The Orange Public Library in Orange, New Jersey closed earlier this year unexpectedly due to lead and asbestos materials found inside of the building. Originally, the library had announced that it would reopen towards the end of May, but the doors have remained closed without a word from library or state officials. Considering the current atmosphere around asbestos related health issues, the lack of communication has certainly caused some concern.
The library building, an exemplary specimen of Beaux Art and Classical Revival architecture, is a well known historical landmark of the Orange, New Jersey. With more than 150,000 books, the library used to see plenty of patrons each day, and its closing went far from unnoticed.
The asbestos issue is one that’s fairly common in buildings constructed throughout the twentieth century. At one time, asbestos was used very often as cheap, effective insulation as well as a strengthening material and a fire retardation additive. While the dangers of asbestos have been well understood since the 1920′s, it’s only in recent history that the general public has been made aware of its potential health hazards.
Organizations like the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization maintain that asbestos causes terminal cancers like mesothelioma as well as respiratory diseases, and in the United States federal and state laws mandate that asbestos materials must not be exposed in public buildings or other areas.
The asbestos in the Orange Public Library was discovered by an employee and later confirmed by an official investigation. The library was given until March to hire licensed asbestos abatement contractors to take care of the issue, but the deadline was then moved to June as nothing was done to correct the problem. Later, upon failing to begin making arrangements when the extension was granted, the Director of the Library was suspended.
The library remains closed and neither library nor state officials have released any information about its status or planned reopening date. In today’s atmosphere of increasingly frequent asbestos related lawsuits, it’s possible that the library has put itself in harms way by failing to handle the asbestos issue properly in the past. Employee’s and patrons of the library may have been subject to some negligent inaction, exposing them to dangerous asbestos fibers that can cause serious and incurable diseases.
