National Mesothelioma Awareness Day: 2011 promises to favor mesothelioma victims

Monday (Sept. 26) is National Mesothelioma Awareness Day, a Congressionally proclaimed occasion honoring and remembering the millions of Americans afflicted by this disease.

We at Weitz & Luxenberg are deeply invested in the mesothelioma community, and are committed to helping raise awareness for this important holiday.

Mesothelioma is a rare and deadly cancer that destroys the tissues surrounding internal organs in the chest and abdomen. It is caused by exposure to asbestos – common in people who have worked for decades at certain industrial jobs.

Among the things that mesothelioma awareness advocates are trying to promote this week are informational resources, organizations providing support, and medical literature. Being diagnosed with mesothelioma is a debilitating blow, and victims of asbestos exposure deserve support – they deserve to be made whole

Awareness, more than anything else, represents hope for mesothelioma victims. There is no cure for the disease, but 2011 represents one step in the passage to a new era of understanding mesothelioma.

At Weitz & Luxenberg, we strive to give mesothelioma victims hope. We are partnering with an expanding variety of organizations and advocates to help provide information and resources to victims of mesothelioma. Awareness is the next step toward finding a cure.

We also want to spreading the word that, although there is no cure yet, today is the best time to make sure that the medical expenses and other costs incurred by mesothelioma get paid. We have helped hundreds of people to receive the compensation they deserve from asbestos companies – compensation that can alleviate at least one of the ill effects of mesothelioma.

Litigation is what we do best at Weitz & Luxenberg, but it is not all we are focused on. With the arrival of National Mesothelioma Awareness Day, we are stepping up our efforts to get the word out. Please make use of all our resources to help us spread the word.

Fire destroys The Castle, a once-proud school turned asbestos hazard

On August 3, a 4 alarm fire raged at the former Julia de Burgos Middle School/ Edison High School/ Northeast Manual Training School at 8th & Lehigh in North Philadelphia. (Photo: David Maialetti for The Philadelphia Inquirer)

August 3rd, 2011 was a sad day for Northeast, Edison and  de Burgos grads, as well as for lovers of architecture, but perhaps a good day for the children of Fairhill, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philly.


This past Wednesday, the Castle (as the old Gothic structure was known) went up in a four-alarm blaze. It had been unoccupied since 2002, when the Julia de Burgos Magnet Middle School closed. The beautiful building, long fallen into disrepair, was little more than an asbestos hazard and scrappers' free-for-all at the time of its incineration, though plans for demolition and rebirth as a shopping center were (and still are, as far as I know) in the works.


In the nine years since the building's last occupant--a magnet school named for the famous Puerto Rican poet-- has been closed, 701 Lehigh Avenue has been a magnet for vandals, drug sales, metal scrappers, and other illegal activity.


Much like the abandoned Roberto Clemente Middle School I wrote about in July, the Castle posed a danger to the community, in that it was easy to access, and full of dangers like broken glass and friable asbestos.


Philly News' Stephanie Farr gave a brief summary of the 109-year-old school's varied history:

The school, which has sat vacant since 2002, began as the boys-only Northeast Manual Training High School in 1903. It then became Northeast High School, until a new Northeast High was opened in 1957.

The building then housed Thomas Edison High School, which lost 66 of its former students in the Vietnam War - more than any other public high school in the country.

Edison High was eventually moved as well and the building became home to the Julia DeBurgos Bilingual Middle School in 1988. In 2002, that school closed. 

701 Lehigh, before the fire. (photo: Annie Bydlon for NewsWorks)

WHYY's Mara Zepeda interviewed the site's developer Scott Oren standing "amid broken glass, rusty nails, asbestos, and shattered beams." These are the sort of dangers the developer, authorities, and the community would love to keep children safe from, but with insufficient funds to guard or seal the large property, have not been able to do.

 Any Northeast, Edison or de Burgos grads in the peanut gallery care to comment? Sad or glad to see the Castle go? I'm torn, frankly--it was a beautiful school, but you can see what had become of it. Asbestos in the schools is an issue whether or not the school is open, because, as the articles I've linked to attest, kids still find a way in, even after the school's shut down. 

Forensic sculptor/ North Philly native Frank Bender dies of mesothelioma

Frank Bender called himself "The Recomposer of the Decomposed".

Philadelphia and the crime-solving community lost a legend last Thursday when Frank Bender died of pleural mesothelioma in his home. He is survived by his two daughters, three grandchildren, and sister. He was predeceased by his wife Janice, who died of cancer in 2010. The New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer both ran obituaries for the late, great forensic sculptor.

Talking about his mesothelioma--the aggressive asbestos-related cancer of the lining of the lungs and other internal organs--Frank Bender once told a reporter, "It's interesting that I have cancer, because I have always said through the years that catching fugitives and identifying people takes a piece of cancer out of our society." 



Mr. Bender believed his exposure to asbestos happened in the engine room of the Navy ship where he and the rest of the crew worked. Mesothelioma rates are high among naval veterans, due to the large amounts of asbestos used to insulate the boilers, engines, and other high-temperature areas of military vessels. 


Even during the last months of his life, Frank Bender was committed to solving crime. His last sculpture, The Woman in the Woods, is a hand-sculpted bust of a woman (estimated age 25 to 40) whose body was found in the woods near Easton in December of 2001. For more about The Woman in the Woods, visit http://coldcase.squarespace.com/ to learn more about this unsolved crime.

The Woman in the Woods--Frank's last case. Her death remains unsolved.

Though his busts of unidentified bodies have helped many families find closure, Frank Bender's most famous sculpture was of a suspected murderer who had eluded the police for eighteen years. When America's Most Wanted asked Mr. Bender to create a time-adjusted sculpture of John List, a New Jersey man accused of killing his wife and family in 1971, a woman watching the show in Virginia recognized the bust as her neighbor, "Bob Clark." Mr. List was subsequently arrested and convicted of the murders.

"In many ways, Frank's bust of John List really launched America's Most Wanted into a national force for catching fugitives," AMW host John Walsh said in 2009. "Whenever I get the tough cases, I call Frank."


If you want to learn more about Mr. Bender and his colleagues' pro-bono work in The Vidocq Society, visit http://www.vidocq.org/index.html. 

Asbestos and hazmat removal in the nick of time in Camden

The former Concord Chemical Inc. (Photo courtesy of DVRBS)

A little late with this one, but you'll have to forgive me--I don't look across the Delaware often enough, and sometimes I'm a little late getting the Jersey news. And what a story this one is: a possible arsonist on the loose in Camden, plus 2010 budget cutbacks in the fire department (always a good idea, shrinking the service that keeps us all from catching fire), bringing on some federal involvement in the form of the ATF.

Oh, and one more thing: a near-miss on chemical explosions and potentially fatal asbestos exposure for the firefighters sent to put out the six-alarm blaze. You see what you miss when you turn your back on Jersey?

(Image courtesy of DVRBS)

Asbestos and "400 containers of hazardous, flammable chemicals" on the scene were declared completely removed by the EPA in March, after a six month cleaning process. Spokesman for the [Camden] Mayor's Office Robert Corrales said: "It could have been really bad." 


Corrales was referring to the hundred of barrels of flammable chemicals and asbestos which, though undeniably fireproof, would have been spread throughout the neighborhood, contaminating a community already devastated by two previous fires set this month.


The Concord Chemical factory had interesting history. Historians at the Delaware Valley Rhythm & Blues Society gave a brief (but very informative) summary of the now-burnt property's history:

The Dobbins Soap Manufacturing Company, founded in 1863, had a factory in Philadelphia at Germantown Ave, Susquehanna Ave, and the southwest corner of Marshall Street which they had remodeled in 1864 and 1865. Owned by the Cragin family, by 1887 the firm had built a factory on the southwest corner of 17th Street and Federal Street, where they operated until 1934. George Cragin was the superintendent from 1887 through 1906, Louis Bresset had the position in 1914, and Alex Macfeat had it in 1924.

The plant was acquired by the Iowa Soap Company, which operated the facility into the late 1940s. At some point after 1959 the Concord Chemical Company moved its operations from 205 South 2nd Street to this building, which is still into the late-2000s. The building was then abandoned, and an EPA team did a clean-up in 2010.

On June 19, 2011 the old soap factory, known roughly 50 years as the Concord Chemical factory, was destroyed by fire.

One product that used to be made at 17th & Federal (Photo from DVRBS)

Great stuff. (The history, not the fire.) The idea of an arsonist on the loose in the Philly area really creeps me out. Behavioral scientists say that bed-wetting, arson, and cruelty to animals are three traits that most serial killers display in their youth. Not saying the arsonist or arsonists are serial killers, but I would not be surprised if this person/ group of people were responsible for some other crimes.


Well that's all for today in asbestos/ arson news. Let's hope it stays that way, for the safety of the people of Camden and Philadelphia. Much love to the Camden Fire Department. I'm glad they were not exposed to asbestos as so many firefighters have been in the past, and even more than the asbestos, I am glad the chemicals were removed. Fires are dangerous enough without gigantic explosions.

A Camden firefighter puts out the six-alarm blaze. (Photo courtesy of DVRBS)

  

Metal scrappers get asbestos exposure at former Clemente Middle School

Juliana Reyes painted a grim picture of the former Roberto Clemente Middle School at Fifth and Luzerne:

Gregory Betancourt perches on an overturned love seat and peers through a stripped window frame into a darkened six-story building.He sees a pile of filthy clothes, a mattress and a lot of darkness. Discarded tires and empty soda bottles clutter the concrete around him. A wooden plank on the ground nearby - what used to be the top of a school desk, maybe - is still legible: "Property of the Philadelphia School District - 1988," it reads.

The old Roberto Clemente Middle School closed in 1994, and relocated to West Erie and North Front. Before it was a middle school named for the Puerto Rican baseball great, it was an Apex Hosiery factory. Reyes says students at the original Clemente called their school "The Pantyhose Factory."

(Note: Do not Google the phrase "pantyhose factory" unless you want to be inundated with pornography. For more information about the old pantyhose factory, read this heart-breaking article from 1954 about Apex in Philadelphia, and this one from 1937.)

After its first two lives as a pantyhose factory and a middle school, Reyes reports that the building became the Greater Philadelphia Book Bank, "a pet project of businessman Robert Graves. The Book Bank, a place for teachers to get books for free, shut down in 2007. Graves said the School District couldn't afford to keep the building open anymore."

Clemente is now abandoned, as it has been for four years, leaving it open for scrapper seeking copper wire and other building materials to sell. A recent article in Philadelphia Weekly by Michael Alan Goldberg explored the dangers unleashed by scrappers tearing up the walls:

The presence of asbestos comes as no surprise to 49-year-old Jose Lisojo, owner of JL Custom Shop on Rising Sun Avenue, which faces the back of the Clemente building. Standing outside his garage, Lisojo and his friend Ray—a carpenter who says he’s certified to remove asbestos—point to pipe wrappings inside the building that they’re certain contain asbestos. Both mention the white dust that comes out of the property every day. 

“[Scrappers are] poisoning the air around here,” Lisojo complains. He says he’s called the city’s 311 hotline repeatedly to report asbestos contamination, but claims no one takes him seriously. “One time the guy told me, ‘Don’t worry—you won’t get sick for 20 or 30 years,’” says Lisojo, shaking his head.

Philadelphia School District Spokeswoman Elizabeth Childs said the district's Facilities Management Division monitors the building daily, and cleans the site monthly. It also "routinely welds doors shut and closes openings in windows on the ground level," but somehow, scrappers still get in.

 

Philadelphia Health Department spokesman Jeff Moran told Philly.com that the district has been cited by the city's Air Management Services: "To comply, the district must either seal the building or remove the asbestos. The district will work with an asbestos abatement contractor as well as a vacant property specialist to seal the property, Moran said."

What do you say, readers? Do you see an asbestos abatement project happening anytime soon at the old Roberto Clemente? Or will it take some kind of tragedy to motivate the underfunded city government to make this dangerous asbestos den a priority? Call me a pessimist, but I'm betting on the latter.

McDonald Elementary will keep name and location, and lose the asbestos

Warminster's McDonald Elementary will keep its name and its location on Street Road and Reeves Lane in Warminster. Everything else—asbestos included—must go. Montgomery News' Natalya Bucuy reports that the new McDonald Elementary (plans for the new school shown above) will retain only its name and address as the school begins its new stage in a modern building's life cycle: asbestos abatement, demolition, and reconstruction.

The school's construction project is planned to begin shortly and will continue through the end of 2012. An earlier article about the fate of Warminter's elementary schools in The Intelligencer placed the new school's opening somewhere in early 2013, though the new article provides no updated estimate.

The soon-to-begin construction project and others are part of a plan to streamline public education in the Bucks County and Montgomery County region. Bucuy writes that “the new McDonald Elementary, along with the renovated Willow Dale Elementary School and the new Davis Elementary School, will replace the district’s current six elementary schools by consolidating them into three.”

In the same meeting in which these terms for the new schools were established, officials approved the closing Alta S. Leary Elementary School in Warminster effective this September. Any Alta S. Leary grads among us, readers? Feel free to share some fond memories in the comment section.

And to the kids and parents of Warminster: congratulations! No asbestos exposure for you. Now if we could just get around to doing this in all Philly public schools, we'd be set. 

Ambler asbestos factory, closed in the 80's, finally going green

The former Nicolet Industries' asbestos factory is going green, over two decades after the Ambler asbestos factory shut down. The Inquirer reported yesterday that, thanks to 2.5 million dollar loan from the Metropolitan Caucus' EnergyWorks program, developers can afford to move forward with the $14.7 million dollar project to convert the sites of the former Keasbey & Mattison Boiler House and two adjacent properties into state-of-the-art, eco-friendly multi-purpose properties.

Montgomery County Commissioners Chairman James R. Murphy said in a statement: "Redevelopment of the Ambler Boiler House will convert this blighted and environmentally challenged property into a vibrant part of the local economy and spur others to invest in Ambler."

The development team heading the conversion of the former asbestos factory have kept the familiar facade and removed asbestos and other hazards. Their focus on green redevelopment is admirable:

Earlier this year, [Summit Realty Advisors] removed all asbestos contamination, including portions of the roof and a 20,000-gallon fuel tank buried under the building.

The new space, which will maintain the structure's distinctive redbrick facade and smokestack, is expected to seek certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design [LEED] program, which offers an internationally recognized set of criteria recognizing eco-friendly construction.

Developers plan to install a geothermal well for heating and cooling, photovoltaic panels on the roof, and a system to capture storm-water runoff.

The Ambler Boiler House has come a long way since the 1960s:

For those of you too young to remember, these are some of the asbestos products formerly manufactured at the Ambler Boiler House:

We have already lived through the economic affects of factory closings, and we have been living with their absence for decades. A whole generation exists that never saw what Philadelphia was like when there were enough jobs to go around. But what they have seen are the closed factories full of asbestos and other hazmats. 

The young people do not face asbestos exposure in the factory as their parents and grandparents did, but they do face it if they wander too close to forbidden zones. Telling a kid to keep out of a place is one surefire way to pique their curiosity, and "Keep Out" signs don't ensure community safety the way asbestos abatement and, even better, decontamination and redevelopment of contaminated sites does.

Of course, 14.7 million is something most communities can't just pull out of a hat. It took nine years for the developers to get the necessary funds. 

I'd be interested to hear from former employees of the Ambler Boiler House--what was it like then? How many people, if any, have developed mesothelioma and asbestosis? Do you expect good results from the redevelopment? Ambler residents: have previous redevelopment projects like the one on Butler been successful, in your opinion?

For my part, I'm cautiously hopeful that green business initiatives like this will bring back some of the industry of the past without its industrial diseases.