Asbestos-laden cloth at giant B’klyn bus facility
The MTA insists there’s no hazard from asbestos-laden “vibration cloth” that drapes the ventilation systems at its bus depots, yet managed to botch a recent patch job to encapsulate the dangerous material at a massive Brooklyn bus facility, the Daily News has learned.
The heads of the East New York bus depot last year moved to enclose the potentially cancer-causing material after a Daily News investigation uncovered a pattern of neglect and unaddressed hazards at the workplace for some 1,000 people.
Joints on most of the vents inside the depot’s fan room contain arcane cloths designed to reduce vibrations and noise from the shaky old machines, which haven’t been overhauled in decades. The cloths haven’t been used in heating and air conditioning systems since at least the 1970s.
Vents in the room feed air to the depot’s first three floors — and the cloths were deteriorating for years, according to interviews with dozens of current and former workers at the facility, The News has reported.
In October 2019, transit officials said they solved the problem by removing some of the material and covering others with a rubberized paint that one transit source likened to Flex Seal, an adhesive made famous by latenight TV infomercials.
But by early June the seal cracked open on at least one of the room’s supply fans — forcing managers to shut it off, stretching the dilapidated air system thin at the start of a blistering hot summer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. This weekend, contractors are scheduled to remove more of the dangerous cloth for good.
Maintainers and engineers at the depot say the asbestos is “friable,” which means it can crumble effortlessly and can be easily carried through air into someone’s lungs. Last year, the cloth was visibly falling into the air supply.
People can breathe in asbestos fibers for decades before a diagnosis is made of mesothelioma or the chronic lung disease asbestosis, which can cause shortness of breath.
The risks are especially worrisome during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed at least 131 MTA employees.
The depot’s managers installed signs on the vents last year that said: “DO NOT DISTURB OR TOUCH THE VIBRATION CLOTH. THE VIBRATION CLOTH MATERIALS ON THIS UNIT CONTAINS ASBESTOS.”
The faulty seal wasn’t the first time transit managers ordered what would turn out to be a shoddy patch job of the asbestos.
Before MTA executives in lower Manhattan were alerted to crumbling cloths in September 2019, workers said NYC Transit chief facilities officer George Menduina had them cover them up with duct tape and caulk.
Menduina also ordered some of the vents to be cleaned in 2016 — but sources said the work merely kicked up dust that settled inside the vents.
Craig Cipriano, senior vice president for buses at NYC Transit, said asbestos is a constant fight at the city’s bus depots, many of which are more than 50 years old. The current East New York bus depot was erected in the late 1940s — but the site on Jamaica Ave. was originally a 19th century barn for Brooklyn’s horse-drawn trolleys.
Cipriano said windows at the Flatbush bus depot had to be replaced recently after they were found to contain asbestos.
Asbestos was also found in the East New York boiler room in 2017, emails from MTA bosses show; it was removed the following year. .
At least 20 high school student interns worked around asbestos in the depot’s fan house or boiler room before the material was removed, according to multiple people who supervised the teens.
Now, only a small group of HVAC maintainers are allowed in the fanhouse, while other employees at the depot are banned from entering
After The News gained access to the room last year, MTA managers installed a new lock on the door and surveillance cameras to monitor entries and exits.
Despite those ominous warnings, for nearly a year, MTA officials have insisted the material is not dangerous.
Carl Hamann, vice president of NYC Transit’s office of system safety, said a thirdparty contractor has taken more than 200 air samples at the depot but found no evidence of friable asbestos.
“In an abundance of caution, and regardless of no known safety hazard, NYC Transit established and executed on a remediation plan on these asbestos-containing cloths, 58 of which have been encapsulated and a dozen removed,” said Hamann. “In recent weeks, an independent third-party firm collected additional air samples yet again, which once more showed no airborne asbestos hazard.”