan, with strong winds and undisturbed conditions, you would expect not to find any asbestos fibers in the air samples, but the material is still there and the risk associated with asbestos is still there.”
Draugelis is pointing to the fact that conditions on the shore make it a difficult area to conduct air tests.
Draugelis closed his memo by stating, “after inspecting Site 2 and with my knowledge of asbestos-related health hazards, I feel that the draft Risk-Assessment of the Johns-Manville Site #2 has not properly assessed the risk to people who would use the area.”
The way tests are conducted, and especially the weather on those days, have been a continual weak point in asbestos studies at ISBP, according to Camplin and Kakuris. They often point to this field note, from the first ISBP study, which notes that samples are being taken in March, while it is raining.
Camplin points out that ATSDR studies do the opposite of what a test for asbestos is normally supposed to do. As an asbestos removal instructor, Camplin says the point is to make the test as stringent as possible, to make it very difficult for any asbestos to escape detection.
He describes an asbestos clearance test for public buildings, saying the area is first completely sealed off.
Then, for a half hour, a leaf blower is used to kick dust into the air. After that, high powered fans are turned on to keep the air moving, and the air is tested for an hour and a half.
This test, he says, is designed to ensure that no asbestos is missed. The testing methods used at the park, he says, all seem to do the opposite.
He points out that no test has ever occurred during the height of beach season, June, July or August, when the sand is hot and dry, and there are thousands of people agitating the sand, and possibly asbestos.
Camplin also points out that many tests were held on windy days, and asks rhetorically, “How do these fibers defy physics and know that they’re not supposed to blow down the beach?”

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