On January 16, convicted Elk City, Oklahoma city manager Guy Hylton submitted his resignation, which was unanimously accepted by the Elk City commission.
Convicted in 2007, along with city supervisor Chuck Little, of misdemeanor negligent endangerment for using state inmates as unpaid labor in 2003 on a railroad depot that was filled with asbestos, Hylton received a six month sentence. Little was sentenced to eight months. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld both convictions and sentences.
According to trial records, Hylton and Little were guilty of using Elk City Work Center inmates to remove asbestos from the Elk City Railroad Dept, which the city purchased from the railroad in May of 2002 to use as city facility. The depot, built in the early 1900s, contained asbestos insulation.
Testimony revealed that the inmates were not given protective clothing or other protective equipment while working. This kind of protection is required by law when working with, or around, asbestos, whose fibers can penetrate living tissue and cause a number of asbestos-related health problems, specifically malignant pleural mesothelioma. Malignant pleural mesothelioma develops so slowly and has so few initial symptoms that - by the time the cancer is well developed - treating it is no longer an option. Most victims die within 14 months of diagnosis.
By failing to provide inmates with protective gear, Hylton and Little were guilty of negligent endangerment of worker's health. In addition, testimony indicates that Little lied to investigators when he stated that the waste from the depot had been disposed of in a properly permitted landfill, though the jury subsequently found him not guilty.
The grand jury case, jointly investigated and prosecuted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Justice, or DOJ, and the state of Oklahoma, is far from unique. In the early part of 2008, 37 former and current inmates at Ohio's Chillicothe Correctional Institution charged the state, and other officials, with subjecting inmates to asbestos without informing them of the dangers or providing asbestos remediation.
According to Gerald Smith, who was incarcerated at the facility for 18 months and worked there as a plumber, pipeline ruptures on more than one occasion caused asbestos to be blown about the facility. Smith reportedly currently suffers from chest pains and coughs up phlegm from time to time. When inmates' legal representative ordered prison officials to test for asbestos, the results reportedly came back positive. A lawsuit was subsequently filed in Franklin County U.S. District Court on January 4, 2008.
Inmates at McNeil Island state prison in Washington protested their use in removing asbestos tile with no protection and no precautions on the part of Department of Correction's employees. This violation led to the filing, by the Washington Department of Labor and Industries, of a citation against the McNeil facility for "willful and serious" violations for this and two other projects performed prior to 2008.
In New York state, a class action suit (Charnock v. Peters) sought to establish the right of prison inmates to be free from continued exposure to asbestos, and to prevent the Watertown, New York Correctional Facility from using inmate labor to remove asbestos without protective equipment.
This suit was subsequently dropped when the Department of Correctional Services established an effective asbestos removal plan that met state and federal parameters for asbestos remediation.
The lesson should be clear. The fact that individuals are incarcerated does not automatically abrogate their right to be protected from hazardous substances. The lesson will likely be a decade in the learning, however, as prison populations are marshaled to address a problem that will ultimately end up costing the United States, and taxpayers, upwards of $200 billion dollars, and America's citizens untold numbers of mesothelioma sufferers.
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