Personal Injury Law

Air and Space Museum Employee?s Asbestosis Claim Denied

By asbestoshub

House Administration Committee Chairman Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.) said he would hold a hearing to investigate health-and-safety allegations regarding the handling of asbestos at the Smithsonian Institution.

The hearing is to investigate “dangerous workplace conditions” at the Smithsonian after The Washington Post’s article about a worker who contends that his work on asbestos-containing walls at the National Air and Space Museum made him sick.

Museum lighting specialist Richard Pullman, 53, filed a federal whistleblower claim with the Office of Special Counsel in March 2009 alleging that the institution retaliated by demoting him for reporting workplace-safety violations. The Smithsonian denies retaliating.

Spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said that the museum is safe for visitors and that tests show there is nothing harmful in the air. “Visitors are not allowed to walk into construction areas — of [Air and Space] or any other museum — and therefore they cannot be exposed to any potentially hazardous fibers,” she said in an e-mail.

Pullman’s diagnosis is of asbestosis, though his workers’ compensation claim was denied, and he is appealing.

Pullman has worked at the Air and Space Museu for 27 years and learned only a year ago that the compound used to join walls at the Air and Space museum contained asbestos.

Brady, who leads the committee that oversees the Smithsonian, criticized museum officials who acknowledged to The Post that notification regarding asbestos had not been passed to workers after a consultant’s finding in 1992 that the walls contained asbestos.

What? Why?

“I am extremely concerned over allegations that the health and safety of Smithsonian visitors and workers have been compromised by a lack of communication and inadequate protection,” Brady said. “The rationale that staff and organizational changes have prevented effective action is unacceptable.”

Well was anyone assigned to ensure that proper notification took place and why wasn’t it brought up again? 1992 isn’t that long ago.

Pullman’s attorney David J. Marshall wrote in a letter to the office, “The museum attempted to clean up the potential asbestos release but its efforts were most likely not adequate because NASM management insisted that cleanup work be completed before the Museum opened at 10 a.m.”

Geez, close the museum and clean it up.

Another recent whistleblower case involved the Air and Space Museum. The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board in 2007 ordered the Smithsonian to reinstate museum specialist Michael Cross, who alleged he was fired in retaliation for reporting that ranking officials of the aviation museum had used the institution’s world-class aeronautical restoration facility in Maryland for personal projects. The case is now in U.S. District Court, and Cross left the museum earlier this year.

Sounds like some additional oversight is needed to oversee the overseers.

Read Washington Post coverage.

Full post as published by Asbestos HUB on March 29, 2009 (boomark / email).