Contaminated construction site...
A contractor excavated a roadway and deposited the material on a staging area for reclamation. The material included asbestos-cement water pipe that had been crushed in the process of excavation and transportation to the site. The pipe debris was mixed with dirt and pieces of concrete and the contractor initially desired to clean and salvage the larger pieces of concrete. I was initially asked to review a work plan for cleaning the concrete and verifying through analysis that the pieces were acceptably free of asbestos fibers. That approach was abandoned and the piles of dirt, concrete and embedded pipe were taken to a landfill and buried. The site remained contaminated with small pieces of pipe debris, however, when I visited the location and obtained debris and soil samples. I am currently reviewing a work plan for final clean-up of the site.
Of particular significance is the presence of crocidolite in the pipe debris as determined by analysis and visually evident on close examination of the pieces that I collected. The soil clean-up, inspection and sampling methods will be of interest to those developing standards and regulations for similar activities.