So, remove asbestos wrong, we will kick. your. ass. Store a gun wrong and have it used in a murder, and we'll....whatever...

@1 How would one define storing a gun wrong?
Purposefully putting people at risk to make a buck seems different than an accident.... Even an easily preventable one.

I use my guns to shoot asbestos with.

Is that ok?

U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, will you be my power-lesbian crush object? Oh, thank you.

It's about time the business owners who pull stunts like this are held accountable. He essentially poisoned his workers, sent poison to the landfill, and paid someone else to cover up his fraud...to save a few bucks.

This also brings up the larger point of how proper regulation of materials in the first place would have saved us all a ton of money from having to deal with it now. Asbestos should have been banned a lot sooner when they started to realize it was a major carcinogen. Lead paint should have been banned a lot sooner too, like 30 years sooner as it was done everywhere else in the world, but we had a strong paint manufacturers lobby who cried that it would cost a few cents more per gallon. Now we have to spend thousands every time we sand, scrape, or do any renovation on something built prior to 1978.

@2 On a closet shelf with the bullets next to it comes to mind...mainly, I was just thinking about the irony of prosecuting one form of deadly negligence with such fervor, while shying away from the same level of diligence with handgun owners, due to our overblown sense of the right to bear arms.

Asbestos is just a rock, unless it's airborne, then it becomes deadly, if you are exposed to it for long enough time.
I understand the business owners point of view, he wasn't making a buck, nitwit, he was trying not to have to shell out a fortune over the asbestos hysteria. Asbestos is a problem, but it is a massively overblown problem. If asbestos removal practices were sane, and just safe, it wouldn't cost so much to remove it. Wear a mask, get it wet, get it into bags, and bury it. It's not radioactive, it doesn't get into well water, or form living organisms that eat your children.
It is proper to fine a guy for putting the employees health at risk, but lay off the hysteria.

there is a similar law for lead as well. its fucking expensive to have it dealt with professionally. prohibitively often. so in a way it promotes not dealing with it. but still, almost common sense now, wear a freakin mask and put up dust traps. what 7 says

@7 nails it: They've made it so prohibitively expensive to follow these over-the-top regulations that it invites even well-meaning, law-abiding people to cut corners.

Oh yes, the poor put upon citizen laboring under needless regulation.... Give me a break.

This greedy old bastard wanted to save 20k, so he rigged a fake second investigation (which probably cost him a few grand) and then put his own employees at risk tearing a contaminated building down and not even informing them of the potential risk. He gambled and he lost. Boo hoo.

He was more than willing to let his employees be exposed to a toxin, because he knew that if they got sick, We The People would end up paying for it. Or they'd just die. Either way, it wouldn't be his problem.

I say he got off easy. But the cult of victimhood on the right will doubtless carry this torch for months, egged on by their cynical leaders.

@9 When you're the guying tearing out the asbestos that your boss KNOWS is in there, yeah, it's the gubment's fault.

There are serious dangers with not properly removing asbestos. The risk to exposing workers and the general public to dangerous asbestos fibers is great. If exposed, the person risks getting lung cancer, asbestosis or mesothelioma and many other respiratory diseases. I work with Meso RC – http://www.mesorc.com/ - and I have seen what these diseases can do firsthand. I would hope all business owners would want to protect their employees and their customers by properly managing asbestos. Regards, TM