Former Smithsonian Employee Alleges Whistleblower Retaliation

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.mesotheliomaweb.org/mar200931a.htm

In 2008, a safety briefing for workers at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. revealed that the museum's walls contained asbestos. It was the first safety training session since 1997, and the first time anyone had mentioned asbestos in more than two decades.

It came as quite a shock to Richard Pullman, a 53-year-old lighting engineer who had worked at the museum for 27 years, often cutting into or through interior walls to update or install artifacts and peripheral lighting components.

No one had said a word previously, and Pullman - who testifies he had been experiencing shortness of breath for a while - immediately began gathering internal documents and filing federal workplace safety complaints through the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA.

Now, Pullman is suing the museum, whose officials - while acknowledging the presence of asbestos in walls - say there is nothing harmful in the air and have spent $27,000 to test the air and clean up this "nothing" from 11 areas in five galleries. According to associate director John F. Benton II, the current administration didn't even find out about asbestos in the walls until 2008, when the museum upgraded their training and equipment. Experts reviewing said tests admit there is danger to unprotected workers, though the risk to visitors is minimal. The tests did not sample accumulated asbestos dust.

Remediation has largely been effected by covering asbestos-containing wall seam material with spackling compound, and at one time essential managers knew this. Unfortunately, frequent staff changes have caused such critical information to be lost over the years, according to museum spokesperson Linda St. Thomas.

Pullman subverted manager's attempts to label him a malcontent by hiring an environmental engineer to sample the museum, and the results indicate that asbestos had, indeed, been mishandled and spread, but a Smithsonian lawyer contends that - because the samples were "wrongly" acquired - they are inadmissible.

FULL story at link.