Another case of asbestos worry

LAST SEPTEMBER, Philadelphia Housing Authority plumbers ripped open Channel Saunders' kitchen wall at the Hill Creek Apartments in Crescentville and removed leaky pipes.

The pipes were covered in a white gauzelike material, Saunders said. When the workers finished, they dumped the rusted pipes on her front patio, she said.

The pipes sat there so long that Saunders decided to get rid of them herself. She used her bare hands to put the pipes - and chunks of white-tattered debris - into big black trash bags, which she put out with the regular trash, she said.

Now she's learned that she may have handled asbestos - a potentially hazardous substance when torn or disturbed.

Saunders' account comes in the wake of allegations detailed earlier this week in the Daily News about PHA workers at Hill Creek routinely ripping asbestos insulation off heating and plumbing pipes and discarding the debris behind walls or into trash bins.

Federal and local laws mandate that only trained, licensed contractors may remove asbestos from public buildings. They require asbestos debris to be disposed of in sealed bags, then trucked to a special landfill.

In other developments:

* The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a criminal investigation. On Tuesday night, EPA agents interviewed Robert Smith, a PHA-hired carpenter who described the practices at Hill Creek in the Daily News.

* A former PHA plumber, David Poulterer, came forward to back up Smith's allegations. Poulterer told the Daily News that when he complained about the illegal handling of asbestos at Hill Creek in 2004, he was suspended for a week without pay.

* Air-quality samples taken from the Hill Creek apartment of Kyeeshah Wright found no unsafe levels of asbestos in the air. The Health Department had earlier confirmed that there were asbestos fibers on surfaces in Wright's basement. Officials said the air samples, taken Monday and Tuesday, provide a snapshot of only current air quality. There is no way to know how many asbestos fibers - if any - were released into the air last September when PHA plumbers did work in Wright's apartment.

* PHA workers and environmental consultants yesterday reinspected the asbestos pipe insulation in Channel Saunders' basement. They told her they'd be back to do repair work, Saunders said. The inspection of her basement comes a week after a PHA-hired environmental consultant declared the asbestos pipe insulation safe.