Former fire chief sentenced in asbestos case

2010-03-19 12:53:36 (GMT) (WiredPRNews.com - Mesothelioma Asbestos, News)

St. Louis (Mesothelioma Cancer News) – A former Northeast district fire chief has been sentenced in an asbestos case. As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Joseph L. Washington, who is also a former board president received probation on Thursday in connection with a federal court case involving asbestos materials being removed from the administration building of the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District.

As noted in the report, Washington pleaded guilty to felony violation of the Clean Air Act last year in exchange for other charges being dropped against him.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Reap is quoted in the report as stating of the case, “Mr. Washington was a public servant, paid by the tax paying public, working in a taxpayer funded public building… When the presence of asbestos was suspected, instead of assisting St. Louis County Health Department inspectors by granting them access to determine if the public was in danger, Mr. Washington turned them away and made them get a court order to get into a public building. … Meanwhile, during the time that investigators were being kept out of the building, there were employees and small children exposed to asbestos.”