Burned down building, rising health concerns.

May 15, 2009 2:57 PM

Asbestos, mold and spores! Oh my! Slightly afraid of the burned down building next to me. Should I be? Details, and a heartwarming metafilter-related story inside.

We live in a multi building apartment complex. About a month ago, one of the buildings in our complex burned down. No injuries, no other buildings caught, but a whole lot of people lost everything.

We really like our apartment for many reasons, and weren't planing on moving. The burned down building, though very unattractive, isn't in view of our windows, and we don't see it all that often. Doesn't impact our day much. A few weeks ago, big "Danger Asbestos" signs went up around the building. Now, looking into the building, you can see big nasty, Katrina-style, black mold on all the drywall.

I'm asthmatic, and pretty sensitive to allergens. I know you are (probably) not a doctor, but perhaps someone with some environmental science background can tell me, how dangerous is it to live next to a building like this? I'm not about to go jump inside it and play with some toxic mold, but could just living in proximity to this building affect my health? Also, how likely is it that a building built in the late 70's would have asbestos?

Story time.

The BF and I moved to Austin recently, and we've been going to MetaFilter meet ups, like the most excellent white elephant holiday gift exchange, where I "won" a very unique frog shaped teapot. . Our apartment is mostly filled with what fit in the back of two cars, and impersonal Ikea furniture, so The Frog was very welcomed. The night of the fire, we had somehow slept through (no exaggeration) 10 full ladder trucks pulling into our parking lot. We were awoken by a police officer banging on our door-- "Its not your building. Yet." Autopilot kicked on; threw on some clothes, grabbed laptops and insurance papers, cell phones and wallets. In an instant, my boyfriend and I were standing in the entryway, looked at each other and said, "OK. Everything else can burn." He grabs the teapot and says, "At least we'll have the frog", and with that we left.

Metafilter has given us the ultimate conversation piece.

posted by fontophilic to health & fitness (6 comments total)

Since it's a building in your complex... and has black mold and asbestos... My big concern would be if the building you're in also has similar issues. IANA Environmental Scientist, but that's the first flag that would go off in my head.
posted by frwagon at 3:12 PM on May 15

it's very likely a building from the late 70s would have asbestos in it.
posted by supermedusa at 5:29 PM on May 15

i agree with frwagon. my first worry would be that MY building also had asbestos and mold. it is possible that the mold has grown recently, after the fire, because of the water and all that, but it's also possible it's been there for years and was only exposed after the fire when walls got gutted.

i'd ask the landlord about it (the asbestos, anyway).

mold is pretty dangerous stuff, especially to those who are allergic (like you and me). i'd be worried about mold spores travelling over to my place on the wind or something. i don't know if that's a real possibility though.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 6:45 PM on May 15

I wouldn't worry about the asbestos. It's only a problem if you get it in your lungs, and that requires it to be particleized, which normally involves either working in an asbestos mine (it's a naturally occurring mineral) or otherwise working directly with the material for a long time. Short exposures, even of high levels, do not seem to pose much of a risk. We're talking decades of exposure here. If you read the Wikipedia article I linked to, you'll see that almost all of the cases discussed were people who actually worked with the stuff professionally, either making clothes or using it in construction.

The mold may not be much of a risk, but it's a much bigger one, as mold is not inert the way asbestos is. The only way asbestos is going anywhere is if it's physically disturbed. Mold grows and spreads on its own. But unless it's in your building, just walking by isn't going to do much. I guarantee you walk by far more dangerous stuff than this every day and never know it.
posted by valkyryn at 8:56 PM on May 15

Mold spores are pretty ubiquitous. Give it a place where it food and moisture and it will do just fine for itself. Unfortunately, if your house is tightly sealed, you being there will give it all the moisture it needs between cooking, bathing, breathing, having a toilet,etc. in short order. Fortunately, they figured this out pretty quickly. Unfortunately, if certain systems in a house fail (like the roof) because they've been poorly maintained (or slightly on fire) you can have hellish mold issue pretty quickly.

If you're not having asthma issues in the apartment you're in now, I doubt you're gutters are directing water straight into your walls to support a small army of pure mold waiting to leap out and kill you in your sleep. Unless there is some reason the air from in and around the burned out building is being directed straight into your apartment it's probably not that much different from a neighbor having a compost pile.

Asbestos abatement was a huge issue in the early 80's, so "how late" in the 70's and how much foresight did the builder have will matter. Not all sources of asbestos are created equally. Floor tiles, for example, are not much of a hazard. But I'd put wrapped on insulation that's now in the process of falling off your pipes and vents in the "clear and present danger" category.

I'd ask your apartment management about the asbestos. It could be that they're required to display that until an audit is done, or it could be an overstated concern to keep idiots from poking around in the partially burned building. Chances are, anything in your building is well contained and would only be a serious hazard if something like a fire happened.

More importantly, YOU WILL WANT YOUR WINDOWS CLOSED WHEN THEY DO DEMOLITION!. I'd ask your landlord to make super sure you are notifed and make real sure you close everything up and switch to AC the day they start. (And then change your filters when they're done. Trust me on this. You can see my house from here.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:23 AM on May 16

Seconding valkyryn & Kid Charlemagne- lots and lots of old buildings have asbestos in them it was used everywhere until the 1970's. I have worked with Asbestos and as long as you don't disturb it you should be all right. I was using Asbestos tile (it has great insulation properties and turns out was also commonly used as tile) and we just never cut it and avoided touching it -usually because something really really hot was involved. Remediation of asbestos is required when you want to disturb it - cutting the tile up to remove it after a fire, for example. Asbestos remediation is well regulated, and it usually requires a specialized (read expensive) crew to come and deal with it, and requires extra safety equipment for everybody involved hence the signs. I would not recommend even limited exposure to asbestos particles - what it does to your lungs is super bad (scarring: no treatment or cure), and definitely on the list of things to avoid. If I was you I would find a reason to skip town during demolition and go on a mini vacation.
posted by zenon at 11:30 AM on May 16