Accredited IAQ Council Ushers in ‘End of an Era’
By Steve Sauer

All eight certification programs currently offered by the American Indoor Air Quality Council now bear the third-party accreditation the group has been seeking for months.

A long-anticipated announcement in February states that the Council of Engineering and Scientific Specialty Boards awarded its accreditation to six additional IAQ Council programs to the existing two.

The certification body, which is run out of Phoenix, Ariz., by Executive Director Charlie Wiles, hailed its achievement last month in an e-mail distributed inside the IAQ industry. “With Council certifications earning prestigious CESB accreditation, the era of the 3-day wonder is coming to an end,” the e-mail states.

CESB, which is based in Annapolis, Md., is a third-party accrediting organization that requires certifying bodies to “have developed a detailed document specifying the ‘body of knowledge’ or ‘minimum level of skills and knowledge’ required by a practitioner in the specialty area.” CESB accreditation is also dependent on factors including a certifying body’s independence and integrity in its operations.

The IAQ Council, under its own rules, offers certification only to applicants who demonstrate requisite experience, education or both. Levels and subjects of academic degrees are necessary in some cases, while documented experience alone can qualify applicants. Particular qualifications vary from one Council certification program to another.

Within the past two years, the IAQ Council made changes to its certification programs that were necessary in order to comply with the CESB guidelines for engineering-related certification programs.

The CESB’s accreditations in 2006 of the Council-certified Indoor Environmental Consultant and Council-certified Microbial Consultant programs were the first such accreditations in the IAQ industry. Until then, limits on who could qualify for an industry certification and pass an exam were little, if any, throughout the industry. Many certification programs currently offered elsewhere in the IAQ industry lack any prerequisites necessary for those qualifying to take exams.

The IAQ Council’s six newly accredited certification programs join the CIEC and CMC in that status, which is also shared by the Certified Industrial Hygienist program offered by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene, the Certified Hazardous Materials Manager program offered by the Institute of Hazardous Materials Management, and others.

The IAQ Council’s accredited certifications are in the fields of environmental and microbial investigation and consulting, structural mold inspection, IAQ program administration, microbial remediation and the supervision of microbial remediation.

A ninth IAQ Council certification program, one that would be offered to microbial insurance claims adjusters, is currently undergoing revisions to be submitted for accreditation later this year.

“The IAQ Council has set a standard for the industry that consumers may now use to examine the credibility of any IAQ certification program,” states the IAQ Council. “Many certifying organizations will now have to change to meet this standard, or face unfavorable comparisons with those who do. Either way, the industry as a whole will benefit.”
 

Maine Resists Issuing Mold Licenses, New Guidance
State Finds Credible Information, Certifications Already Exist
By Steve Sauer

Mold certifications, guidance and cleanup standards promulgated within the indoor air quality industry are sufficient to protect the residents of Maine, according to findings reported in late January by a task force convened by the state legislature. A 71-page report by the “Mold in Maine Buildings” task force covers the recent history of mold as a public policy issue and summarizes positions of the scientific community on mold’s health effects.

The task force reports the shortcomings of efforts in Texas and Louisiana to license mold remediators and assessors. In Texas, it says, the licensing program “was expected to be self-supporting through license fees” but that “the number of licensees is fewer than anticipated and the program is a financial burden to the state.” One failure of Louisiana’s program, it says, is that it “allows individuals who had received training and certification from a reputable non-profit organization to be waived from regulatory requirements in the areas of training and testing.”

“Significant financial resources are required to develop a state-run program, and the work would be redundant of much that is already offered by independent third-party professional organizations,” the task force reported. “States considering a regulatory structure to protect consumers from fraudulent practice by assessment and remediation contractors can rely on certifications managed by reputable organizations that undertake the training, testing, and accreditation of the professional community.”

Its position on existing standards and guidance relevant to mold was similar. It listed nationally recognized documents that deal with worker protection, mold remediation and assessment, ventilation and related topics. In addition, the task force discredited the notion that a state could produce better results.

Pointing toward existing standards that bear the accreditation of the American National Standards Institute, the task force presented as evidence the ASTM assessment standard, the IICRC standard for water damage restoration, and the two ASHRAE ventilation standards.

“Task force discussions reflected that ANSI-approved standards are preferred for use in Maine, as the ANSI accreditation process provides verification that the standards and guidelines represent true consensus on best practices for the industry,” the report states.

It also listed a number of guidance documents and standards that, while not ANSI-accredited, are seen as authoritative. Such documents cited in the task force’s report were developed by IESO, ASHRAE, ACCA, ASSE, NADCA and IICRC.

“For assessment, remediation and worker protection topics for which no ANSI-accredited standard exist or are under development (assessment in residential buildings),” the report points to state and federal guidelines it considers “the most up-to-date references that may be utilized.” Such references are available on the federal level from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and on the state level from New York and Connecticut, the task force reported.

The report bears a significant impression left by the Maine Indoor Air Quality Council, a non-profit group established in 1998. Its executive director, Christine Crocker, was one of 18 main participants on the task force.

Included in the report are the minutes of task force meetings held during the last three months of 2006, a table of existing standards, and a reprinting of the Maine Indoor Air Quality Council’s mold exposure policy statement.

The task force said it believes that the policy statement, adopted in November 2003, “is still an accurate reflection of what we know about the effect of mold on human health.”

The policy statement says, in part, “Additional health research is needed to better characterize the nature and scope of the health effects caused by indoor exposure to certain, specific molds. Particular attention should be given to the possible role of mold in producing serious, short-term or long-term effects on respiratory, immune, and nervous systems.

“Since the research to characterize the effect of mold on human health is not fully developed, it is prudent to take precautionary measures, where practical, to prevent the growth of mold in the indoor environment.”

Most task force participants represented various state government agencies or IAQ-, building- or health-related organizations or companies located in Maine. Participants also included Maine attorneys, the state congressperson whose law convened the task force, and the executive director of the Indoor Air Quality Association (Glenn Fellman, who is also the publisher of IE Connections, was the task force’s only participant who resides outside Maine). Five additional individuals are listed as providing review or research for the task force.

Two contacts listed on the report’s cover work for the Department of Health and Human Service and the Department of Environmental Protection.

WORD ON THE STREET

Voices

“She’s complaining. I say, ‘Ok, I’ll do something with a ventilation system.’ ... But it’s not a sandwich, I cannot make it right away.”

— Tae Hyun Shin, the owner of a Subway restaurant in Manhattan, quoted by United Press International in a report last month on his response to a neighbor who had complained that smells from his kitchen permeate her condominium; UPI included the story in its “Quirks in the News” column on Feb. 12 after the condominium board took legal action against him

Word on the Street

HOME INSPECTION FRANCHISE SOLD

A lucrative franchise in the home inspection world has been bought out by a company looking to combine that industry with the IAQ industry. The acquisition of Allstate Home Inspection & Household Environmental Testing by Environmental Service Professionals Inc. was completed in February. Environmental Service Professionals, or ESP, announced plans to acquire “several complementary service companies” as part of a strategy it calls “growth through acquisition.” Ed Torres, ESP’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement that a certification program it offers, the Certified Environmental Home Inspector, is going about helping to combine the worlds of IAQ and home inspection. Allstate’s president, Francis X. “Rich” Finigan, said the franchise has been around for a dozen years, coupling building inspections “with a wide variety of environmental testing services.” Finigan currently serves as treasurer of the Indoor Environmental Standards Organization.

ESP recently sought to purchase MoldTech Software, and a division of ESP in January bought National Professional Services Inc., a developer of training programs and technology-based solutions for the IAQ industry. ESP is evidently not finished with its “expansion by acquisition” strategy. Its Feb. 5 news release added that ESP “is in various stages of discussion with several companies that are a good operational and economic fit. The current acquisition candidates include some that will be free standing subsidiaries and others that will be absorbed into existing operations, if they are acquired.”

SMACNA REVIEWS IAQ GUIDELINES

Now available for a limited time is a newly updated draft of “IAQ Guidelines for Occupied Buildings Under Construction.” The document, first available in 1995 from the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association, is being revised under a process to be approved by the American National Standards Institute. Stakeholders wishing to participate in the public review of this SMACNA document have until March 31 to contact SMACNA staff liaison Peyton Collie by e-mail at pcollie@smacna.org.

SPOTLIGHT ON VETERANS’ HOSPITAL BRINGS IEQ TO FRONT PAGE IN WASHINGTON

A series of articles appearing on the front pages of the Washington Post throughout February exposed a number of problems at the army’s top medical facility, with poor indoor environmental conditions among the “signs of neglect” detailed. Over the course of four months, two Post reporters conducted numerous interviews with residents of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are treated. The initial articles focused on conditions like “mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses” in a former hotel where the odor was described as smelling “like greasy carry-out.” Subsequent articles throughout the month dealt with the military’s response to the articles. One piece by Post columnist Dana Milbank details the response: “The Army mobilized. Painters were deployed to cover the offending wall with a fresh coat of white semigloss. And television crews were invited in to inspect the result.” Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, second in command at the facility, accused the Post of “one-sided representation,” according to Milbank’s column.

BUILDING SCIENCE ‘ON THE ROAD AGAIN’

A second national lecture tour of building science experts Joe Lstiburek and John Straube is scheduled to begin again in May. Between October and December of last year, the duo brought their two-day seminars to seven cities. Some of the same cities are gearing up to host them again this year as “Building Science Fundamentals 2007” intends to cover 10 cities by late November, including two in Canada. The two-day agenda has been revamped to include new topics close to the hearts of their authors, including Lstiburek’s take on energy issues published in this issue of IE Connections (see page 19). The schedule is set to include Boston (May 29–30), San Francisco (June 19–20), Los Angeles (June 26–27), Toronto (July 10–11) and Philadelphia (July 17–18). September dates are set for Houston, with October dates in Chicago and Seattle, and November dates in Orlando and Vancouver. For more information or to register for a seminar, visit www.buildingscienceseminars.com or contact Christine Cronin by phone at (617) 800-2633.

‘MY FEMA TRAILER IS KILLING ME’

It sounds like it could be the title of a new book from Jeffrey C. May, but the above remark is actually something Sierra Club volunteer Becky Gillette recalls being told in Mississippi.

In an article by Wayne Martin of AllerAir Industries in Montreal, IE Connections revealed last June that trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Hurricane Katrina victims were shown to have high levels of formaldehyde, probably caused by low air turnover. The topic has certainly hit the mainstream media, with Gillette interviewing for an in-depth article appearing in the Feb. 26 issue of The Nation and reprinted by the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald among other news outlets and Web sites.

In an initial Sierra Club test cited by media accounts, formaldehyde levels in 94 percent of a test sample of trailers exceeded federal occupational limits. In a second test sample almost double the size of the first, formaldehyde levels exceeded the limit in 83 percent of the trailers. Gillette told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that FEMA is selling “these trailers that they know are dangerous and pawning them off on unsuspecting people.”

THE GAUNTLET HAS BEEN THROWN

Building community leaders take partial blame for greenhouse gases they believe cause global warming, and their “2030 Challenge” contains plans intended to reverse the trend. It calls for a step-by-step increase in the fossil fuel reduction standard for new buildings so that new buildings will be carbon-neutral by 2030. The challenge also impacts existing buildings, and the newly formed Green Mechanical Council furthers the challenge to the mechanical system industry, which chairman Dan Chiles says “can significantly contribute to meeting the carbon reduction challenge sooner and more effectively than any other industry. We have the designers, installers and service technicians in position now – today – to effect real and significant reduction of carbon fuels and greenhouse gases.”

ASCR Renamed ‘Restoration Industry Association’
Strategic Name Change Part of Reinventing Process, Says Manger
By Steve Sauer

One of the main components of the reinventing process the Association of Specialists in Cleaning and Restoration adopted over a year ago has now come to fruition. It is a strategic move that focuses sharply on refining the association’s image, identity and role.

Now touting a pristine and perhaps clearer name than ever before, the newly christened Restoration Industry Association is expected to enhance understanding among both the general public and elected officials about who the association’s constituents are. RIA would also seek to be better informed and suited to protect the business interests of those companies making up its membership.

RIA is a fresh brand with a slick logo, unveiled publicly on both www.ascr.org and a new Web site, www.restorationindustry.org, on the afternoon of Feb. 16 – all while the association’s executive director, Don Manger, briefed a listening audience on the Internet’s “IAQ Radio” and said the name change was taking immediate effect. IE Connections confirmed his claim with a phone call placed during the announcement to the switchboard operator at the association’s headquarters office in Columbia, Md.

Manger explained that the association’s new moniker fits in with the reinventing process underway since September 2005, when he commenced his tenure as ASCR’s executive director. “The process began more than a year ago, so the name change is just one of many steps,” he said during his Web-accessible interview with co-hosts Joe Hughes and Cliff Zlotnik, who is a past president of ASCR.

Manger is more than just the appointed spokesperson for the metamorphosis but also a catalyst for its implementation. An experienced professional in transforming associations, the gray-haired and bright-eyed executive in fact plays a crucial role in carrying out the desires for improvement expressed by members of ASCR’s Board of Directors when he came aboard.

“You know, when the board hired me in 2005, they asked for far-reaching organizational change and told me that they had been dissatisfied with ASCR’s performance for a number of years,” said Manger. He said he kicked off his transformation method, first, by getting to know the staff and volunteers and, later, by helping the association’s planners to identify factors that hindered the kind of success board members were struggling to achieve.

“One of the most valuable aspects of the planning report was the planners’ consensus regarding our own internal cultural barriers that have kept us from succeeding in the past,” said Manger. “This understanding of what has held us back well could be the most valuable aspect of the entire plan.”

A rare insight into what those factors may have been came when Manger admitted there has been some staff turnover within ASCR’s ranks. “Yes, we lost a few good people,” he told the listening audience. “The changes associated with making a quantum leap in performance can be painful.  Although some of the staff have moved on, we recruited successful, experienced association professionals who are dedicated to the success of RIA and our shared vision of the industry.”

Manger also emphasized that RIA would be attempting to represent an industry that has, to this point, not been satisfactorily united or unified. “One of the things that I think is most important for the immediate future is to articulate our aspirations – a vision, if you will, for the industry and how RIA can serve the industry,” he said.

One reason cited for launching better communication is to attract new members, an area where he believes vast improvement is drastically needed. “That ASCR should have barely twelve hundred members after 61 years is unfortunate,” he said. “I believe that the Restoration Industry Association should strive to triple that number over the next five years.”

A jolt in membership would present the association with “two things,” according to Manger, identifying them as “greater influence of and for the industry, and increased financial resources to serve the entire industry.”

Having the attribute of greater influence would be a shot in the arm toward accomplishing the legislative goals of the restoration industry. Manger said that ASCR invested more than $14,000 last year into lobbying efforts nationwide. The primary instance of that was to ensure the passage of a bill in Colorado then perceived as having benefits for the restoration industry. Although the state’s legislature passed that bill, a governor’s veto prevented it from becoming law.

A national Restoration Industry Association more encompassing of its members would theoretically be able to exert greater influence over lawmakers across the country, said Manger, who offered that the new name has been shown to be more representative of its constituency, and therefore easier to understand, compared to its cumbersome predecessor.

“Since November, when the board voted on the name change, we’ve had a number of encounters that prove RIA is a better name in the public’s mind than was ASCR,” Manger explained. “Specifically, when we used to introduce ourselves to potential service providers as ‘A-S-C-R’ – or ‘Ass-car,’ an acronym that I’ve never particularly enjoyed – we usually had to go through two or three rounds of explanation before the other party understood which industry or industries we were talking about.

“But once we started introducing ourselves as being with the Restoration Industry Association, we found that understanding came almost immediately on the first mention of the association’s name, and there was never a problem with the people we were explaining ourselves to understanding that cleaning was a part of it.”

In terms of assembling a more substantial financial force for achieving goals in regulation and legislation, the association has already instituted what it now calls the Industry Defense Fund. Formerly dubbed the 1006 Fund after the number assigned to the Colorado House bill ASCR supported last year, the fund was set up “to support pro-restoration legislation.”

Manger said that the money ASCR spent in 2006 on lobbying was miniscule compared to what it ought to be. “The effort will require several times that amount in order to wage a credible fight,” he said.

The Industry Defense Fund has accepted donations from ASCR members, and Manger has acted as the sole point of contact. Soon to be lending his hand to efforts in increasing awareness of the fund, Manger said, is longtime association member G. Pete Consigli, a member of the IE Connections Editorial Advisory Board. He joins the ranks of fellow technical advisers retained by RIA: Martin L. King and Dr. Steve Spivak.

As far as what kind of efforts the Industry Defense Fund was established to support, Manger said, “In the representation area, we intend to pursue legislation and regulations that preserve competition and professionalism in the industry.”

In particular, he elucidated on the state of affairs between restorers and property and casualty insurers. “P&C insurers have shown a disturbing trend to improve their bottom line by treating restoration work as a commodity rather than a skilled service,” he said. “There is no one-size-fits-all restoration job, and to treat these jobs as such does not serve either the consumer or the contractor performing the work, or the retailers who supply the project.

“We’ve seen many cases that when an important client of an insurance company has a catastrophe in his home that the insurer will leave all discretion to the restoration contractor. However, when the policyholder is just an ordinary homeowner with no other business or political influence over the insurer, many will see fit to restrict the scope of work, set limits on amounts to be reimbursed, restrict the list of available contractors to a select few, or to just one company,” he continued.

“There’s not a single P&C insurance executive who, in the event of a fire or a flood in his own home, would tolerate a restoration under these terms. So, if RIA does not speak up for the consumer from its unique vantage point as restoration practitioners, then who will?

“As an aside, I just want to mention that RIA is not against the property and casualty insurance industry. We are against the shortsighted policies that many are using to control their claims payouts. What some insurers are doing in the professional restoration arena is similar to the attacks on them by activist attorneys general, as in Mississippi that just caused State Farm to withdraw from the market, leaving Mississippians with about half the insurers this year as they had last.”

The initials “RIA” stand not only for “Restoration Industry Association” but also, conveniently, for “representation, information and action” – three goals the revamped trade organization says it plans to undertake more profoundly.

Asked during his “IAQ Radio” appearance about how RIA fits in an industry alongside the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, Manger said he believed the two would continue to reside symbiotically with an understanding of their roles.

“IICRC has done a fine job of advancing the vision of its founder, Ed York, to develop a training standards and distribution system that helps to get training down to the technician level,” said Manger. “In fact, I’d venture to say that the majority of RIA’s members utilize IICRC certifications and IICRC-approved trainers. And with any organization’s success comes a certain role confusion, and some practitioners think that by paying certification service fees to IICRC they are paying a membership dues that gets [sic] them a vote in the organization, which they are not.”

He continued, “I can’t speak for IICRC or for any of the other organizations serving the industry, but I can tell you what my personal philosophy is. I encourage industry participants to belong to as many trade associations as they can economically justify. No organization can do everything, but every organization can perform its specialty to a high-quality standard, an ethical practice standard, thereby giving the industry’s members some meaningful options in where they invest their available money and time.”

At the same time, RIA indicates that it will seek “to improve the quality of training and to move the testing out of the training sessions,” according to a list of talking points generated prior to Manger’s spot on “IAQ Radio” and shared afterward with IE Connections.

This RIA document, which closely follows Manger’s interview, references the third-party accreditation the American IAQ Council has attained for nearly all of its certification programs.

“The industry is maturing and outgrowing the era when we could create our own terminology in the area of third-party certifications,” Manger’s talking points state. “I believe that the industry will see more moves towards certification programs that meet the requirements of competency assurance organizations like NOCA [National Organization for Competency Assurance] and CESB [Council of Engineering and Scientific Specialty Boards].”

Manger said RIA is on its way to making its advanced-level designations – including Certified Restorer, Water Loss Specialist and Certified Mold Professional – available outside its membership.

“While our advanced credentials are known and respected by industry insiders, we need to open them to a broader audience so that more practitioners can benefit from them as well as the consumers whom they serve,” he said, adding that this would be “one means of helping to raise the level of professionalism of the entire industry.”

Other results of ASCR’s reinvention are a newfound emphasis on promoting best practices for all types of restoration. Manger announced that RIA intends to publish a best-practices guide for specialty rug cleaning this year. In addition, he said RIA’s Restoration Council agreed in January to adopt industry business standards similar to those that apply to architects and construction contractors – a plan Manger said “could be one of the most ambitious objectives ever undertaken by the association.”

In the process of reinventing the association, Manger said he would exercise caution not to alienate any of its current constituents. Asked whether the name change may result in rug and carpet cleaners dropping their memberships, the executive director said, “I don’t think it’s likely, and I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. After all, the association’s ASCR name was adopted for the members of the association to reflect how they saw themselves. The ASCR name was built around the terms ‘cleaning and restoration’ for a number of years, and the ‘cleaning’ term in the association’s name was never limited to rugs, carpets and textiles but included cleaning of buildings and mechanical systems.

“Additionally,” he continued, “in the public mind, ‘cleaning’ is not a term that engenders understanding, or even respect, and it’s highly subjective: What is clean to me may not meet your definition of clean. In considering whether we should change the association’s name, we examined how the public – our members’ customers – would view the association’s name.”

Manger pointed out that defining the word “restoration” embodies the ability “to return something to a previous state or condition” and that cleaning is an inherent function of the word’s definition.
 

Publisher’s Perspective (March 2007)
Do We Need a Standard For Fixing Leaks?

Given recent events, there appears a need to develop a restoration industry standard for fixing leaks – not the kind that causes water damage or leads to microbial contamination but the kind that results in newspapers reporting on sensitive, “insider” information.

About a half dozen people say they were accused, or accused by implication, of leaking confidential information from the IICRC’s S520 Committee to IE Connections. IICRC representatives have allegedly made direct and veiled accusations both verbally and in writing. IICRC takes confidentiality very seriously, requiring strict non-disclosure agreements of its volunteers.

The latest incident occurred when a letter distributed to S520 Committee members regarding an internal issue of a highly sensitive nature was forwarded to this newspaper’s editor, Steve Sauer. None of the three individuals who forwarded him the letter serves on the S520 Committee, and whether all three received the letter from the same source was not divulged. Like a good reporter, Steve queried IICRC on the authenticity of the letter.

In response, IICRC representatives launched what is described to me as a “witch hunt” to find the culprit who leaked the letter. Knowing the IICRC folks as well as I do, I suspect “witch hunt” is an exaggeration. Nonetheless, Steve was contacted by phone after his inquiry about the letter’s authenticity. The call’s purpose was neither to confirm nor deny authenticity; Steve was asked to reveal who sent him the letter, which of course is something a good journalist doesn’t do. Steve politely denied the request but disclosed that he had received the letter from three separate individuals.

There are legitimate reasons a standards development committee should keep draft documents under wraps. However, an ANSI-accredited standards developer must also work within a fairly transparent environment where secrets may be perceived as hush-hush backroom conversation and insider politicking.

The month after S520 was released for public comment, I was corresponding with the American Industrial Hygiene Association’s executive director, who shared AIHA’s S520 comments with me by e-mail. I asked if I could share the comments with others and was told yes, both because I am an AIHA member and because AIHA doesn’t consider its comments on peer review documents confidential. I forwarded the comments to several colleagues including Steve, who printed some of AIHA’s commentary the following month.

Once it appeared, I learned that an attorney representing IICRC wrote three people a letter in which he mentioned that AIHA told IICRC that they had not released their comments to the press. This was followed by a reminder of committee member confidentiality requirements.

When I learned about IICRC’s allegation of a leak to us, I called AIHA’s staffer who drafted their comments. He told me that he was asked if AIHA sent its comments to the media, to which he replied no – but to which he also added that AIHA doesn’t view their comments as confidential and would in fact release them if requested. This particular staffer simply wasn’t aware of my previous e-mail exchange with the AIHA executive director.

In “Gulliver’s Travels,” Jonathan Swift writes satirically about two warring nations whose ideological divide is over which end of the egg to break when eating a hard-boiled egg. Had we a Swift in our industry, he would compose a satire on the folly of chasing down informants who report to the press on the happenings inside the S520 Committee, and he wouldn’t lose sight of the irony that all of this energy and time is being spent on what are really inconsequential leaks of information in the big picture of consensus-based standards development.
 

Dr. Harriet Burge
Director of Aerobiology
Environmental Microbiology Laboratory Inc.
San Bruno, Calif.

With the rising use of spore trapping, this question is cropping up with increasing frequency. Spore trapping is straightforward, the equipment is easily handled, and analysis can be as fast as you want. Cultural sampling, on the other hand, requires sterile agar surfaces that need special handling. Analysis is straightforward (although expensive if species identifications are necessary), but the time it takes depends entirely on how fast the fungi grow. So, given this comparison, why would you ever want to use cultural sampling?

As I have emphasized many times, all investigations should be hypothesis-driven. So, the answer is that cultural sampling should be used whenever testing your hypothesis requires such sampling. There are a number of hypotheses that relate to hospitals for which cultural sampling is essential. In residential or office building investigations, the information gained by culturable sampling is usually not worth the added cost in residential or office building investigations.

But there are a few exceptions. For example, let’s consider a situation where a good visual inspection has not revealed any obvious fungal growth. However, the occupants are convinced there is a mold problem and insist on some kind of sampling. So, we develop hypotheses for the next step in the investigation:

1.     Fungal reservoirs are not present in the building.

2.     Fungal reservoirs are present in the building.

These are the two major hypotheses being tested. If the first is true, then a good spore trapping protocol is likely to adequately support the hypothesis. Remember that documenting the negative case can never be proven with one or two samples. If the second hypothesis is true, then not only do you have to document that growth is or was present, but you also may want to gain some information on its potential source.

Before beginning, then, we need to develop a new set of hypotheses to test in the event that the second hypothesis is true:

A.      The aerosol is residual from an outdoor event that occurred prior to the sampling event (e.g., wood chips were spread on the garden).

B.       The aerosol is residual from a transient indoor event (e.g., the occupants discarded a moldy bagel just before sampling began).

C.       There is a hidden source for spores somewhere in the building.

We now need to develop a sampling strategy that will support testing of all of these hypotheses. First, you may be able to test these hypotheses without additional sampling. Questions about outdoor events, or referral to an outdoor data base that would give you the probability of an outdoor event sufficient to cause such high residual levels, may work for hypothesis A. Questioning or searching the trash might adequately test hypothesis B. You could do a more in-depth search for hidden growth to test hypothesis C.

If none of these approaches proves successful, we are going to have to rely on air sampling data. The spore trapping that was used to differentiate between the first two hypotheses will give you some information. Spore trapping will certainly tell you whether or not an aerosol is present and provide some information on the spore types present. This may be enough. For example, perhaps all the spores are basidiospores of the type produced by Coprinus. Then, you can go outdoors and look for the clump of inky caps that is decaying the old stump near the house (and producing the moldy odors that concern the occupant). However, what if the spores are all Penicillium/Aspergillus types? In this case, we have not distinguished among our three hypotheses.

It is at this point that cultural sampling may be useful. Disturbing compost and tossing out moldy bagels are likely to produce aerosols of different species of Aspergillus and Penicillium. For example, A. fumigatus is common in compost but not likely to be abundant on moldy food or growing in other indoor reservoirs. On the other hand, Penicillium spp. are very common on molding food, and both Penicillium and other Aspergillus spp. are common in damp building materials. Cultural sampling will readily distinguish these different fungi.

Where should the samples be collected? Outdoor samples need to be collected both near and away from the wood chips. A sufficient number of indoor samples need to be collected so that if no aerosols are found, you have sufficient data to support the negative case, i.e., in case the aerosol is no longer present. I would suggest five samples, all of which need not be analyzed. If the first shows no aerosol, then analyze the second, and so forth, until you have analyzed all five or encountered a suspicious aerosol. I would also collect bulk samples of wood chips and any possible other sources, such as moldy bagels in the garbage.

Let’s assume that the spore trap data used to test hypotheses 1 and 2 revealed 10,000 Pen/Asp spores per cubic meter of air indoors. Outdoor concentration of Pen/Asp spores was 10,000 spores/m³ near the wood chips, 2,000 spores/m³ of air away from the chips. Based on these data, analysis of the cultural sampling is necessary to test hypotheses A, B, and C. For hypothesis A, one would expect that the species present indoors are the same as those outside near the newly spread wood chips and those in the wood chip bulk samples. If this is true, then you have good evidence that wood chip aerosols are responsible for the indoor aerosol. Similarly, for hypothesis B, you would expect that the indoor aerosol would be different from that outdoors and that the indoor aerosol would match the hypothesized “indoor event” source of spores, e.g., the bagel mold. If no such match occurs, then you are left with an unidentified source and evidence to support destructive testing to find hidden mold.

If you can sample on more than one occasion, then you can do a spore trap survey to test hypotheses 1 and 2, and then develop new hypotheses based on these initial results. This is probably the most efficient approach providing the building occupants will allow more than one visit. If multiple visits are not feasible, you could collect all the samples needed to test all the hypotheses, and check the spore trap results quickly. If no aerosols are found on the spore traps, then you can abort the analysis of the remaining samples.

This is only one of many possible hypotheses that are best tested using cultural sampling. Documenting exposure to opportunistic pathogens often requires cultural sampling, as does clearance sampling to document the absence of viable spores (There will always be a few dead spores around following remediation).

Dr. Harriet Burge is director of aerobiology at Environmental Microbiology Laboratory Inc. and associate professor and director of the microbiology laboratory at the Harvard School of Public Health. Widely considered the leading expert in IAQ, Burge pioneered the field more than 30 years ago. She has served as a member of three National Academy of Sciences committees for IAQ, including as vice chair of the Committee on the Health Effects of Indoor Allergens.

To submit a question to Dr. Burge, write to her by e-mail at askdrburge@emlab.com. All questions posed to Burge will receive a reply, although space limitations prevent us from publishing them all. By submitting a question, you agree to have your question and its answer published in a future edition of IE Connections.

Energy Security: How to Defeat al Qaeda with Insulation

Joseph Lstiburek, Ph.D., P.E.
Principal
Building Science Corp.
Westford, Mass.

Energy security is pretty easy to get a handle on. The American people are eventually going to figure out that it does not make sense to send a trillion dollars a year to the Middle East to people who want to exterminate them – people who turn that money around and foment hate and terrorism across the planet.

So, how do we keep the money here? Easy. Don’t buy their oil. We don’t need it anyway. We have plenty of energy right here in good, old North America. The problem is that it is not cheap energy, and it is not clean energy. We can make it clean, and we will, but it will be even more expensive. And actually, that is good because we won’t waste it when it is expensive.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t have an energy crisis; we have a cheap oil crisis. We are running out of light, sweet Arabian crude. And the sooner we run out of it, the better. Once it is gone, there won’t be much to fight over. That’s why I drive two SUVs, and each one has a bumper sticker that says: “Drive an SUV for World Peace.” As soon as the price of oil gets high enough, we will change over to another energy source. In fact, the Saudis know this and are pumping oil like crazy to keep the price down. With oil prices too high, the Saudis know that good, old-fashioned American technology will make them irrelevant. The Saudis are the neighborhood drug dealer keeping the American people hooked on Arabian crack. They know if the price goes up too much, American junkies will go to a different drug. I’ve got a news flash here, folks; it’s already too late for the Arab pushers. Let me tell you how it will play out and what it means.

The first thing you have to understand is that energy security is first and foremost a car-truck-transportation problem that, as it gets solved, will change the rest of the American economy – for the better, I might add. In fact, we have already solved the transportation problem although most folks don’t appreciate it. The good news is that the government didn’t do it and couldn’t do it. The bad news is that government might yet still screw it up. I am hoping for government gridlock and weak leadership. What are the odds of that? I want the marketplace and innovation to sort it out. The only thing we need from government is a modicum of environmental protection so we don’t pee in our collective planetary bed while this gets sorted out. I think we can count on that; the environmental loonies are good for at least one good thing.

The second thing you have to understand is that anything General Motors or Ford picks as a winning technology is a loser. General Motors and Ford picked hydrogen. Dumb. Toyota picked the hybrid. Guess who won?

So, what is this solution to energy security? The plug-in hybrid vehicle. That’s it? Yes, that’s it. Not fusion? No. Not solar? No. Not the flux capacitor? No. OK, so explain it, Dr. Joe – especially the part about why I should care. Read on, Macduff.

A hybrid vehicle is nothing more than an electric vehicle with gasoline as the energy source for the electricity. When we add a big enough battery, we can plug it in and run the vehicle using juice we get from the grid rather than juice we get from the gasoline. As we transition current hybrid vehicles from nickel hydride to lithium ion battery technology, we are going to be able to plug in the vehicle and get 50 to 75 miles between charges. This is a big deal because this is the distance of the average commute. And we don’t have to worry about running out of battery power because we still have the gasoline there to take over when we run the battery down.

It gets even better when we dilute the gasoline with ethanol – and boy, can we dilute it – up to 85 percent (E85 ethanol is 85 percent ethanol, 25 percent gasoline), and presto! End of transportation energy problem; hello, energy independence. The vehicles will have all-electric drive; gasoline/ethanol will be burned only to run a generator to charge the battery packs.

Will the vehicles get smaller? What, are you on crack? This is America, the land of the 60 oz Slurpee and the 40 oz bladder. Small vehicles are a greenie weenie Eurotrash concept. Europe is a small continent with small countries small people and small imaginations; their time is past. We are a nation of big-assed Americans with big-assed cars and trucks. We are going to go for high performance and size. How do you say 500 brake horsepower in kilowatts? Do you have any idea what torque you can get with series-shunt electric drive? We don’t have the tire technology to take the stress. Electric dragsters will leave the nitro burners in the dust.

So, what is this transition of the transportation sector from petroleum to electricity and ethanol going to do to the rest of the economy? Well, electricity is going to get expensive – very expensive. And so is natural gas, because we make electricity from natural gas. Oh, we make electricity from coal too, but coal is dirty, and we are going to have to make it clean and that will make it expensive. So, we will have expensive electricity made from natural gas and from clean coal. What about nuclear? It will be cheaper to make the electricity out of clean coal than with nukes. The big problem with nuke is what to do with the waste. We were going to stick it in Nevada, but too many people live there now, and the congressional representation is now strong enough to kill that idea. So where to put it? What’s a big state with no people and weak congressional representation? I pick Montana.

With the plug-in hybrid, I bet the cost of electricity will go to 35 cents per kilowatt and the cost of natural gas will double. At 35 cents/kilowatt, that translates to 75 cents/gallon gasoline – peanuts, nothing, zip, zilch. Electric plug-in hybrid vehicles win. The American Dream lives on; we do love our cars. Now, with winners, there are always losers.

Who loses? Pay attention here; now comes the fun part. Buildings consume 40 percent of all energy in the U.S. economy, more energy than the transportation sector, which pushes 30 percent. We cool our buildings with electricity and heat our buildings with natural gas. Folks, we are going to triple the cost of air-conditioning, and we are going to double the cost of heating. The transportation sector is going to compete with the building sector for the same energy, and the transportation sector is going to win.

A rational person would say, OK, just make the buildings smaller, with smaller windows, and smaller appliances. I remind you, this is America. Twiggy is a European icon. Anna Nicole is an American icon. Next question. We are not going to get smaller buildings, but we are going to get ultra efficient buildings. We are going to double and triple the amount of thermal resistance in the typical building enclosure. We are going to insulate, and we are going to insulate big time. We have no choice. So, in order to defeat al Qaeda, we must insulate.

Now, this is both good and bad: good for energy security but bad for building durability. Insulation reduces energy flow, and here is a good time to remind everyone that there is no such thing as a free thermodynamic lunch. As the energy exchange across building enclosures reduces, drying potentials reduce, and this means we are in for a world of hurt in the coming years in terms of corrosion, decay, mold and other moisture-induced deterioration as we change our building technology to take into account the new energy cost realities. It gets even worse – or better, depending on who profits from the problems – when you consider that over 80 percent of the buildings that will be around in 2035 are already here and they will have to be insulated as well. Who knows how to do that? I can tell you who does not: the folks down at Home Depot and the pretty boys on “This Old House.”

Building science and building diagnostics and building technology and building rehabilitation are going to boom because things are going to bust. Can it get even better? Yes. They can’t outsource the jobs offshore to Bangalore, India. This has to be fixed by Americans right here in America. The future is not in plastics, my boy; the future is in construction. Actually, the future is in fixing construction.

There is more. Remember that trillion dollars? It doesn’t go abroad anymore; it stays here in the United States. Do you have any idea what that will do to the balance of payments and the value of the American dollar and what that will in turn do to the American economy? We are going to boom like this planet has never seen before. We are going to have jobs coming out of our ears. And we are going to need more Americans. And that is good, because we need young Americans and we are not going to get them by growing them ourselves. We are going to need immigrants – young, hard-working ones like my parents and yours. We need them to look after our old and to pay into Medicare and Social Security. And we are going to need more houses to put them in. It will be great. Europe’s population is aging, and so is Japan’s. Ours is not, and we must not allow it to do so.

Let’s now go back a step and look at the ethanol part of this a little bit more closely. Where are we going to get the ethanol? Look around, Grasshopper. The politicians are meddling. Corn is not the right play for the ethanol source, but that is where the subsidies are going. It is never smart to trade food for fuel. The price of corn is going way up. That means beef prices go up too; the Big Mac price index is in for a ride. There have already been tortilla riots in Mexico City because of the rise in corn prices, and they are blaming the American gringo and corn-based ethanol. Ask me how much I care about the price of your tortilla, and ask me how much I care about what you think of me, Pancho Villa, after you flaunt our border laws and suck up to our enemies. But when the price of my Big Mac goes up right here at home, now that hurts. Yes, food prices are going to go up because the politicians are meddling. Cellulositic ethanol is the answer, but we will get corn ethanol in the short term until this silliness gets sorted out.

Now, this is not the key point for us in the construction industry, entertaining as it may be. This ethanol thing is going to affect us in a big way once the marketplace figures out that cellulositic ethanol is the right play. One of the dominant building materials we use is cellulose fiber. It is likely to be a winner in the future as well. However, it does not make sense for us to get this cellulose fiber by cutting down 1,000-year-old trees in the state of Washington. We should be growing and harvesting our fibers in Iowa and Nebraska and Mississippi and Alabama on plantations. And we are beginning to do so. The days of 2×10s and dimensional lumber are over. The rise of engineered wood, oriented strand board, hardboard, particleboard, fiberboard and laminated paper composites has arrived. All of these products are cellulose fiber-based. All will be in competition for the same cellulose fibers that the transportation sector also covets. Cars will be competing with buildings for the same energy and raw materials. We know who will win. The car always wins. That means that the fibers the building sector will get will be second-rate and expensive. And none of the engineered wood products are as durable as the real thing – wood. We will be adding stuff to the fibers to make the stuff work. I predict the stuff won’t stay in the stuff, and we will have environmental issues right along with the durability issues. Damage functions and the Arrhenius¹ Equation, here we come.

We are going to have fun boys and girls. Think about what lies ahead? Less robust materials in highly insulated building enclosures with low drying potentials. Stuff is going to stink, rot, break and otherwise annoy. There are going to be a lot of mistakes in the next decade as we get all of these things sorted out. But I wouldn’t trade this for anything else in the world. Because our country needs us to clean up the mess from the energy security ethanol hangover we are going to have.

Dr. Joseph Lstiburek² is a principal of Building Science Corp. He is internationally recognized as an authority on moisture-related building problems and indoor air quality. He can be reached by e-mail at joe@buildingscience.com or by phone at (978) 589-5100.

_______________________________________________
1. Dead, white, European, Nobel Prize winner, no longer fashionable to study.

2. Not dead, but white, of European ancestry, has not won the Nobel Prize, also not fashionable to study.
 

Are We Serious Enough About Radon?

Douglas Kladder
Director
Center for Environmental Research & Technology Inc.
Colorado Springs, Colo.

During January’s National Radon Action Month, there was a focused effort toward public awareness about radon. Given the number of news stories and television responses, I would say it was successful.

However, in listening to and participating in some of these programs, I heard a repeated message that just did not sit right. The phrase typically echoed by the news talent or reporter went something like this: “One should mitigate a home if it is above four picocuries per liter, which EPA considers to be a safe level.”

Although it is correct that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends homes be fixed if they have long-term levels in excess of 4.0 pCi/L, it is totally incorrect to assume that there is no risk below 4.0 pCi/L. However, it is understandable that – with the focus on a guidance number that is found in so many publications and is part of many practices – the public could easily draw this incorrect conclusion. After all, why would a federal agency set a guidance that wasn’t safe? Let’s examine just how safe 4.0 pCi/L is.

Comparison of EPA Guidance to Other Contaminant Risks

Seven out of 1,000 people will contract radon-induced lung cancer at a lifetime exposure at the guidance level of 4.0 pCi/L, according to the EPA’s “A Citizen’s Guide to Radon.” Whoa, hold the presses! Any contaminant that is regulated – whether it is for waterborne contaminants or clean-up efforts – is controlled to a maximum contaminant level exposure to where one out of 100,000 or 1 million would be affected. That means the guidance level for radon would allow for a health risk factor that is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than other “regulated” contaminants!

How many lives are really being saved with a 4.0 pCi/L guidance? Let’s look at this from another perspective. Recent health advisories from EPA and the surgeon general indicate that approximately 20,000 lung cancer cases occur each year in the United States from exposure to radon. The assumption that many consumers make is that if homes were reduced to less than 4.0 pCi/L, those 20,000 lung cancer cases would be averted. However, that is not quite true either.

“Approximately 13,000 of the 20,000 annual radon-related lung cancer deaths occur below the action level of 4pCi/L, with about 7,000 occurring at levels above the action level 4pCi/L,” said EPA press officer Roxanne Smith, in response to questions from IE Connections.

Whoa, hold the presses once again! What this means is that if all homes that are above 4.0 pCi/L were mitigated, only one-third of the total annual deaths would be averted. What about the other two-thirds of the cases, which amounts to 13,000 deaths per year? I would imagine that most people would not judge as successful a program that achieves its goal of reducing exposures to less than established guidelines but does not save even half of the lives at risk.

Why Such a High Risk Rate?

So, if we are serious about radon risk, why is the guidance set at such a high risk rate? In EPA’s defense, setting a guidance level at a more common one-in-a-million risk would mean mitigating radon levels to less than what is found in the ambient air. This would have the effect, as one EPA staff member related to me, as condemning homes. No one wants to do that. However, in selecting a guidance number upon which many real-estate transaction contingencies are based, there is a perception that buying a home having a level below the 4.0 pCi/L guidance level would provide a safe living environment, which is obviously not correct.

Also, as the “Citizen’s Guide” indicates, “Radon levels can be reduced in most homes to 2 pCi/L or below.” At least for those cases where mitigation is employed, substantial health risk reductions are being achieved. But what about the homes that have test results of 3.9 pCi/L and the buyer thinks everything is just fine and dandy, yet their risk is in the neighborhood of one in a 100 if they do not smoke and about 10 times higher if they do?

It has also been related to me, since the use of short-term tests at the time of resale is assumed to overestimate the long-term exposure, homes are being mitigated where the long-term exposures are less than 4.0 pCi/L and, therefore, some of the homes with moderate radon exposures are being addressed beneficially. That could very well be true, assuming the short-term tests are being conducted correctly and that they truly provide an indication of the highest radon potential of the home. However, there have been a number of studies that indicate short-term radon tests on a given home, depending upon the time of the year the home is tested, can have results varying twofold or even threefold. This certainly suggests that there can be a number of false negatives in homes where mitigation would have been prudent but did not occur. So even with a generous 4 pCi/L guidance, the high reliance on short-term testing versus long-term testing may be causing even more of those avoidable lung cancer cases to be missed.

Several in this field have suggested that even if the short-term test result is less than 4 pCi/L, a long-term test would be highly advisable.

How Serious Are We About Radon Control Systems for New Homes?

The EPA and other organizations recommend the installation of a passive system during the construction of a new home in high-risk areas and that, after occupation, a test be conducted. If elevated (presumably above 4 pCi/L), a fan should be installed to reduce the indoor radon levels further, according to recommendations within the appendix of the 2006 International Residential Code.

Again, a homeowner’s perception of a system installed during construction is that it should prescriptively reduce levels to less than the surgeon general’s recommendation of 4.0 pCi/L on a long-term basis; unfortunately, that is not the case.

Smith, the EPA press officer, indicated, “A passive system can be expected to reduce the radon level by about 50 percent if installed correctly.” Whoa, stop those presses yet again! If the home would have had a radon level of, say, 12 pCi/L (without the passive radon system), then the installation of the system in accordance with code would reduce it to 6 pCi/L with a risk factor that is more than a risk of one in 100!

Compound this with the fact that passive systems are recommended only for Zone 1 areas, where the radon potentials are high enough to where a short-term test would likely be above 4.0 pCi/L. What about the folks in lower zone designations where significant risks are still present, yet with the unintended perception of the zone maps being that one need to be concerned only about new homes in high-risk areas? If one takes the health studies stating risks at exposures less than 4.0 pCi/L seriously, does this make sense?

Does Budget Reflect Priorities?

It has been said that radon presents the largest environmental health risk in the United States with respect to mortality, at an annual rate of 20,000 lung cancer cases per year. Accepting this staggering statistic, one would expect that federal budgets would reflect this as a priority. However, in reviewing the president’s proposed EPA budget for fiscal year 2007, we see that the sum of the budget items for state radon grants and the EPA radon program administration is 0.2 percent of the entire EPA budget. That is less than 1 percent for a contaminant that causes 20,000 lung cancer cases each year and is supposed to be the single largest environmental health threat!

Granted, radon is not a regulated program and often does not get the financial priorities of regulated and compliance related programs, and there are certainly financial pressures on EPA and other branches of the government. But on the other hand, it is easy to understand consumer perception of low risk associated with radon when the radon program represents such a miniscule portion of the EPA budget.

The purpose of this column was not to bash EPA, as the 4.0 pCi/L guidance is lower than many those of other nations in the free world, and a lot of progress has been made over the last 20 years. However, many of those advances were made subject to the support or limitations of technology that were available at the time guidances and approaches were adopted.

Times have indeed changed. Technologies have improved. Consumers want and expect safer indoor environments than they did 20 years ago. It may be time to reassess some of the approaches and priorities that we are assigning to this issue. EPA does not dictate budget but rather must rely upon the will of Congress, and that takes support from the constituencies of our representatives. Certainly, progress has been made, but we also need to reassess our approaches in light of current times and most certainly as a function of some of the unintended consequences and false assumptions that are being made.

As always, who says there is nothing new in radon?

Douglas Kladder is director of the Center for Environmental Research and Technology Inc. He can be reached by e-mail at dougkladdr@aol.com or by phone at (719) 477-1714.
 

The King is Dead? Long Live the King, Asbestos!

Jeff Mlekush
Operations Manager
QuanTEM Laboratories, LLC
Oklahoma City, Okla.

Do you remember, back in the cobwebs of your memory, when you could read a trade publication and not even see an article about mold? Do you remember back when asbestos was king.

Most articles about environmental issues in the media lately have been geared toward mold. This article may prove to be a breath of fresh air – pun intended.

Indoor environmentalists should be concerned with potential sources of problems other than mold: formaldehyde, lead containing paints and varnishes, animal dander, insect skeletons, excrement, asbestos-containing materials and so forth. So, I will turn the focus away from mold for a bit and talk about something else.

The mold professionals out there should keep in mind that the fixing of a moisture problem and the associated remediation of the moldy materials may involve breaking, abrading or otherwise damaging materials that contain asbestos or lead. In our litigious society, the issues of lead-containing and asbestos-containing materials are still hot topics and should be addressed in addition to any primary mold issues. The suspect materials should be addressed in an inspection report. Sample the materials yourself, get the materials sampled by another appropriately certified party, or include a disclaimer in your mold report and recommend the materials be sampled by a properly certified and licensed inspector prior to being disturbed during mold remedial activities. Also, if you do the sampling yourself, make sure that you have the proper lead or asbestos certifications and/or licenses in your state to avoid any encounters with your local environmental regulatory agency.

As a reminder, prior to 1978, lead was commonly added to paints, varnishes, ceramic tile and ceramic tile glazes. Even today, some imported ceramic tiles and glazing contain lead. Asbestos was, at one time or another, put in just about every building material produced. A long list of materials has been found to contain asbestos, including gypsum wallboard, joint compound, texture (surfacing) materials, plasters, vinyl floor tiles, sheet flooring, tile adhesives, grouts, caulks, pipe wrap, block pipe insulation, sink insulation coatings, heat shields in light fixtures, vermiculite attic and wall insulations, acoustic ceiling tiles, lightweight acoustical ceiling textures, cement sheeting (transite), roofing (shingle, rolled, tar paper, built-up), roofing tars, penetration sealants, aluminized paints, stuccos, and wire insulation.

Asbestos

The asbestos process has been defined for over 20 years now and involves the phases of inspection and sampling, abatement, and clearance. During the inspection and sampling phase, each suspect material is identified, sampled and analyzed, utilizing a bulk analysis technique such as polarized light microscopy or transmission electron microscopy, otherwise known respectively as PLM and TEM. During abatement and clearance, air samples are collected. Air sampling is used during abatement to determine asbestos concentrations for worker exposure purposes and to ensure that asbestos fibers are not being released into areas outside the containment area.

Now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires air sampling after abatement (clearance, in other words) to ensure that the air within the containment is not contaminated with residual asbestos and that the containment can be removed and remaining remodeling, demolition or re-occupancy can occur. Air sampling should be adequate to identify any airborne asbestos hazard. But is air sampling enough to characterize asbestos health hazards within the containment? What if the asbestos particles are not airborne at the time of sampling? What if the asbestos particles are settled out of the air and are present in settled dust? How would the air sampling technician identify this problem? Now that everyone is up to speed on the different asbestos materials and the asbestos process, I would like to address a specific issue that may be overlooked concerning asbestos contamination.

Our company has been involved in several projects where the consultants chose to collect settled dust samples in addition to clearance air samples. The interesting thing about these projects was that no asbestos was detected in the air samples while hundreds of thousands to millions of asbestos fibers per square centimeter were present in the settled dust. What does this mean? What conditions could promote this outcome? Scores of hypotheses could be made if all of us were to sit down and think back on all the containments we’ve been in and what we’ve seen in those areas. Let’s discuss two possible causes.

First: Make sure the containment is clean. Visual inspection of the containment after detail-cleaning and prior to air sampling needs to be improved. More thorough investigation of surfaces in the containment is warranted. The inspector’s visual inspection needs to be comprehensive, including areas the abatement crew may have overlooked during their detail-cleaning. I can’t remember how many times I went into containment and crawled around in hard-to-reach places and found pockets of asbestos-containing debris lying about. Many of my colleagues in various areas of the country have found similar conditions. So, if you have raw asbestos-containing debris lying around, there are bound to be asbestos fibers in the dust. Make sure the abatement contractor cleans these areas thoroughly (HEPA-vacuumed and wet-wiped, not just picking up the bulk pieces); otherwise, asbestos may still be hiding in the dust.

Second: Is the air sampling protocol utilized during a clearance sampling event adequate? The EPA-established protocol is usually the preferred method for clearance sampling. This method requires aggressive agitation of the air inside containment; this is usually accomplished with a leaf blower and box fans. Samples are then collected in and around the containment. The problem arises when all the surfaces inside the containment are not blown with the leaf blower. In some containment areas, blowing every surface may take hours to accomplish. As a TEM laboratory, our company receives thousands of these clearance air samples from abatement activities each year. Over 90 percent of them contain no detectable amounts of asbestos. This means either that the majority of the containments are very clean or that asbestos is not becoming airborne during the sampling event. Given the outcome of the projects mentioned previously where settled dust samples were collected, I tend to believe that there may be a hidden contamination problem this industry is missing.

The methods used to determine if the asbestos has been removed may not be thorough enough. The unaided eye cannot see microscopic particles. Air-sampling devices cannot collect asbestos particles if the particles are not entrained in the air. So, to improve the effectiveness of an abatement project, why not collect settled dust samples to make sure that the entire containment is clean and that the response action is truly complete?

No asbestos-containing materials + “clean” dust + “clean” air = clean containment.

Lead

Let’s look at a similar scenario with a different contaminant: lead. EPA-mandated lead clearance has required sampling of settled dust. Why? Because lead is heavy and settles out of the air quickly, and the hazard is ingestion of lead-containing dust. No air sampling is mandated for lead clearance. Yes, I know, most asbestos fibers are much lighter than lead particles, but some will still settle. The small fibers will be entrained in the air and drawn into the HEPA filters. The larger particles will settle out.

Now the fun begins: sampling settled dust. There just happens to be a method for determining asbestos contamination on surfaces. The folks over at ASTM International developed the method over a decade ago. The specific reference is ASTM D5755 Standard “Standard Test Method for Microvacuum Sampling and Indirect Analysis of Dust by Transmission Electron Microscopy for Asbestos Structure Number Concentrations.” For a copy of the complete method, contact ASTM. A summary of the method follows.

Collecting dust samples is straightforward. Materials needed:

·         25 or 37 mm sampling cassettes containing a mixed-cellulose ester (MCE) filter with pore size less than or equal to 0.8 microns (standard PCM or TEM sampling cassettes work great)

·         vacuum sampler capable of maintaining a minimum flow rate of two liters per minute

·         masking tape or template for demarcating sample area

·         quarter-inch diameter tubing for connecting cassette to vacuum sampler and constructing vacuum nozzle

·         sampling log for recording data (area sampled, location of sample, etc.)

Constructing the nozzle:

·         Cut a 1–1.5-inch length of tubing.

·         Cut one end of the tubing at a 45-degree angle.

The sampling technician demarcates an area to sample using a template or masking tape. ASTM recommends 100 square cm for the sample area, but it can vary either way depending on the amount of visible dust present. Cleaner surfaces may require larger sample areas while dirtier surfaces may require smaller sample areas. Remove the end plug from the cassette. Place the nozzle on the cassette. Calibrate the vacuum sampler to draw at least two liters per minute using standard industrial hygiene practices. Make sure to calibrate the vacuum with the sample cassette on the tubing. Vacuum the sample area for at least two minutes by moving the nozzle left to right across the entire area and then front to back across the entire area. Once the sample is collected, point the nozzle upward, turn off the vacuum, remove the nozzle and place it inside the cassette, and replace the plug in the cassette endcap. Make sure to label the cassette with an appropriate identifier, fill out a chain of custody, and submit the sample to the laboratory for analysis. The laboratory will need to know the exact area vacuumed for the sample, so send that information with the sample.

As a side note, the ASTM sampling method described above can be used in other scenarios. It has been successfully used to collect mold samples from surfaces, to determine the extent of asbestos contamination from inadvertent damage to asbestos material, and to collect dust for forensic particle analysis. The method is not limited to hard surfaces either. Soft goods such as furniture, carpet, clothing and so forth have all been successfully sampled using this method.

At the Lab

Once the laboratory receives the sample, technicians will rinse all of the dust out of the cassette and prepare the sample for TEM analysis according to the method. The preparation process can be quite lengthy depending on the amount of contamination and the number of dilutions the laboratory must perform to make a suitable mount of the dust. The analyst will analyze the sample on the TEM at a magnification of approximately 20,000×. Asbestos structures will be classified and counted using the same counting criteria as standard Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act air clearance samples.

The laboratory will provide results in number of asbestos structures per square centimeter of the area sampled, or S/cm². The report will also tell you what type or types of asbestos were identified in the sample. This qualitative information may be helpful in discovering the source of the asbestos contamination.

But what do you do with this data? Local, state and federal government really have not defined any limits for asbestos in settled dust.

This leads us into an ethics debate that I am not going to discuss at length. However, there are a few things we, as professionals in this industry, need to think about: If the government doesn’t provide us with an acceptable limit for asbestos in settled dust, do we need to collect the samples? What will happen to the dust after the abatement crew has left? Will the dust be disturbed and the asbestos become airborne? Will other construction trades disturb the settlements to complete their portion of the project? Will occupants of the building return and clean up the dust? If we, as ethical environmental professionals, do not investigate this potential contamination concern, this means that asbestos may still be present in dust settlements. Doesn’t this increase our liability?

What do you think? More importantly, what are you going to do?

Jeff Mlekush is operations manager for QuanTEM Laboratories LLC, based in Oklahoma City. He has over 13 years of experience in asbestos, lead, industrial hygiene and IAQ issues. He supervises a knowledgeable, experienced group of analysts whose mission is to build strong, long-lasting partnerships with environmental professionals through quality analyses and a sincere commitment to customer service. He can be reached by e-mail at asbestos@quantem.com or by phone at (800) 822-1650.