Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

About a month ago, this site shared information about the latest investigation of Chicago’s Oak Street Beach, which has been examined several times by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because of asbestos contamination. In June, the Environmental News Service, an independently owned and operated daily international wire service for environmental news, reported the beach has been inundated with asbestos fibers from the Johns-Manville Asbestos Superfund site for the past 20 years.

The Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society, an environmental advocacy organization, dubbed the area “Asbestos Beach.”

This weekend, columnist Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun Times - the newspaper that initiated an investigative series about the beach back in 1997 - questioned why residents and visitors that use the six-and-a-half-mile park on the shores of Lake Michigan still do not have answers about asbestos danger at the site. Asbestos can cause mesothelioma, as well as asbestosis and other asbestos related diseases.

Marin points out that during the past 10 years, Illinois and federal officials have assured people the Illinois Beach State Park is safe, even though internal documents from the EPA indicate serious concerns about the area, and a 2006 study shows “significantly elevated” levels of asbestos at the park.

In 2007, she reports, the EPA’s Environmental Response Center conducted another test of the area. EPA personnel in haz-mat gear, including full respirators, stirred up the sand with typical beach activities like volleyball and games of Frisbee, she said, to measure the amounts of asbestos fibers released into the air. Nearly a year later, there still are no definitive answers.

Summer is in full swing, and the beach is open for business. Meanwhile the EPA acknowledges “low levels of potential asbestos exposure for recreational users,” Marin reports, but the full report will not be available until August, “when … beach season will be all but over for another year.”

Too little, too late, again?

Tags: asbestos, Chicago, Environmental Protection Agency, Johns-Manville Asbestos Superfund site, mesothelioma, Oak Street Beach

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.