Suit alleges asbestos cover-up at Dearborn Height schools
- Custodian disciplined for speaking out about asbestos dangers
- District said MIOSHA found it in compliance, when in fact agency fined it for serious violations
- Consultant denied authoring report that gave school district a clean bill of health
- Investigator says superintendent concerned asbestos talk could hurt student recruitment
A Dearborn Heights school district endangered students and staff by falsifying a report and covering up past asbestos contamination at two schools, according to explosive records filed with a federal lawsuit on Tuesday.
Officials at Dearborn Heights Schools District No. 7 acknowledged to the Detroit Free Press they made a mistake by using electric sanders on vinyl tiles that contained asbestos, but insisted this week there is no evidence asbestos was released into the air where it could damage human health.
Nobody is alleging there is a current asbestos contamination problem at either of the schools.
Custodian Theresa Ely was reprimanded by the district in 2013 and again this year after complaining about district orders to use sanding equipment to remove wax from the tiles, and for warning co-workers their health was endangered when they did the work without protective equipment at Annapolis High School in 2012 and Madison Elementary School in 2011.
In disciplining Ely, district officials said the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration checked and found no problems. Jeff Bartold, who was district superintendent until July and is now the interim business manager, also cited a consultant’s report that gave Annapolis a clean bill of health.
But MIOSHA records show the agency fined the district $27,000 in 2013 for “serious” health and safety violations related to the work on asbestos tiles at the two schools.
Also, the environmental consultant cited by the district, Don Clayton of D&D Consulting, says he never inspected either school for asbestos, and that he never wrote nor had any knowledge of the report the district attributed to him.
Clayton told a MIOSHA investigator he suspects somebody in the district doctored an earlier report Clayton wrote on a different subject to forge a false report on the asbestos issue, records show.
“I’ve never seen the length that this district has gone to cover this up, from falsifying asbestos reports to issuing gag orders to employees to not talk about an item that has grave health concerns,” said Robert Fetter, Ely’s Detroit attorney.
Citations which MIOSHA issued against the school district on June 5, 2013, based on inspections conducted during May of that year, cited the district for “serious” violations for allowing sanding of floor tiles containing asbestos, for failing to give employees proper training, and for failing to conduct initial monitoring of “employees who were or may have been reasonably expected to be exposed to airborne concentrations of asbestos at or above the ... permissible exposure limit.”
MIOSHA initially assessed fines totaling about $27,000, which were later reduced to about $9,000, Fetter said.
Ely, who in a separate MIOSHA complaint alleges she was retaliated against when the district laid her off for the summer of 2013, said about 20 workers likely were exposed but only she and one other worker who complained have been tested, and the district hasn’t even paid for those tests.
The suit, assigned to U.S. District Judge David Lawson in Detroit, alleges that last year a kitchen employee at Annapolis died of mesothelioma, an asbestos-related disease.
Paul Egan is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press.