By RIK STEVENS
MILTON - The General Electric co. Tuesday released a statement dismissing a union's claim that workers cleaning a cooling tower at its West Milton nuclear facility were exposed to asbestos.
"The cleanup operation was done outside in the open air and not in an enclosed area," said Gerald Sabian, a spokesman for GE, which runs the reactors at the Kenneth A. Kesselring Site of the Knolls Atomic Power Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy.
"Air samples were taken as a precaution prior to the initial work and, as expected, confirmed no detectable asbestos in the air," Sabian said.
Doug Allen, business manager for Local 301 AE, International Union of Electrical, Electronic, Salaried Machinists and Furniture Workers, disagreed with Sabian's statement pointing to the conditions at the air test.
"You tell Mr. Sabian that I disagree with him greatly," Allen said. "How are you going to get an accurate air test 50 feet above the ground in 20-mile-an-hour winds?
"As far as I'm concerned, this is a health hazard," he said.
Allen said he filed his complaint March 30 after he learned two union members, working on a fan motor inside the tower, were not given respiratory protection while two other workers cleaned peeling asbestos from the tower's roof.
The two employees cleaning the asbestos a cancer-causing agent, were equipped with filters over their noses and mouths, Allen said.
Sabian acknowledged that asbestos was apresent at the cooling tower as four union members scrubbed the tower clean. However, he said the type of asbestos present was not hazardous.
The tower is sheathed with tiles of "delaminated cement asbestos board" which has commonly been used for its fire resistance, Sabian said.
"It contains asbestos bound into a hard base material like floor tiles," he said. "It is not friable like soft asbestos insultation and does not generate airborne asbestos unless it is being demolished, sawed or drilled."
If asbestos is called "friable," it can be easily broken down into minute particles that, while hard to see, are easily breathed, Allen said. Allen filed a complaint with the DOE charging the asbestos presented a hazard and the workers were not adequately protected.
The workers are given disposable coveralls to protect their clothes and skin from asbestos particles, but Allen said that does nothing when respiratory protection is not provided.
"It fascinates me that they make them wear the clothing but give them nothing to protect their lungs," Allen said.
The union also claims paper thin pieces of the asbestos insulation blew off the property into nearby woods but Sabian said the insulation stayed on the site.
"The loose pieces referred to in the complaint had broken off due to weather and water damage and some had blown off the cooling tower on the ground nearby," Sabian said.
He also said the pieces were too big to cause a health hazard, measuring 1/2-inch thick and between 2 inches and 2 feet across.
A local watchdog roup said GE's response was just another indication of how little regard the company has for the public.
"It would seem that, especially in this instance, it would have been better to err on the side of caution," said Ellen Kelly-Lind, spokeswoman for the Knolls Action Group.
"If they're not concerned about the health of their employees then I wonder how concerned they are with the hazards that affect the neighboring public," she said.