Cal State Chico Professor Still Worried about Asbestos

A professor of geography and planning at the California State University at Chico told the school newspaper this week that he’s still concerned about the presence of asbestos in aging Butte Hall, despite the fact that the Division of Occupational Safety and Health performed an inspection and gave the building a clean bill of health.

The professor, Mark Stemen, explained to the newspaper that when Butte Hall was constructed, asbestos was combined with cement materials that were applied as fireproofing on the metal pillars. This was normal practice for construction during the 1970s, when asbestos was still in use but beginning to be questioned.

Stemen says the university is “trying to ignore what they already have acknowledged”; namely, that asbestos material was found in ceiling tiles during a 2010 renovation that addressed lighting throughout the campus.

At that time, Luis Caraballo, director of facilities management and services, notified Gayle Hutchinson, the dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, about the asbestos and she replied with an email noting the ceiling space was made “off limits” several years ago to keep maintenance workers from disturbing the material.

Joe Wills, director of public affairs and publications at Chico State, then explained that that statement wasn’t really true. The space wasn’t off-limits, he said, but it is accessed only when using a so-called containment enclosure, which uses a high-efficiency particulate air vacuum to keep dust from circulating around the building.

But Stemen says there are many faculty members who simply don’t believe the university when they claim that all is safe in Butte Hall. Many still think the cancer deaths of two individuals who worked in the building for years, professor Andy Dick and staff member Tami Harder Kilpatric, were as a result of the poor environmental conditions inside Butte Hall.

“[Faculty members] see this as a ‘Wizard of Oz’ trick they’re trying to pull; don’t look behind the curtain, don’t look above the ceiling tiles,” Stemen said. He doesn’t think the Cal-OSHA investigation was very thorough and cites the continuous issue of falling asbestos material on top of the ceiling tiles as a major hazard.

“The university response is to put duct tape around the holes and seal off the crack between the ceiling to keep everyone quiet,” he said. “The university hasn’t done this for 40 years, and now they have started to seal it up after people started to complain.”