Town custodian files grievance over alleged mishandling of asbestos exposure
Aug. 10—MARBLEHEAD — Ed Medeiros is the kind of person at Town Hall that everyone gets to know: The caretaker of a historic building's secrets that give Abbot Hall its character.
Medeiros, 59, has been a custodian in Marblehead for the past 14 years. He has a small, closet-like office jutting off the Washington Square-facing entrance of Abbot Hall.
Bald, with a prolific goatee and tall but relaxed stature, often sits outside when taking a break, on the front steps and chatting regulars up as they walk in. Everyone stops to say hello.
His town workers union, however, claims that due to a mishandled alleged asbestos exposure incident in May, Medeiros may have jeopardized his health and that of his entire household.
It took more than a week after the incident before he realized there was a problem, he said, and so far he has yet to see the incident properly handled by the town.
Closet job goes awry
On May 16, Medeiros was assigned to prep a room for painting at the town's Mary Alley building, one of two historic buildings that house Marblehead's municipal functions. He noted that an unrelated pressure-washing job then took priority, but it turned out the equipment for that work wasn't available one particular day.
"(Building commissioner John Albright) said to me, 'Since we're not pressure-washing the building, can you get started on the room under the penthouse?' I responded by saying, 'I'm a little concerned about the presence of lead paint,'" Medeiros said.
The town then had paint in the room tested for lead, which came back negative, Medeiros explained. "That particular email that came in that Monday was that they had it tested, that it was negative, and 'I want you to start the closet,'" he said. "'Don't do anything, no trash, no recycling. Just paint the closet.'"
He arrived about 1 p.m. the next day (May 17) and started scraping the closet's walls to prep it for painting. His arm at some point incidentally bumped a covered pipe hanging in the room, causing some material encasing it to crumble away and rain down on top of him, he explained.
"At the time, stuff was falling — hitting the shelf, hitting the floor... still just doing my job," Medeiros said. "One of the other inspectors walked by ... and said I gotta close this door. and I said, 'you can't close this door. I'm working in here.' He said, 'What are you doing?' and I said, 'I'm prepping the room for paint.' He said, 'Who told you to do that?' I said, 'The commissioner.' He said, 'Where is he?' and I said, 'I dunno.'"
The inspector then found Albright and disappeared behind closed doors. Soon, "they came out and pretty much just said, 'let's clean it up,'" Medeiros said. "They gave me a better mask, a KN95 mask, and told me I went too far."
The material that crumbled to the floor — which was later determined to contain asbestos, according to the union — was then cleaned up by Medeiros using a vacuum. It was triple-bagged by Albright, the bagging taking place in a fashion consistent with handling hazardous materials. But there was no explanation at the time for why they were handled that way or what happened to the bags after they were placed in Albright's vehicle, Medeiros said.
Medeiros was then asked to fully clean out the vacuum he used on the material — a possible vector for spreading asbestos in the air being breathed by any town employees in the vicinity, he said. At that point, he was still not aware of any dangers from the work. Once the vacuum was cleaned, he painted the closet and became sick for multiple days, which he suspected was due to improper ventilation of the fumes from the painting materials. He also left an accident report for Albright to fill out, thus creating a claim should issues arise in the future, he explained.
When Medeiros recovered from the ventilation issue and returned to work the following week, he learned that the town had the bagged material tested and found it was "hot" for asbestos, he explained.
According to the union, they requested Albright's accident report May 23, which he provided May 31, and that report stated the debris was determined to contain asbestos.
"The following Monday, I came in and was really afraid to go back in the closet," Medeiros said. "That's when I notified Terri about what's going on."
"And I said, 'don't set foot in that closet,'" interjected Terri Tauro, head of MMEU IUE-CWA Local 1776, the town's municipal union.
Not being transparent
From the beginning, Medeiros' incident has been a learning process, according to Tauro.
"The first thing I did was google 'asbestos exposure,' and the paint. If you google 'exposure,' it's 'stop work immediately. Wet the person down. Seal the room. Get rid of his stuff. Have him take a shower,'" Tauro said, adding that the clothing must all be destroyed. "It was a two-day period... moving in the closet, breathing these particles constantly. Only an expert can clean those particles."
There are also concerns that Medeiros may have tracked asbestos home and exposed everyone in his family to it, according to Tauro. An email from Tauro to town officials in early June noted that concerned residents had started an online gofundme campaign "to have (Medeiros') house and truck cleaned since he was sent home twice covered in asbestos to his family which include two grandchildren under the age of 5 (one a baby)."
But to date, the town hasn't turned over a copy of the lab test results that show asbestos was detected in the materials, Tauro explained. A heat map showing the presence of asbestos in town buildings apparently doesn't exist for Mary Alley at all, she added, making it difficult for Medeiros to have even known the pipe's insulation — which was exposed to open air for however many years if not decades — contained asbestos.
"We need the positive asbestos test," Tauro said. "We're looking out for Ed's house. We need to get a new washer and dryer. We need to get Ed's house tested, Ed's car tested. His clothes were washed in the washer and dryer that they all use to wash their clothes in.
"We want to make sure Ed is taken care of and this is well-documented in the event that, moving forward, Ed does have an incident," Tauro continued. "They put an employee at risk because of negligence. We want Ed to get his sick time back, and we're demanding Ed be taken care."
But "we've heard nothing," Tauro said.
Albright and Thatcher Kezer, Marblehead's newly hired town administrator, both declined to discuss the situation with The Salem News. Albright answered an initial inquiry by saying, "at this time, I don't feel it prudent to comment on the custodian or union."
In the meantime, the case has triggered a six-charge grievance to the Department of Labor Relations. The grievance, Tauro explained, requests:
1. The town's risk-assessment plan on asbestos and toxic materials exposure
2. Protocols and standard operating procedure following a suspected accidental asbestos exposure
3. Protocols for following up an asbestos exposure incident
4. The town's most up-to-date heat map "for all municipal buildings known to have asbestos, including but not limited to the Transfer Station, Widger Road (the Mary Alley building), Abbot Hall, Tower Way and Waterside Cemetery buildings"
5. Results of the required air testing that should have been conducted immediately after the incident on May 17
6. Information on how long the vacuum used in the incident sat in the building unsealed, and where it is today
None of the six requests have been answered to date, Tauro explained, and the union filed for arbitration July 28, "because the grievance steps — one, two, and three — went completely unanswered."
"When we have a grievance, we go to the department head first. The department head couldn't settle the grievance, so we sent it to the town administrator, which is step two," Tauro said. "Step three was the Board of Selectmen, and they had 21 days to respond."
That response, Tauro said, never came in. An attempt to contact Moses Grader, the board's chairperson, seeking comment went unanswered.
"Now we're filing for arbitration," she said, "which is going to cost the town and union money."
Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.
Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.