Good morning. Today we’ll look at how a group pushing for a federal ban on asbestos teamed up with a firefighters’ union to promote its cause in an eye-catching way. We’ll also find out the results of a state audit of Kendra’s Law, a treatment program for mentally ill people at risk of becoming violent.
It is an unusually serious message for a giant screen in Times Square: “Ban asbestos now.”
Those words are appearing four times an hour in an ad for the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, which says that most Americans believe asbestos has been banned for more than 30 years. In fact, a federal appeals court, in 1991, overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to prohibit most uses of asbestos.
Asbestos, long linked to lung cancer and mesothelioma, has been used less widely in recent years, in part because of liability concerns.
But the disease awareness group says that more than 300 tons of it came into the country last year. The group has been campaigning for a federal ban on such imports and has joined with the International Association of Fire Fighters, the largest union of firefighters and paramedics in the United States, to create the billboard ads.
“We’re hoping to spark curiosity, and, by raising awareness, prevent exposure to asbestos,” said Linda Reinstein, the president of the disease awareness group.
Reinstein said that asbestos-related diseases claim 40,000 lives a year in the United States, and the union says that firefighters are twice as likely to suffer from lung cancer as the general public, in part because of asbestos exposure.
“Since 9/11, New York City’s firefighters have been significantly impacted by lung diseases at a higher rate than the public,” said Edward Kelly, the general president of the firefighters’ union, which represents more than 344,000 firefighters nationwide, including members of the Uniformed Firefighters Association in New York City. “Asbestos has undoubtedly played a role in that.”
Kelly said that a ban would help “make a dangerous job as safe as can be.” Asbestos can be released into the air during a fire and pose risks besides those from inhalation, he said. If asbestos fibers land on firefighters’ gear, they can ride back to firehouses and eventually to firefighters’ homes, he said.
It has been 20 years since Reinstein started the disease awareness group. At the time, her husband, Alan, who had worked as a metallurgical engineer early in his career, was ill with mesothelioma: cancer caused by asbestos exposure.
By the time his cancer had been diagnosed, she said, “I thought asbestos had been banned.”
She continued: “He took a job in the ’60s when they were building nuclear submarines in Camden, in New Jersey. He was an engineer with a clipboard, and he did home repairs, so the reality was Alan was also exposed at home.” He died in 2004, when he was 66.
More than 60 countries have prohibited the use of asbestos. Last year the E.P.A. proposed banning one form of the material, chrysotile asbestos. It is used in making chlorine, an ingredient in household bleach and some medical products, along with disinfectants for water-treatment plants.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group, said this week that chrysotile asbestos has “limited, but critical, uses in the chemical industry.” The group added in a statement that “the chemical industry supports an appropriate phaseout of these uses” but that such a change must be made gradually “to minimize the impact to the national economy and critical infrastructure, including the availability of safe drinking water.”
Reinstein said the ban proposed by the E.P.A. would not go far enough because there are other types of asbestos that should be banned.
She also said that one of the biggest threats is so-called legacy asbestos, which is in building materials like insulation, floor tiles and roof shingles that were installed long ago and could be dislodged during renovations. In New York City, asbestos abatement work may be required, especially in buildings built before 1987.
Reinstein favors a more wide-ranging bill introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Democrats of Washington, that would prohibit companies from making or using chrysotile and seven other types of asbestos. That bill, named for Reinstein’s husband, was the subject of a Senate subcommittee hearing in 2022 but has not come up for a floor vote.
Weather
Enjoy a mostly sunny day in the low 50s. At night it will be partly cloudy, with temperatures dropping to the low 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended today (Lunar New Year’s Eve) and tomorrow (Lunar New Year).
Fatal lapses in a state program intended to curb violence
Yesterday we looked at an audit of a city program to treat mentally ill people. Now comes a separate audit, which says that the state’s premier program for treating mentally ill people who are at risk of becoming violent also has problems.
The audit, by the state comptroller, said the program has sometimes suffered from poor oversight and bureaucratic delays. In one case, nearly a month passed before a mental health provider connected with a person in the program, something that was supposed to happen within a week.
The provider did not schedule a follow-up meeting, and before long the person was arrested on a homicide charge. The audit said that the State Office of Mental Health, which is responsible for ensuring that people in the program receive treatment, learned about the delay after the killing, when it was notified by a local health department.
Still, the audit found that the program, known as Kendra’s Law, was working effectively in many instances, but it said that improvements were needed to reduce delays and lapses in communication.
Treatment providers and health officials are supposed to share information about how people in the program are faring so they can coordinate care. But in nearly a quarter of the cases auditors reviewed, there were data entry errors in reporting things like whether people had been arrested or had threatened to hurt themselves.
The audit echoed the findings of a New York Times investigation that pointed to breakdowns in Kendra’s Law. The program was set up in 1999 after a man with untreated schizophrenia shoved a 32-year-old woman, Kendra Webdale, in front of a subway train.
Kendra’s Law was intended to prevent similar attacks and gave judges the power to order outpatient treatment when someone posed a danger and had lashed out violently, or been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons.
But The Times found that people under this most heightened form of monitoring had been accused in more than 380 violent acts in the last five years. At least five people who were or had been under Kendra’s Law orders pushed strangers onto subway tracks.
New York State spends about $29 million a year to run the court-ordered treatment program for some 3,800 people. But the program has been underfunded, and treatment providers and health officials are often stretched thin, The Times found.
State mental health officials said they largely agreed with the auditors’ findings and were working on ways to enhance monitoring.
METROPOLITAN diary
The 37
Dear Diary:
I was at a market in Morningside Heights recently getting lunch to go.
An older woman in line behind me asked what I was ordering.
I said I hadn’t decided yet.
“They have at least 157 different sandwiches here,” she said, pointing to a stack of menus.
“My husband liked the 37,” she added.
I checked the menu: roast beef with fig jam, Parmesan, hot peppers, tomatoes and other ingredients. I decided to try one.
