Consultant: City incorrect in saying no asbestos in Sinclair

CEDAR RAPIDS - City officials incorrectly interpreted a consultant's document when they said this week that there is no asbestos, a carcinogen, in the burning buildings at the former Sinclair meatpacking site, the consultant, Howard R. Green Co., said Friday.

In fact, there may be asbestos in the buildings, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on Friday recommended that the city establish downwind air monitoring for asbestos substances, DNR air quality specialist Tom Wuehr said Friday afternoon.

At the same time, Wuehr noted that asbestos does not burn and that dousing sites with water is the accepted practice in abating asbestos at demolition sites.

“The Fire Department is putting a lot of water on this building. ... So you would assume there would be very little asbestos in the air,” Wuehr said.

Kevin Ward, a construction manager at engineering firm Howard R. Green Co. in Cedar Rapids, on Friday said a laboratory analysis on which city officials have based their statements about asbestos does not show what the city has said it shows.

Ward said Howard R. Green's central focus at the Sinclair plant in recent months has been to determine the structural integrity of the old slaughterhouse complex's 25-plus buildings.

In six instances, Ward said, his firm came across spots where fireproofing material had fallen off structural beams. He said the firm decided to send those six samples from three buildings to a laboratory for testing to get an idea of what those doing a more thorough future assessment of the buildings might encounter.

“So we just grabbed a couple of things in a couple buildings,” Ward said. “That's a massive complex. And six samples doesn't really give a good representation of what the entire complex is.”

Tests found that one of the six samples had asbestos, he said.

Ward said it would be “very unusual” for buildings of the Sinclair vintage not to have some type of asbestos in them.

“The right way to do that would be to do a complete environmental survey with a complete testing of all areas,” he said. “We took these (samples) just for our own information. But then we shared them with the city figuring they would like the information based on what was going on there.”

Ward said Howard R. Green Co.'s reaction has been “there really isn't a report” when the city this week cited the firm as not finding asbestos in the burning buildings.

“We only took six samples in a very, very limited area,” he said. “So to make that statement, it's not really a true statement.”

Jim Hodina, the air pollution control officer at Linn County Public Health, said Friday afternoon that his office was still operating by statements by the city this week that there was no asbestos in the burning buildings.

The county agency is continuing to monitor for particulate matter, which Hodina said was measuring three to four times higher than the standard as far away as Kirkwood Community College.

Fire Chief Steve Havlik said Friday afternoon that the city's firefighters are accustomed to fighting fires in old buildings with the possibility of asbestos in them, and he said firefighters are taking the same precautions at the Sinclair site – self-contained breathing equipment and working from upwind of the fire – as they always do at such sites.