SIT exposes community to air-borne asbestos

April 22, 2002 (Earth Day) — Stevens Institute of Technology created a company that removes arsenic from drinking water in Bangladesh. They have initiated a study that explores the relationship between UV radiation and skin cancer. After the World Trade Center attack, Stevens, sited directly across the river from midtown Manhattan, sent out reports to assure students that no asbestos or other harmful agents were in the air they breathed. But when Stevens Institute began detonating explosives within the serpentine rock on their campus to make way for an 800-car parking garage and the Lawrence T. Babbio, Jr. Center for Technology Management, they behaved as badly as a corporate polluter, suppressing their knowledge that this rock contained asbestos.

For five weeks, Terminal Construction Company drilled, blasted and excavated this rock, sending clouds of dust into the air and Stevens Institute of Technology said nothing. Stevens conducted pretesting of the air at this site on four days in January of 2002, thus confirming their awareness of the potential asbestos problem at that time. There is no record of any notice by Stevens to local or state authorities, to the public or even to their own students and faculty that the dust being sent into the air contained chrysotile, also know as white asbestos. Asbestos, a known carcinogen, becomes a hazard when it is airborne and inhaled in the lungs.

When news of the asbestos hit the front page of the Jersey Journal on April 12, 2002, Stevens Institute revealed for the first time that they have been monitoring the air for asbestos since the blasting began on March 11. On April 15, Roger T. Cole, Stevens’ Vice President of Facilities and Support Services exclaimed, “For the duration of the work . . . there was no health risk or danger to anyone.” But on nearly every day during those five weeks of blasting, Stevens’ own monitoring consultant detected the presence of chrysotile in the air. Four of the samples taken on two separate days, March 19 and April 8, found levels that exceeded the EPA standard that is currently being used at the World Trade Center site.

The September 2000 issue of Multinational Monitor contains an interview with Barry Castleman, a leading expert on health issues related to asbestos. In this interview, he states, “It’s generally accepted by medical authorities around the world that no level of asbestos exposure can be considered safe, and that the more exposure one has, the greater the risk. The incapacity of the lungs caused by asbestosis is the result of a multitude of insults to the lung from individual fibers. Cancer is different in that the emergence of a cancer can actually occur from as little as one asbestos fiber interacting with the cell of the lungs or another cell in the body in such a way as to start the chain of events that creates a self-reproducing malignant cell.”

During the blasting and excavation, Stevens has taken few precautions to minimize the dust. No effort was made to wet down the site in order to control the dust until April 12 when the asbestos hazard became public. Cass Bruton-Ward, a spokesperson for Stevens Institute, claimed that they were not allowed to hydrate the site because of the State of New Jersey’s drought restrictions. Representatives of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection contradicted this claim, stating that there are no restrictions on using water to control dust on construction sites. Even today and throughout this operation, workers operating heavy machinery and detonating the explosives, wear no dust masks and take no special measures to protect themselves from the airborne asbestos.

On April 15, Roger Cole of Stevens, in an effort to minimize the problem, stated, “Serpentine rock may contain trace elements of asbestos.” But Stevens’ own testing confirmed that asbestos was present in the air. Steven Okulewicz, a geologist who has studied serpentine outcroppings in Staten Island, confirmed that all serpentine rock contains asbestos, it is simply a question of how much. Okulewicz said that the serpentine rock in Staten Island, part of the same band of rock that shows up at Castle Point in Hoboken, contains about 2% asbestos.

Hoboken Planning Board has yet to receive Stevens’ application for the 800-car parking garage. Thus, there is no local approval to build this structure. Nevertheless, the Hoboken building inspector, Alfred Arezzo, issued a construction permit on November 20, 2001 that states, “install/construct foundation and parking garage.” Ron Hine, the Executive Director of the Fund for a Better Waterfront, stated, “Stevens Institute, with the City’s cooperation, has circumvented the approval process. If this project had come before the Planning Board, we would have had an opportunity to learn of this public health peril, and the necessary safeguards could have been put into place.”

The Fund for a Better Waterfront brought the asbestos issue to light the week of April 8 after consulting with several geologists about the serpentine rock. This organization has opposed efforts of Stevens Institute of Technology to expand their campus to the waterfront claiming that it will destroy Hoboken’s opportunity to finish its continuous waterfront park that is now 70% built. Stevens Institute is seeking to build at three waterfront parcels: one that they own between Sinatra Park and Castle Point Park, and two that they do not own, Union Dry Dock and Maxwell House.

Serpentine rock is a rarely seen part of the earth’s crust. About 425 million years ago, a tectonic plate collided with a volcanic island system forcing up a band of this rock that stretches along the eastern region of this continent from Alabama up to Newfoundland. There are several rare outcroppings of this rock, including one at Castle Point in Hoboken and another in Staten Island. Stevens Institute of Technology, founded by the Steven’s family in 1870, has been built atop this natural bluff overlooking the Hudson River.

FBW News Archive