EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. — The boys of summer they were not. On a baseball diamond in this upscale suburb east of Sacramento, a federal team in blue and marshmallow-white moon suits gathered last October for a different sort of game.
Respirator masks jiggling, the oddball squad hit the diamond -- batting, fielding, sliding into third. They also rode bikes and played hopscotch, kicked soccer balls and shot baskets. As dust rose, little air monitors quietly sampled what the earth dished up.
The fear is that there could be danger in the soil.
As the state's development boom cuts a swath through the Sierra foothills, Mother Nature has pushed back a bit. Veins of naturally occurring asbestos lace this territory, once the haunt of Gold Rush miners. Released into the air by a bulldozer blade scraping a home pad or new roadway, asbestos can lurk in the lungs for decades before striking with deadly force.
This small community, where Mercedes and BMWs dash past tony Tudors and Mediterranean mini-mansions, has uncomfortably found itself at the center of a debate over what to do.
Asbestos fears prompted a $2.5-million fix at Oak Ridge High School -- capping almost every exposed surface with concrete or ground cover -- that was finished just in time for the return of 1,800 students last fall.
U.S. health authorities are warning those most at risk of past exposure -- athletes, long-time coaches and others who spent time out in the dust -- to get regular medical checkups for lung cancer, asbestosis and other afflictions brought on by the spear-shaped fibers.
At the park, brooms have replaced the leaf blowers that once kicked up dust.
Now the results of last October's playground tests threaten to unleash a new round of consternation in an unincorporated community that is 90% white, backed George W. Bush in a big way and is among the state's wealthiest places, with one in five households reporting a median income of $150,000 or more.
Around here, many folks have grown weary of this environmental intrusion on the good life.
"We know how the government overreacts to everything," said Bob Close, a longtime resident who can't name a single old-timer, erstwhile high school athlete or anyone else who has contracted an asbestos-related illness. "It's the old knee-jerk thing. Forty years down the road I could be wrong, but there's risk in life whatever you do."
