By Dorothy Wigmore
New Jersey has many old school buildings. When districts decide to renovate or upgrade them, it’s time for NJEA members to ask about asbestos hazards.
That’s a lesson the Wayne Education Association (WEA) learned once renovations started on the oldest of 15 buildings in the district, the Preakness Early Childhood Center.
“They started on the windows, doing things with the exterior that involved grinding a lot of old materials, including grout,” Heather Potts-Jacobs, the new WEA president and former health and safety committee chair, explained.
Despite assurances there was no hazard, staff found visible dust on classroom supplies. Members started asking questions about it.
In response, WEA met the district, consulted the New Jersey Work Environment Council (NJWEC), and made Open Public Records Act (OPRA) information requests. When independent testing was positive for asbestos, the district closed the building wing in April and moved classrooms until work ended in the summer.
“Now they’re updating the building interior, dealing with the ‘glue dots’ on the walls,” Potts-Jacob said. The contractors also are working through layers to get to the original asbestos-containing floor tiles.
Given the earlier experience, the district had a community presentation about their plans, including precautions, training and daily testing, for the next stages.
“The health and safety chair and I specifically asked questions, like ‘Are we going to see any dust again?’ They assured us the answer is no,” she said. “They have to send these [daily test results] to the state, so if anything comes back abnormal, it just gets shut down immediately.”
What’s the hazard?
Asbestos is a group of minerals used for fire resistance and insulation properties in building materials, brakes, theater curtains, drug and wine filters, and more. Unlike many other countries, the U.S. has not fully banned its use and importation. Legacy materials are a hazard in older buildings, especially in renovations.
People are exposed to asbestos when it becomes “friable,” which means it is disturbed and its invisible fibers pass in the air and onto surfaces. There’s no safe level for any type of asbestos. Effects include lung and other cancers, as well as life-shortening asbestosis.
The school law isn’t working all that well in New Jersey
The WEA wanted the district to obey the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA), passed in 1986 to ensure school districts identify asbestos containing materials (ACM) sites in their buildings and remove or manage it properly. New Jersey’s Department of Health’s Public Employees Occupational Safety and Health program (PEOSH) enforces the law.
It requires districts to have a trained designated person dealing with ACM and a management plan based on inspections every three years and checks made every six months. The plan must be updated based on activities and available to anyone who requests it. Other provisions include labelling ACM areas.
Early in 2025, the state Department of Health’s Environmental and Occupational Health Surveillance Program (EOHSP) published two AHERA fact sheets.
Difficult to find on the website (they are under Reducing Exposures to Hazardous Substances, not the school asbestos pages), one analyzed 456 PEOSH asbestos inspections between 2008 and 2017. The results are scary, especially since the law is almost 40 years old:
- 48% (218 schools) had unidentified asbestos.
- 20% didn’t do the required six-month checks (“surveillance”).
- When friable ACM was present, half had no operations and maintenance plan.
- 57% (259 schools) failed to put warning labels near asbestos-containing building materials (ACBM) in routine maintenance areas.
- Short-term workers in 254 schools weren’t told about ACBM locations.
- Workers in more than half the schools inspected (254) were not told about required actions.
- Most districts had a designated person (all but 77 schools) but many are not properly trained (41% / 185 schools).
Lessons for health and safety committees
Local associations and their health and safety committees need to find out what their district is doing about AHERA, like the WEA did.
Committees can:
- Learn about the law.
- Have membership conversations using workplace maps to discuss where ACM is located and how it’s managed.
- Keep tabs on district management plans and activities, updating members about what they learn.
- Advocate for stringent protections.
WEC works with NJEA members who go through their UniServ rep for health and safety help.
“We get these reports and things from the district, but we don’t necessarily know exactly what we’re looking at. We need somebody who knows to tell us what to do,” Potts-Jacobs said. “Having someone from WEC who can talk about those things is really important when working with the district, because you start saying, ‘Well, we were told …’ and they go ‘OK, I’ll get back to you’. And suddenly it gets done.”
That’s also a lesson for the district, she added. It can be a partnership, not a “gotcha.”
“We are going to exercise our rights to follow up on these things and ask these questions, and we’re going to rely on WEC and NJEA and those connections to ensure things are safe.”
Connections to the membership are key. Potts-Jacobs got involved with her committee in 2019.
“Members and leaders need to know that health and safety committees aren’t just there for these unique situations,” Potts-Jacobs explained. “They’re there to help with things that maybe you’ve just been dealing with as a person in the classroom, because you thought that’s what it’s going to be like day in and day out. Members should know they can say something so that the committee can act on it to make things better.”
“After all, our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.”
Dorothy Wigmore is a long-time health and safety specialist and WEC consultant. She has worked in Canada, the U.S. and Mozambique, focusing on prevention and worker participation to fix job-related hazards.
Resources
NJEA
Asbestos killer dust in your school?
Environmental Protection Agency
New Jersey Department of Health