Wall Township to remove asbestos-containing ceiling tiles at Old Mill School after confirmatory tests

Wall Township officials said confirmatory testing found trace amounts of asbestos in some original ceiling tiles at Old Mill School and announced plans to remove affected tiles during a summer abatement project before larger HVAC and electrical renovations begin.

Dr. Richard Lynch, a certified industrial hygienist and president of Environmental Safety Management Corporation, told a meeting of the Wall Township Board of Education that the district27s expanded sampling program covered about 21 representative classrooms and roughly 76 bulk tile samples. "No asbestos fibers were detected in air at all at a detection limit of 0.002 fibers per cc," Lynch said, noting that the detection limit was well below the EPA school clearance standard of 0.01 fibers per cc.

Bulk laboratory results showed variable, very low asbestos content in some tiles, Lynch said, with most samples under 1 percent and a few up to about 3 percent. He said pink- or reddish-backed tiles from the school27s original construction were more likely to contain asbestos than newer gray-backed tiles found in later renovations.

Based on those findings, Lynch recommended that the district update its AHERA inventory and asbestos-management plan, revise operations-and-maintenance procedures for facilities staff, and pursue a Subchapter 8 abatement to remove asbestos-containing ceiling tiles at Old Mill this summer. "We27re recommending a full Subchapter 8 asbestos abatement to remove all of those asbestos-containing ceiling tiles in this building," Lynch said.

A district staff member reiterated that the laboratory reports, sampling summaries and letters to families are available on the Wall Township Public School District website. "All of the reports are available online," the staff member said, and the district said it would post timelines and communicate directly with Old Mill families about logistics.

District officials said the abatement will be publicly advertised this week, with bids scheduled to be received on May 21 and an intent to award the contract at the board meeting that evening. The work is expected to begin as soon as school lets out, with Old Mill largely inaccessible during the abatement. A district facilities official said that, in classrooms where the affected tile type predominates, all tiles and the ceiling grid will be removed and replaced; rooms without affected tiles will not be altered.

Residents and staff asked whether past tile replacements or mold remediation projects might have caused exposures. Lynch said the planned exposure-determination testing and targeted sampling during removals will help quantify any past exposures and noted that custodial or maintenance workers who handled tiles directly may have faced higher short-term exposures than occupants. "We will be doing measurements," Lynch said, describing a schedule to begin outreach and assessment steps in the weeks before the school year ends.

The district said it will proceed carefully and not rush testing or clearance work. Officials emphasized that the sampling indicates no current inhalation risk for students or teachers but that removing identified asbestos-containing tiles now will reduce the potential for disturbance during the larger renovation work.

The board and staff said they will continue to update the community through the district website and direct communications with affected families; the district expects to award the abatement contract at the May 21 meeting and to complete removal and testing over the summer so classrooms are ready before the next school year.