WB Asbestos History

Condensed Timeline

Feb 2023 Concerns about asbestos in the basement first raised
March 2023 a number of lab were contacted for quotes.
Around that time Renewal with Grace, Inc visited the basement and said to leave it alone
Feb 2nd 2025 concerns about asbestos re-raised
Feb 6 2025 contacted Patrick Hogan
March 17 2025 Hogan vists basement, says abatement is necessary
April 6th 2025 quotes from 3 contractors are obtained ranging from $1400-$3300
April 29: Igor from KAC aka Excellence Consulting visits for walkthough -- says that asbestos is literally "falling off" (abatement quote $2500 excl. air monitoring)
May 4 2025: Juan from Undaunted visits for walkthrough (abatement quote $2400 excl. air monitoring)
May 16 2025: Athenica sends quote of $660 for lab testing of insulation material. Testor Tech sends quote for $700-800 for air monitoring.
May 24 2025: Fundraiser hits goal, reaches total of $3160.
Jun 3 2025: rediscover lost lab report from March 2023 which confirms the presence of asbestos in pipe elbows

Full Overview

The following overview was compiled by consulting basement meeting notes, a page on talking to asbestos labs, a page tracking progress on interacting with abatement contractors, and various signal chats.

It appears that concerns about asbestos in the basement were first raised in or before February 2023 and were last explicitly mentioned in basement meeting notes May 2023. Meeting notes discuss self-collection of air samples to send to labs for testing but it's unclear if this ever actually happened.

In March 2023 a number of lab were contacted for quotes. The quoted prices ranged from $650 to $2000.

Around that time Renewal with Grace, Inc visited the basement and their assessment was summarized as such

We can have the asbestos removed if we want, more for mental health - he seemed unconcerned about it being actually unhealthy. He said if we ran an air quality test right now, it will be negative.

It appears this assuaged concern about asbestos until February 2nd 2025 when the following was reported in the woodbine.basement chat

hi so the asbestos insulation on the pipe near the soldering station is becoming friable

i blew on it and a strand came loose

i dont hav reason to believe it's gotten all over the place yet but it's gotten to the point that we need to act

i know a guy who knows an abatement guy who i will talk to tomorrow

this same person contacted Patrick Hogan of Leinster Contracting Services on February 6th 2025

Hogan visited the basement on March 17th 2025 and quoted $4500 for abatement.

asbestos guy came and pointed out all the places where it is incl some places i didnt know about

gave us a quote of $4500 for abating the whole basement

he said that the last abatement wasn't handled great. he said it's crumbling even when it's not being disturbed, and bits of it must be on the ground and getting kicked up into the air. [...] he said the situation seemed so visibly problematic that he didn't even feel it would be necessary to run further air quality tests

Hogan said the largest area of asbestos is on this pipe. interestingly this spot was not included in the prior group of photos documenting the asbestos locations.

an inquiry was made to 311 in March 2025 and the following was noted

three different processes

disturbed

exposed (that’s what we have)

in the air

because it’s a commercial space it is not under the jurisdiction of the HPD. the landlord will not get a ticket if he doesn’t care. it’s not clear whose responsibility it is.

if you report it. you can say it is exposed, and that report gets send to the DEP. then an inspector comes out and makes an assessment.

if a suspicion of the air, you reporting an air quality issue, not an asbesthos issue.

April 29, 2025: Walkthrough with Igor from KAC/Excellence Consulting

Walkthough hosted by daniel and paul

he's very professional, with 20 years of experience in New York.
He identifies more joints with asbestos that previous experts had overlooked. He wants to remove 100% of the asbestos (including the big encased pipe in the corner that other contractors considered excluding from their quote)
Since there are less than 25 linear feet total of asbestos insulation, we don't need to file paperwork with government agencies that would slow down the process and add extra costs
he's booked this week, but we could schedule abatement with his team as soon as next week
- typically he begins work at 8am. The job could be finished by 4pm and the space will be usable by the evening.
confirms quote for $2500, which does not include lab testing
air quality testing is necessary -- the abatement job is only complete after a lab test confirms that the air is clear. Testing is done on the day of abatement, and after the contractor performs the abatement, a final test is done.
- refers us to Chris Air Monitoring Company (+1 347-337-2320)
  - Chris verbally promises a fee of $850 for one day of air monitoring
- Igor has worked with every "just about every monitoring company in the city," says price is typically $700-900.
Igor and his team will build "tents" around each individual joint or around small clusters of nearby joints. Tents will be enclosed floor to ceiling in plastic. We will work with him in advanced or on the morning of the abatement to help clear out any obstacles lying directly below asbestos joints, ie. some boxes and tables.
- outside of a 2-3 foot box around each asbestos joint, nothing else in the basement needs to be covered.

Interestingly, he mentioned that it's good that ventilation is so poor in the basement because the asbestos could become airborne if air was circulating better. (To me this means that its urgent for us to perform abatement prior to improving ventilatinon. --daniel)

Finally, he pointed out 1-2 small asbestos joints in the boiler room. The fee would be the same whether or not he removes those. But it might be in our interest to ask the landlord if he wants us to have abatement done in the boiler room, and see if he's willing to cover a small portion of the expenses.

May 4, 2025: Walkthrough with Juan from Undaunted

needs to follow up with a quote and says prices have gone up since the last quote
says the large elbow pictured above is just concrete, not asbestos
does not require air testing to finish the job but says if we want to sign off on his work with air testing then it will be a two day job and he will break down the tents the next day.
will used vaccums rather than negative-air machines hooked up to the tents

As of April 6th 2025 we have heard back from the following abatement contractors with quotes:

KAC (?): $2500
Undaunted: ~~$1400~~ new quote is $2400
Renewal with Grace: $3300

There still seems to be debate around:

doing an air test and just delaying abatement if it comes back negative (to save money)
doing a full abatement

it's also unclear how willing or what the terms would be of WB paying for either of these.

May 16 (-DS)

Daniel called a bunch of air monitoring companies (details: link). Quotes/proposal documents from the two standout consultant and air monitoring companies are being shared in the WB Coordination chat. Those two companies are Athenica and Testor Tech.

First: The lowest air monitoring quote was from Testor Tech. They have a baseline fee of $650 to bring a consultant out to the site for the day, plus an additional fee of $6.90 per sample. They expect to need about 10 samples -- Igor from KAC confirmed that 10 is typical. Igor and Testor Tech have never worked together before, but that shouldn't pose a problem. So that would bring to total to about $3200-$3300 for the abatement and air monitoring.

Currently, Igor (KAC) is available to schedule the abatement sometime after Memorial Day. That means we could be asbestos-free by the end of the month!

Second: I was referred to Athenica by Laboratory Testing Services Inc.. Laboratory Testing Services is a lab that does analysis -- they do not collect samples themselves. Consultants and air monitoring companies collect the samples, and then send them to labs for analysis. Good consultants like Athenica try to be as neutral as possible, and they watch over the abatement contractor to ensure that all conduct is done in a responsible and properly-regulated manner, with proper forms filed, etc..

… One final question is: how do we know that we have asbestos? Has there ever been a lab test? Spiro from Athenica , who was one of the consultants that I spoke to today (40+ years experience), said that no human has the capacity to truthfully know from sight or touch alone whether or not a material is asbestos: the only foolproof test is to put it under a microscope. To my mind, it's a no-brainer to run a $660 test if it can save us from spending $3500. I am certain that no lab analysis occurred in 2024/25, and general knowledge seems to be that we never had a lab test in the past, either.

Note: the quotes from Testor Tech and Athenica are for totally different services. They are both testing for asbestos, but the tests serve different purposes, and we might need to run both of them. Testor Tech will provide air monitoring on the day of the abatement. Igor from KAC will not do the abatement unless we have air monitoring on site, and Testor Tech gave us a lower quote for air monitoring than anybody else. But before we do abatement, it might be worthwhile to have Athenica test the insulation material to verify that we are dealing with asbestos at all.

I see three (or four) possible paths from here:

Spending ~$660: We hire Athenica to sample the insulation material. If the lab test confirms that it isn't asbestos, that's the end of it.
1b. Potentially, somebody within Woodbine could purchase necessary equipment to collect samples and directly interface with a lab for analysis, bypassing the consultant and collection company. But we've been discussing this for months and nobody has figured out how to do it...
Spending ~$3300: We skip the initially lab test because our gut feeling is that it's asbestos. Igor does the abatement and Testor Tech does the air monitoring. Never worry about it again after that.
Spending $4000: We hire Athenica to sample the insulation material. If the lab analysis finds asbestos, we hire Igor and Testor Tech.
Don't do anything… Just keep waiting…

So we have to decide if we want to commit to spending $3300 off our intuition? Or take a risk to scientifically determine if abatement is needed, with the chance that it'll either save us $3300 or be a waste of $660. I think this decision should be made by the directors (or whoever is allocating us a budget).

June 3, 2025 (-DS)

Our fundraiser brought in $3160. We therefore decided to first schedule lab analysis from Athenica. We paid the deposit of $350 on May 30th and scheduled the inspection for June 04.

On June 03, we uncovered a lost document from March 2023 that confirms the presence of asbestos in pipe elbows. In 2023, Lippe hired Accredited Environmental Solutions (AES) to perform an asbestos survey. The full report is viewable on element in the #abatement channel.