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Thayer addresses Congress
April 11th, 2007 by Wendi Lewis
On March 1, 2007, John Thayer, the supervisor of the U.S. Capitol power plant tunnel crew, addressed the U.S. Congress to bring to light the hazardous working conditions affecting his staff, including daily exposure to asbestos. He spoke in support of the Ban Asbestos in America Act, which was presented in the Senate by Sen. Patty Murray. Here is an excerpt of his remarks:
“If you all are comfortable sitting in this room, because our team of pipe-fitters and welders and electricians is doing its job. Just over a year ago, we found out that the AOC had been misleading us for years about the extent of our workplace exposure to asbestos.
“The Architect knew, but didn’t tell us, that the concentration of airborne asbestos in the tunnels was extremely toxic 30 to 40 times the legal limit. We discovered this when the Office of Compliance filed an unprecedented complaint against the Architect for not fixing safety problems that the OOC had identified seven years earlier. So we asked to see the medical records from our annual employment physicals conducted by the Office of Attending Physician.
“My own records stated that my lung age was 118 years old. I was 33 at the time. No one ever told me this: on the contrary, every year the doctor gave me a paper saying I was cleared to work in the tunnels. We all got those pieces of paper. Even worse, the Architect had let us carry deadly asbestos home in our clothes every day for years, without telling us that this posed a real risk to our wives and children. Banning asbestos is important not only for the safety of the workers who handle it, but also for their families.”
