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Trnies
NEWS FOR AND ABOUT EPA EMPLOYEES
INSIDE:
*	Asbestos at EPA
~	Leaders vs. Managers
VOLUME 2 NUMBER 1 OCTOBER 3, 1984
Treasure From the 'Graveyard'
Are you bored with mun-
dane recreational activities?
Does your jaded spirit yearn
for thrills even greater than
daring the crowds at the lo-
cal shopping mall? Well
then, grab your handy
crowbar and head for the
graveyard!
We do not suggest follow-
ing in the thrilling footsteps
of Michael Jackson—you
seek gold not ghouls. Better
you should track the wake
left by Steve Heare on one
of his annual visits to the
"Graveyard of the
Atlantic"—the warm
treasure-laden waters off
the Outer Banks of North
Carolina.
Heare helps clean up
hazardous waste sites as
Chief of EPA's Removal Op-
erations Section. During his
vacations he is interested in
a different type of
removal—the recovery of
valuable and interesting
artifacts from the grasp of
Father Neptune.
Virtually hundreds of
ships have found their final
resting place off the Outer
Banks. Many were lost in
storms, others were the vic-
tims of collisions or Ger-
man torpedoes. Both foreign
and domestic freighters,
passenger liners, and ships
of war lie here guarded
only by the "junkyard dogs"
of the deep—the ever pre-
sent sharks.
For the past two sum-
mers, Heare has been ex-
wwm
Steve Heare, on right, and dive
of the brass windows recovered
The SS Proteus, lost on the night of August 19, J 918, after
colliding with a tanker while sailing without lights to escape
detection by German U-boats. (All but one of the 95 passengers
and crew were rescued.)
The stained-glass (aquamarine and pale amber) section from
the top of a recovered window—after considerable cleaning.
Among the artifacts he
and his team-members
hauled aboard their charter
boat were the ship's wheel,
engine-room telegraph, and
a number of bronze-framed,
leaded, stained glass win-
dows. No diver of Heare's
acquaintance had ever seen
the likes of these 150- to
200-pound English-built
windows.
With this summer's
wreck-diving season over,
Heare and his friends are
already planning dive trips
for next year. Their efforts
will probably focus on the
wreck of a large cargo ship
and the American sub-
marine USS Tarpon, both of
which were first located
last year close by the Pro-
teus.
Hauling treasure from the
depths is not a task for
novices. Heare has been
SCUBA diving since 1968
when he took a course
taught by the University of
Maryland dive club. ~
partner Dave Bluett, hold up one
from the Proteus.
plorihg the recently dis-
covered liner SS Proteus
which sank in 1918. The
ship sits upright in the sand
120 feet down and about 20
miles offshore from More-
head City.
According to Heare: "Be-
ing among the first to dive
on a newly located wreck is
a great thrill. If that wreck
happens to be a passenger
liner, it's truly a once-in-a-
lifetime experience."

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Letters
This letters column is intended to provide a means /or Agency employees
to communicate to other employees and/or the Agency administration
whatever messages of criticism, praise, opinion, or explanation they so de-
sire. Brevity and constructive suggestions are encouraged, obscenity and
rudeness are disallowed Letters ivill be published as space allows and may
be edited for clarity and conciseness No attempt is made by the editor to
confirm any data presented by correspondents and the opinions expressed
should not be taken to represent Agency positions All letters must be
signed and accompanied by submitter's o//ice location and telephone num-
ber
Dear Editor: ,
4 * " r	.
The August 22 edition of .-The EP.A.Ximes included a let-
ter to the editor from an employee which indicated he had
a problem with the Direct Deposit of salary payment proc-
ess. Specifically, the employee indicated that "... 1 use to
have my check deposited directly into my account until
one pay period someone in finance decided to have the
overpayment withdrawn directly from my account without
my knowledge . . ."
The statements made in that letter are factually in-
correct. The employee's salary payments were not in-
cluded in the Direct Deposit process. Further, the Finan-
cial Management Division did not have funds withdrawn
from the employee's bank account. The fact is, the em-
ployee's bank erred in crediting his account with an origi-
nal and a reissued salary check for the same pay period.
The reissued check was obtained through the ''Federal Sal-
ary Composite Check" procedures, the forerunner to the
current Direct Deposit process. When the Department of
the Treasury discovered the bank error, the employee's
account was adjusted by the bank.
In summary, EPA's Payroll Office cannot effect with-
drawal of funds from an employee's account. Further, we
have found that the Direct Deposit process is a more reli-
able and efficient method than delivery of checks through
the mail or at the office. We urge all employees to consid-
er this option.
Sincerely,
Robert C. Allwein, Chief
Accounting Operations Branch
People	
Died: Peter Anderson, 48, Region 2, on August 14.
Continued Superior Performance Awards presented to:
Evelyn Spicer, Portia Cunningham, Geraldine Waltham,
and Ivery Jacobs, Administration and Resources Manage-
ment . . . Ruby Whiters and Lela Sykes, Pesticides and
Toxic Substances . . . Margaret Schneider, External
Affairs.
Special Act Awards go to: Bridget Todd, Carolyn Dolt-
ery, and Renee Lawson, Administration and Resources
Management . . . Robert Herbolsheimer, Office of the Ad-
ministrator . . . Mavis Rravo, Pnliry, Planning and FivgJua*
tion.
Quality Step Increases awarded to: Sandra Hill and Pat-
ricia Kruger, Administration and Resources Management
. . . Deborah Carson, External Affairs. ~
Dear Editor:
We are very sad to report that Tim Matzke died of can-
cer early Friday morning, August 24, 1984. Through the 12
years Tim was at EPA in Region 6 and at Headquarters, he
quickly won the respect and friendship of those who
worked with him. Everyone who worked on the Monitor-
ing Task Force knows that Tim's vision and dedication
were the main impetus behind the monitoring initiatives.
As a small token of our esteem, we are dedicating to
Tim the national environmental report, Environmental
Progress and Challenge: An EPA Perspective. His courage
and cheerfulness through his personal struggle were re-
markable. We hope that we can do justice to the commit-
ment, energy, and devotion that he gave to EPA. As
friends and colleagues, we will miss him very much.
Sincerely,
Cynthia Kelly
Policy, Planning and Evaluation
Dear Editor:
The August 22, 1984 edition of The EPA Times carried
the following item [under the Training Opportunities sec-
tion]: "Managing People . . . the latest techniques to help
supervisors be better people managers."
If you saw the "60 Minutes" segment of which she was
the star, you may have heard Admiral Grace Hopper make
the following observation: "You manage things; you lead
people."
The title and purpose of this course (a Freudian slip of
sorts?) could be a clue as to why morale in this agency can
drop to such depths at times.
Sincerely,
Daniel Papcke
Region 5
Agency Activities	
Coke oven emissions designated hazardous air pollut-
ant under the Clean Air Act. Regulations will be de-
veloped to reduce emissions due to estimates that between
1.5 and 16 lung cancer deaths per year are attributable to
exposure to coke oven emissions.
Diamond Shamrock Corporation cited for PCB mis-
management. Fine of $2,367,796.60 proposed for improper
disposal, storage, marking, and recordkeeping.
More than 50 Department of Defense installations in the
Chesapeake Bay region covered by an EPA/DOD joint reso-
lution pledging cooperative measures to safeguard the
quality of Chesapeake Bay waters. DOD will give priority
consideration to funding pollution abatement projects and
studies, develop environmental self-auditing at several in-
stallations, review practices to insure quality of
enviionniental inipioveiiient, provide information needed
to issue or re-issue major National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System wastewater discharge permits, and re-

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Environmental News
"The City Council voted overwhelmingly today to ban
the sale of all leaded gasoline here within 90 days, mak-
ing Chicago the first U.S. city in more than a decade to
take such a step."—The Washington Post, 9-7.
t"Forest Lawn buried more than its clients at its 900-acre
Imetery. For a time, city inspectors have discovered, it
so was burying its trash there ... A city engineer said
methane gas within the 2-acre pile of rotting grass clip-
pings and wastepaper was edging toward an explosive
concentration."—Los Angeles Times, 9-13.
"Hours after raising a sunken barge from the New York
Bight last month, workers hammered holes in the ship and
sent it back to the bottom of the Long Island Sound . . .
the rusty barge became part of a 300-yard-long artificial
reef under construction a mile off the Long Beach Pavilion
. . . composed of three other sunken ships, seven 250-ton
concrete-filled cylinders, and more than 20,000 scrap auto-
mobile tires . . . the reef has become an angler's paradise
. . . and divers routinely take 4- or 5-pound lobsters off
what was once a barren, worm-infested bottom."—The
New York Times, 8-11.
"You can no longer find Tarahumara frogs in Arizona.
The rare species—a population of several thousand in the
state in the 1960s—apparently died out two years ago.
State environmentalists suspect lead or arsenic poisoning
from acid rain."—Arizona Republic, 8-27.
"The nations ringing the Caribbean—communist and
capitalist, rich and poor—are quietly coming together to
try to save its blue crystal waters from the sewage and
chemicals that have spoiled other seas. Environmentalists
say a 16-nation anti-pollution treaty just ratified by the
U.S. Senate is a first step toward protecting the Caribbean
Leaches, reefs, and coves that draw tens of millions of
^cationers every year. But obstacles remain."—AP, 9-5.
"Thousands of fish were killed and water supplies to a
major city seriously polluted when liquid waste from a
sugar factory gushed into a Ukrainian river, a Moscow
newspaper reported Wednesday."—Los Angeles Times,
8-30.
view land management practices at several installations to
reduce runoff into the bay.
128 additional waste sites added to the National Priori-
ties List. Must were proposed for inclusion last September.
Any perceived imminent threats to health have already
been addressed through emergency response actions.
Corvallis lab successfully tests the statistical method
known as "kriging" in working from laboratory bioassays
to obtain accurate estimates of toxic contamination at
waste sites.
Immediate action underway at Union Chemical
in South Hope, Maine, to remove more than 1500 de-
teriorating barrels- EPA and the Maine Department of
Environmental Protection will meet with concerned
citizonc to di3CU3S cleanup activities and the discovery of
an off-site warehouse containing more than iuuo drums of
lknown substances. In a related action, the owner of
onion Chemical agrees to pay $72,000 to settle an EPA
complaint for violation of RCRA regulations. ~
"Mexico City—U.S. embassy employees receive extra
retirement credit for the time they work here because this
megalopolis of 17 million people has some of the worst
air pollution in the world . . . Mexican health officials
have conceded publicly that the city's air quality is among
the world's worst due to millions of vehicles without
emission-control devices, the altitude, and geographic fea-
tures ... 'It is a new thing and we are the only U.S.
embassy to have this type of policy—the State Department
thought this would be a way to compensate for the un-
healthy post,' embassy spokesman Lee Johnson said."—
AP, 8-30.
"The nation's largest manufacturer of lead gasoline addi-
tives says an administration proposal to ban these pro-
ducts might increase health risks rather than reduce them.
The greater risk would come from more use of so-called
'aromatic' compounds by refiners seeking to enhance the
octane rating of their gasoline."—The Washington Post,
9-3.
"Taunton, Mass.—On a recent Tuesday night, the TV au-
dience here could choose form the usual lineup, 'The A-
Team' and 'Three's Company,' or 'The Great Waste De-
bate'. . . this debate, sponsored by a local community
group, was aired on the cable-TV system . . . part of a
grass-roots effort in this state to educate the public about
issues surrounding hazardous-waste treatment and
disposal."—The Christian Science Monitor, 8-27.
Terms of Environment
For this issue the term is "ENVIRONMENT," and also
"ECOLOGY." Evidence recently brought to our attention
suggests that despite, or perhaps because of, the popularity
of these terms, everyone is not clear about the distinctions
between them.
The first definition our trusty "Webster" gives for en-
vironment is: "the circumstances, objects, or conditions by
which one is surrounded." Other definitions given reflect
the same concept. Ecology, on the other hand, is defined
as the study of, or the totality of, "the interrelationship of
organisms and their environment."
So, environment refers to what is around or outside of a
person, place, or thing and ecology refers to the operations
within something. The environment of a bay of water is
not the fish, kelp, currents, etc. within the bay—these
things are part of the bay's ecology. The bay is the en-
vironment of the fish; the environment of the bay is the
land around it and the sky above.
Likewise, the earth's environment is made up not of
trees and oceans, but of planets, stars, and cosmic vacuum.
Thus, when we say that we work to protect the public
health and environment we are referring to our environ-
ment, not the earth's. ~
Tlio EPA Timos is published 24 times per year to provide news and
information for and about EPA employees. Readers are encouraged to
eubmit nows of thomselvcs and of fellow employees, letters of opinion,
qucctionc, comments, and suggestions to: Miles Allen, Editor, The EPA
Tunes, Office of Public Affairs (A-107) Telephone 382-4394 Informa-
tion eoloctod for publication will be edited as necessary in keeping with
space available.

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Special Report: Asbestos at EPA
On December 30, 1903, a fire broke out amid the highly
flammable scenery on the stage of Chicago's Iroquois Thea-
ter. The deaths of some 600 people that infamous winter's
night compelled the owners of theaters and "opera
houses" across the nation to protect audiences by install-
ing curtains of fire-resistant fabric. Painted on such cur-
tains, amid the ads for elixers and local hardware stores,
was usually a reassuring word in large letters: ASBESTOS.
In all likelihood, future generations shall never see a cur-
tain so proudly labeled. A word that once signified safety,
"asbestos" now portends only disease and death.
As seems to be the case all too often, the solution has
become the problem.
"Asbestos" is the common name for several silicates—
natural minerals that easily separate into thin fibers of ex-
ceptional strength. Chemically inert, heat-resistant, and
stable, asbestos is, or has recently been, used in the U.S. as
a fire retardant or insulator in some 3,000 different pro-
ducts.
Unless sealed or encased, asbestos can break into a dust
of tiny fibers. Much smaller and more buoyant than ordi-
nary dust, some of these fibers may float almost indefinitely
in the air and can be easily inhaled or swallowed. Once
the fibers enter the body they can trigger several serious
diseases, such as asbestosis and cancer.
Since EPA facilities include 273 buildings, such a com-
mon construction material as asbestos is obviously a prob-
lem the Agency faces first hand. Efforts to deal with poten-
tial sources of contamination in-house were accelerated
this past May when Deputy Administrator Al Aim asked
the Office of Administration and Resources Management
and the Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances to com-
plete a survey of all EPA facilities within 90 days.
The Office of Administration's veteran industrial hygien-
ist, David Weitzman, along with rookie Karen Reed, quick-
ly went to work on the problem.

Asbestos Survey
Chronology
May 3
Deputy Administrator requests sur-
vey of EPA facilities (273 build-
ings).
August 16
Preliminary results presented on
inspections of 202 buildings. (In-
spections were deferred at 53 build-
ings with infrequent occupancy—
such as garages—and incomplete at
the remaining 18.)
Asbestos was found sprayed or
trowled-on in occupied spaces in
12 buildings. In 31 buildings asbes-
tos was found in pipe wrap, ceiling
tile, or remote locations.
August 29
Health hazard evaluations com-
pleted on the 12 buildings.
In progress
as of
September 19
Health hazard surveys scheduled
to be completed by September 26 at
remaining buildings identified as
having asbestos.
Reed, who had just joined the Agency on April 30, for-
tunately had been part of an asbestos removal project
while completing her graduate work in industrial hygiene
at Colorado State University. Within a month after being^
told that she, regretfully, would have few travel opportu®
ties due to budget restrictions, Reed found herself poking
around ceilings and boiler rooms all over the country.
About 25 key players from EPA were assisted in the sur-
vey tasks by a contractor, GCA, Inc., which surveyed non-
regional buildings and provided laboratory support. So far,
two situations have been discovered that warranted im-
mediate action.
At the regional office in Denver, the inspectors found
that asbestos insulation, which had fallen onto ceiling
tiles, had been shaken through the tile's holes by vibration
from renovation work. Several employees, including Re-
gional Administrator John Welles, were moved to other
offices until the problem could be corrected.
At Research Triangle Park, approximately 40 employees
were relocated from the National Center for Health Statis-
tics building when asbestos dust was found settled on var-
ious office furnishings. The dust had fallen from the
underside of the roof into the air-return space above the
ceiling and subsequently had been blown into the offices
by the heating/cooling system.
EPA employees are not the only ones to benefit from the
asbestos project. According to Bob Magor, the extremely
close working relationship developed by EPA with the
General Services Administration will serve to better pro-
tect the health of all federal employees. Magor, who is the
Director of EPA's Occupational Health and Safety Staff,
said that many Agency employees had told him they wer°
pleased to work for a management so concerned about
their health and safety. "In turn, I am very pleased," he
said, "to be part of management's response." ~
Industrial hygienist David Weitzman searches an EPA ceiling for
loose asbestos.
GPO 909-999

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