seattlepi.com wrote:Most mechanics don't know -- or don't care -- about asbestos

Friday, November 17, 2000

By CAROL SMITH and
ANDREW SCHNEIDER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

The government tried for years to warn mechanics of the hazards of asbestos in brakes. But the message didn't get through to the thousands of grease-streaked neighborhood shops that do brake jobs every day.

Most mechanics today either don't know, or don't care, about asbestos.

During the past four months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer observed scores of mechanics changing brakes in more than 70 gas stations and auto-repair shops. Some national brake-repair chains and high-end car dealers have pristine work bays, shiny tiled walls, sterile-looking tool bins and asbestos-capturing filter systems. However, most procedures on sick cars get done in smaller garages, under less than operating-room conditions.

The mechanics doing the work in these independent shops are largely using obsolete or inadequate techniques, putting themselves at risk. The well-documented danger of asbestos is rarely considered.

Asbestos is a killer. It causes asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma -- all incurable. Mesothelioma snuffs out life in months. Asbestosis destroys the lungs' ability to function. Death by slow, agonizing suffocation takes years.

Yet nine out of 10 of the mechanics and supervisors interviewed thought that there was no longer asbestos in brakes or clutches.

Health researchers and industrial hygienists have developed many techniques to reduce exposure to asbestos as auto mechanics do their jobs. These protective measures boil down to a simple philosophy: Keep asbestos fibers out of the air, and if that can't be done, at least keep mechanics from breathing it.

All of the guidance produced by government and industry denounces the old "dry" method used for decades.

Compressed air hoses were commonly used to blow the dust from the brake mechanism. Using this method to clean drum brakes could "release up to 16 million asbestos fibers in the cubic meter of air around a mechanic's face," the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned.

Even hitting the brake drum with a hammer to loosen it can generate 1 million fibers, the agency said.

Wiping with a dry brush or dry rag can launch a deadly cloud of fibers.

The Coordinating Committee for Automotive Repair (CCAR), an education program for mechanics sponsored by 200 manufacturers, colleges, health groups and government agencies, warns that even the new "wet" techniques "may actually contribute to the problem."

Wiping with a wet rag or brush does little to prevent the scattering of asbestos.

"When the rag dries or is shaken, asbestos is spread around the garage," says CCAR's Web site.

Liquid squirt bottles or aerosol cans of solvent "scatter much of the asbestos and when it dries, it is still all over the surrounding work surfaces," the group warns.

CCAR, EPA and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OHSA) all recommend that mechanics wear respirators, carefully fitted and with asbestos-trapping filters. They caution against using traditional vacuum cleaners or shop-vacs because, unless equipped with a special "HEPA" or high efficiency particulate air filter, the fibers will not only not be captured, but in fact, be blown out and spread over a much wider area.

The recommendations also suggest that mechanics wash well and change clothes before going home. Dirty work clothes should be laundered at special facilities equipped to handle clothes contaminated with asbestos, the group says.

It is a safe bet that only a small percentage of mechanics follow all of these recommendations.

"You're dealing with the phenomenon of, 'If mechanics can't see it and they can't smell it, it doesn't exist and they don't deal with it,"' said Sherman Titens, CCAR president.

Titens is correct. The mechanics interviewed and observed by the P-I appeared almost cavalier in their disregard for their own safety.

Three were still using air hoses to blast the dust away.

When a mechanic in Seattle was again visible through the cloud of black he stirred up with the air, he looked sheepish and said: "I hold my breath until the dust settles."

When told that studies show that asbestos fibers can stay airborne for hours or days, he just shrugged.

Some were proud that they were using the so-called "wet method," an OSHA-sanctioned technique for reducing the asbestos hazard that they'd learned in school.

As a Tacoma mechanic hosed down the brake mechanism on a Ford, a black, dusty fog boiled out of a collection pan gathering the dark water at just about his chest level. A gritty film covered his face and his blue denim shirt.

"This is supposed to be the safest way," he said, looking a bit chagrined.

Other workers employed magical thinking about asbestos.

"It's OK, because I always wear gloves," said one.

"Asbestos isn't bad if you don't smoke," said another.

Some believed even if a brake contained asbestos, the residue left over wasn't dangerous.

"By the time we see it, it's all ground down like dirt and can't hurt you like the fibers can," a brake worker said.

Many said they simply held their breath.

But asbestos is invisible. You can't avoid it by blowing out or turning your head. What's more, while smoking does exacerbate the likelihood of disease, thousands of victims who have died from asbestos never smoked.

At many stations, machismo hangs in the air like secondhand smoke. Older mechanics, like campers trading bear stories, swap tales about how much asbestos they have sucked down.

"That's why you don't see any old mechanics," another said with a laugh. But he was only half kidding.

Four out of the 77 repair shops had HEPA vacuum-equipped enclosures for changing brakes -- two at dealers and two at independent stations. Mechanics at both the smaller shops said they couldn't remember the costly rigs ever being used.

"I know how to do it, but I don't use it. It just takes too much time," said one Boston-area mechanic. "I can get four wheels done before I can get one set through the vacuum setup."

CCAR's Titens says the rule is time is money.

"In the independents, they typically work by the hour, which means if they're not working on a car they're not getting paid," he said. "The owner is not going to change his ways voluntarily so you've got this disconnect between these good environmental practices and the need to make a living."

Owners or managers in 11 stations bought respirators for their mechanics. Properly used, they will prevent the inhalation of the lethal fibers. However, in all cases the respirators sat in unopened, dust-covered boxes.

Some mechanics occasionally use paper surgical or dust masks. Almost none of these will stop asbestos fibers from being inhaled.

Titens says CCAR worries about the turnover of about 60,000 mechanics a year.

"The schools only graduate 40,000 a year, so what you get is a lot of on-the-job training which only perpetuates all the faults of the past," he said.

Brian Hughes, an automotive instructor at South Seattle Community College, shares Titens' concern.

"I tell them to assume it is asbestos because the risk factor is too high," he said. But he admits it's difficult to communicate the risks of something students can't see and that won't affect them for many years.

He also stresses that they can't count on employers or oversight groups to protect them, and to speak up if they see unsafe practices.

"I tell them the only one who is going to protect you is you," he said. "You can't expect an organization or a group to do it. You're going to have to be the one who stands up and says this is unacceptable."

He had a sense of humor that permeated everything he did. Even the agonizing death he was fighting from mesothelioma -- a rare form of asbestos-caused cancer that destroys cells that line the chest or abdominal cavity.

"With all this asbestos in me, I'm probably fireproof," Kine joked. "I can eat all the hot chilies there are."

After two decades of running his own auto repair shop, he spent the next 26 years teaching others how to do it. He taught mechanics to hundreds of youths in Spokane's West Valley School District, at Spokane Community College and at the Shelton High School near Olympia. At one point, he was president of the local Washington Education Association.

It was a tightness in his chest, a hard time getting a full gulp of air, that brought him to the doctor in March of 1998.

"First I thought I had a bad cold, or the flu, but I couldn't shake it," Kine recalled.

Some X-rays showed how wrong he was.

"The next morning I was flat on my back in a hospital and they were draining this yellow gunk out of my right lung. Lots of it," he said.

Ultrasounds and CT scans followed immediately.

"I had this huge mass between my right lung and my ribs."

A biopsy to get a sample of the mass became major surgery.

"They started up front," Kine said, pointing to his chest, "and wound up going all they way around to the back and up over the shoulder blade. They were trying to get around the mass, but it was everywhere. It had grown through and all around my ribs."

He had mesothelioma.

"I know what it was. It was in the handouts I gave to my students. It was what I warned them about; it was the ultimate harm that asbestos can do to you if you're sloppy working with brakes and clutches," he said. "And now I'm dying from it."

The survival rate for mesothelioma is usually eight to 12 months. Kine made it almost two years.

He fought hard. Chemotherapy, radiation treatments, dozens of them. They slowed the growth of the cancer, but didn't stop it.

"I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm terrified of leaving Donna alone," Kine said, fighting back the tears as he thought of his wife of 42 years.

"I don't want to be a burden but I really wanted to watch them live their lives," he said, speaking of his daughter, two sons and four grandchildren.

Always the clown, he quickly changed the subject.

"The worst thing about the chemotherapy is that it changes the way things that you loved all your life taste," Kine said.

"My favorite was shortbread animal crackers, but now they taste terrible. Coffee, which I used to almost inhale, tastes ghastly. Life is just funny."

He thought back to when he first learned that asbestos in brakes can kill.

"I guess it was in '83 or '84," he recalled. "We got these fliers from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) or OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) or some government agency, telling how dangerous asbestos was and how much was contaminating the average guy doing a brake job.

"It just didn't make sense. I'd been messing with asbestos for years and so had every other mechanic I knew. No one ever told us it could kill you."

While he was still debating how much attention to pay to the federal warnings, the National Automotive Education Association sent him another batch of pamphlets for his students.

"They were serious. This asbestos was bad stuff. I started think back to all the old mechanics I knew, but I didn't know a lot of old mechanics. Most of them had died of breathing problems or lung cancer and some of them never smoked," he said.

Quickly, he added asbestos dangers to his curriculum.

He remembers telling his students that medical researchers said an exposure lasting only one or two months can result in mesothelioma developing 30 or 40 years later.

"I don't think it sunk in," he said. "These kids were convinced they'd never die, especially not from something they couldn't see. But I kept hammering at them."

He became an auto-repair evangelist, spreading the word of the dangers of the invisible fibers every time he stopped at a gas station.

"God, they were bullheaded. I remember when I was young. I thought nothing could harm me."

Long before he was diagnosed, he wondered about his own exposure.

During the 20 years he ran his own repair shop in Spokane -- Grand Prix Motors -- he was doing four or five major brake jobs a week.

"There was asbestos dust all over the place," he said. "We'd sand the brakes, file them, drill them, grind them and we and everything around us would be covered in that black grit.

"I'd blow my nose and it would be black. I'd wash my hair and the tub would be black."

He said it wasn't just the brakes that had asbestos.

"It was all over the vehicle," he said. "It was in the clutches, the exhaust and intake manifold, the cylinder heads, lots of gaskets. It was everywhere," Kine said.

He was angry that the manufacturers of the cars and the replacement brakes and clutches never warned mechanics of the dangers.

"Not a damn word. Not one. Never," he recalled. "Even in the early '90s the parts salesmen were saying it was much ado about nothing.

"How could they possibly keep something so deadly a secret?"

He didn't understand, he said, why the government went silent.

"I was just amazed. The government was so serious about getting the word out about the dangers from asbestos in the '80s. Then it just stopped, silence, like someone turned off the faucet," he said.

Like almost everyone else, Kine believed that the government had banned asbestos, that new cars no longer used it and replacement parts were now asbestos-free.

"I'd go these gas stations and see the kids covered in dust. Some of the brake boxes still said asbestos on them. Most didn't, but I could tell it was full of those fibers," he said.

"The kids would just shrug. They probably thought I was an old fool."

But Kine didn't quit trying.

"It became easier to hammer my point home after the surgery," he said. "I'd lift by shirt and show them the scars and then they'd pay attention."

Kine was most proud when his students came back to show off their wives and kids.

"I couldn't help wondering, 'Do they have it? Will they get it? Do they remember what I warned them about?'

"My students were not the ones that were going to MIT, but they were going to be damn good mechanics. But would the job kill them?"

As the tumor grew, Kine became weaker, but he kept fighting it off. He had one more thing he wanted to do. In June, the National Model Railroad Association and Circus Model Builders were holding their national convention together in Boise.

Trains and circuses, two of Kine's loves. For years, as Red Nose the Clown, he entertained hundreds of children.

"These go together because in the old days all the circuses traveled by railroad," he said. His collection of model trains was extensive and he wanted to show them off one more time.

Kine went to Boise, clown costume and all, wheeling his oxygen bottle behind him.

"I had to go and I did. It was hard, but it was worth it," he said.

The disease was taking its toll.

"You can't walk anywhere. You've got to plod and I've never been a plodder," Kine said. "My right lung doesn't do anything at all and I've got less than 30 percent function in my left lung. And it's never going to get any better. I'm going to be treading water the rest of my life."

On Aug. 13, he went into the hospital for the last time. He was suffocating from the fluids in his lungs. The cancerous mass had grown so large it was blocking his intestines.

That night he talked about the importance of getting the word out that asbestos was still out there.

"I hear the burst of an air hose and I cringe," Kine said. "Even with my eyes closed I can see the clouds of dust and now, when it's too late, I can almost see the invisible fibers of asbestos. I know it's in there.

"I wish I could do more, but I'm going to die here. EPA, OSHA, someone has got to warn these kids that they're working with death. If the government doesn't do anything, no one will."

Kine died on Aug. 25.

In his will he wrote that he wanted neither funeral nor memorial service.

"I feel they work a hardship on those left behind. I want my relatives to have a good old-fashioned wake instead ... buy a keg or two, prepare food, celebrate my life with a big party. Cab fare will be provided as needed."

Parties were held in Spokane and Olympia.

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