Tuesday, March 9, 2010
A St. Louis man will spend a year in jail for providing false asbestos inspection reports.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Calvin Burks, 57, owned J & C Environmental Services, Inc., which conducted asbestos inspections in St. Louis. He pleaded guilty last December to one felony count of making false statements, and appeared Tuesday for sentencing before U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson.
Authorities said from April 2008 to May 2009 Burks conducted more than 100 asbestos inspections of buildings in the city and provided the results on a different company letterhead. Officials say Burks copied information from Precision Analysis letterhead even though he had not conducted the analysis or testing. Authorities said he falsified 108 reports, charging $150 per report.
Authorities said building contractors and owners submitted the asbestos information to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for notification of demolition and renovation in the city. Officials said based on one of Burks' notification reports, the City of St. Louis subsequently issued a demolition permit authorizing demolition of a property located at 6257-6259 Gravois Ave.
Comments
MesoRC (anonymous) says...
I'm with a group for victims of asbestos-related diseases (http://www.mesorc.com) and hate to see stories like this. Asbestos is a proven, harmful material & education and awareness of it is already lacking even before people decide to act negligently. We actually just launched the Ban Asbestos Now initiative to try to get rid of the nasty stuff altogether - hopefully to one day be rid of instances like this. If you're interested, you can check it out at http://www.banasbestosnow.com
- JM
March 10, 2010 at 11:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )