Men in yellow isolation suits and respirators padded through Zina Pikas' Sherman Oaks condominium and Charles and Barbara Maggio's Rancho Palos Verdes home last week, measuring polluted air and scraping fiber samples off couches, rugs and even a teddy bear.
Pikas and her daughter haven't been able to get back into their condo for eight months. The Maggios and their son haven't been able to go back home for six weeks.
Both families fled on the advice of health experts, taking nothing with them. Their possessions, presentable to the naked eye, are contaminated with deadly dust. Their losses will total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The cause of these nightmares is a cancer-causing substance more commonly associated with industrial illness: asbestos.
In both cases, home remodeling contractors began work without testing for the presence of asbestos in textured ceilings, insulation or floor covering--a sporadic oversight that reflects inadequate regulation and knowledge of asbestos in home improvement work, according to building experts.
Materials with the mineral asbestos become a hazard when they are in a deteriorated or crumbling condition, allowing them to release fibers into the air. The vast majority of homes older than 15 years--especially those built in the 1950s and 1960s--contain a number of asbestos products that were used because the substance strongly resists heat, fire and decay. Left undisturbed, the material poses no health threat.
Consumer officials have long urged homeowners to have a laboratory test suspected asbestos before remodeling. California regulations say asbestos can be broken up and removed only by a contractor who is specially licensed to handle the material. However, state building codes do not require a routine check for asbestos before a remodeling job is performed. The South Coast Air Quality Management District adopted such a regulation last year, but it lacks the inspectors to police contractors fully.
As a result, experts say, asbestos is routinely scattered and cleaned up in countless remodeling jobs, leaving fibers strewn throughout the house--sometimes unbeknown to the homeowner, sometimes with his complicity.
"I guarantee you it happens a thousand times a day," said Steve McCloskey, a San Bernardino County floor contractor. "There's no incentive here for the contractor to open his mouth. . . . Every homeowner I make aware of the fact that there's an asbestos risk on his job laughs at me and says, 'Well, that's ridiculous. I'll pull it out myself or I'll have somebody come in on the weekend and do it.' "
