Unquantified Asbestos Releases from East Wing White House Demolition
Destruction of East Wing, No permits needed
The White House began open demolition of the historical East Wing on October 20th, the Monday after huge “No Kings” rallies were held across the nation.
It was as if President Trump was signaling to the world that since the birth of the new “Golden Age” any kind of malignancy can be normalized as tolerable.
No permits were issued for the open demolition because, according to the President and the staff, “no permits are needed for this portion of the project.“
However, according to the Daily Mail, President Trump was “able to bypass a historic preservation review by appointing an ally, Staff Secretary Will Scharf, to chair the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC).”
At press conferences White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeatedly emphasizes that the NCPC is only responsible for “vertical construction.”
“They have ruled consistently, their general counsel has said, when it comes to phase one of this project, the tearing down of the current East Wing structure, a submission is not required legally for that. Only for vertical construction will a submission by required.”
In interviews with the press, however, former members of the NCPC, as well as a variety of experts and former staff members, disagree.
As most professionals in the building and engineering community understand the codes, there really are no exceptions, historical or not, for obtaining a demolition permit. Inside Washington, D.C., new construction takes years to complete precisely because over the past decades, a new sense of responsibility for ecology and sustainability has awoken concern over harsh construction methods. There is such an emphasis on reuse, recycling, and repair of structures with environment and safety considerations, to practice natural conservation.
In demolition projects especially inside downtown, at the very least, there is extensive netting and establishment of debris chutes, ventilation, and huge vacuum units for sucking out toxic and carcinogenic building material dust, especially asbestos, which has been shown to cause lung cancer and lung disease.[1]
Many Americans know of relatives who worked or were inspectors in the building industry in the 1970s having developed painful lung disease in their later years, even if they never smoked.
But the cleverness of the developers in circumventing the permits and review process is so that the East Ballroom project will be completed before Trump leaves office, which will be regarded as a signature accomplishment by President Trump and the Donald Trump Organization (DTO), who are basically transforming The White House legacy.
Nevertheless, a number of people and politicians are also concerned because of the blatant disregard for “The People’s House,” an eponym that even the Clintons and Obamas observed. Indeed, on any given day, there are always numerous tourists whose highlight of their visit to Washington, D.C. includes a stop at the White House. Even though today the tours are very limited, back in the day, anyone, including my parents, could apply and receive tickets, but the East Wing was where the tours began.
Tours of the White House today are also available online, including a 2024 tour by PenguinSix, and an even more thoughtful East Wing tour by TourDoctors.com, owner Dr. Gary S., from 2019. The West Wing, where there are the press meetings and press rooms, is never open to the public. However the East Wing is where tour visitors were invited to catch a glimpse of the past merged together with the current President’s daily life. There was an arcade gallery of First Lady portraits, and a portico with sentimental photos of past presidents and their families. There was a stop at the movie theater which the Obama family loved so much. There were outdoor gardens lovingly tended and delicately balanced by its complement, the Rose Garden at the West Wing, renovated this year by President Trump. The new outdoor patio, which strangely resembles the central venue seating arrangement at Mar a-Lago, facilitates a chatty atmosphere and comfortable walking for high heels traipsing over the concrete pavement.
Politicians Respond to Requests for Review
In fact, the People have demanded their politicians to respond because the current destruction adds insult to injury. Here we are at week six of the Government Shutdown, with government services frozen; log-jams at the nation’s airports; people lined up in front of food banks due to the GOP and Trump withholding SNAP card benefits; and ACA enrollees suffering sticker shock from the sudden rise in health insurance premiums. To make matters worse, not only have conservatives been careless, they are actually sneering at the public at their Halloween Party galas, and appealing any decision by judges to use set-aside funds for the SNAP benefits emergency.
Even worse, GOP supporters, who are fully on board with “normalized malignancy” (as termed by Dr. Bandy Lee in a recent interview at the Daily Beast), claim that the poor do not need to eat. The Health Ranger (Mike Adams) even told his listeners in early November that the poor “just use their SNAP card to buy junk food.” GOP podcasters are deflecting from the suffering caused by the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill (H.R. 1), by focusing on illegal immigration, crime, and balancing the budget. Strangely, these are mostly the same people and politicians who will, to a man, embrace the new 2026 defense spending bill, with nary a question about the expected one-trillion dollar defense (Department of War) budget.
But here is what Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts pointed out in an open letter to White House Contractor ACECO Engineering & Construction in questioning whether health and safety standards are being followed, or whether workers and the public and visitors to the White House will be at heightened risk for exposure to asbestos and other hazardous materials.
“ACECO’s work falls squarely within a network of federal regulations governing demolition, hazardous material handling, and worker protection. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) asbestos standard requires that employers identify, monitor, and control asbestos exposure in demolition work. And the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) rules require inspection, advance notice, and approved abatement or containment procedures before demolition of a structure containing asbestos.”
The Senator knows what he talks about as a Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Senate Subcommittee, as well as a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It doesn’t matter who Trump replaces at the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) or at the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA); people will find out about the Trump ideologues and document every attempt to circumvent established planning and design standards. Otherwise the First Family is setting forth a dangerous culture of exceptionalism that undermines the very government agencies that uphold federal oversight and regulatory standards.
Dangers of Asbestos, Trail of Disposal and Cover-up
Markey also describes the dangers of breathing in asbestos fibers, which cannot be easily eliminated and linger within the human body for decades:
“Damaged asbestos fibers are one of the most hazardous substances that can arise from construction demolition. Unless their presence is disclosed, individuals have no way of knowing that the air may contain tiny, tasteless and odorless fibers that cause no noticeable irritation but can be deadly. Construction workers on the East Wing site, nearby office workers and tourists, and passersby could now be at heightened risk of developing lung cancer, asbestosis, or mesothelioma from the inhalation of demolition dust.”
People with lung disease, pleurisy, lung cancer, and mesothelioma are the reason why respiratory therapy has become such an important health profession. People with late-stage infections literally cannot breathe without the help of expensive machines and hookups that need to be carefully monitored and their phlegm cleared several times an hour.
Needless to say, these types of disease are painful, inconvenient, and severely hamper the lifestyles of retired workers and their spouses and families, even if they do have affordable health insurance. Now, will workers struck by the disease who cannot afford medications and/or respiration hook-ups be herded towards self-suicide?
According to MeidasNews.com in “Deadly Secrets of White House Demolition,” even if ACECO claims it is not culpable because those workers were non-union, the fact is that those workers and their families are now exposed. Further, the trail of asbestos removal includes not only D.C. (at Hain’s Point, according to PenguinSix), but outside in Maryland via the dump trucks transporting concrete rubble to Capital Heights junkyards and material recovery sites, several of which are involved. For instance, Smith Industries is located at 2001 Kenilworth Avenue, Capitol Heights, MD, not far from a confluence of highways, and Beaverdam Creek, a tributary of the Anacostia River.
According to WJLA, one of whose news crew followed a truck, they were dropping off at DC Materials, Inc, located at 3334 Kenilworth Avenue. Upcycling can include recovery of rebar, concrete, and valuable woodwork. On the date of their investigative reporting, one worker told the investigative reporters that the debris was from the White House, but that it was not part of the larger concrete rubble. Other crew were “spotted removing copper and other wires from the dirt.”
Will this become yet another of the Trump’s numerous debacles, where more money is paid out in hush-money, spent on cover-ups and defensive actions than in any attempt to hold oneself accountable to the public? What about potential conflicts of interest from the tech oligarchs, many of whom are heavy donors to this project, now or in the future? (WJLA compiled a list here.)
Technically, as has occurred in the past, any project that is out of bounds with the law, including an improper foundation following an unauthorized razing of the East Wing, can be ordered torn down. Nobody knows how much asbestos or wastes are being spread around the East Wing site for perpetuity, for instance.
While subcontractors are eagerly crushing and sorting the East Wing demolition remnants for recycling, they will undoubtably be exposed to— and help spread—the asbestos wide and far, since there is as yet no evidence of any asbestos abatement plan developed or implemented. In other words the estimated $300 million dollar project contains none to inadequate protections for the workers and the subcontractors, since they are too insignificant, just a small clause in the legalese of liability.
Asbestosis-related NGOs Issue Letters of Warning
According to Mesothelioma.net, “asbestos exposure can be blamed for almost all of the 3,000-plus cases of malignant mesothelioma diagnosed every year the U.S.” The main culprit is asbestos exposure at the workplace. Thus, asbestos abatement is a critical component for disease prevention, even if asbestos removal can be lengthy and dangerous. The removal and identification of asbestos is complex because prior to the 1980s, it was incorporated into thousands of building materials for elevating inflammability. Roof shingles, all kinds of insulation, pipe construction, even floor tiles and gypsum wallboard might have included asbestos in its fabrication.
This is why remodels, demolitions, and repairs involving suspected asbestos removal requires calling in a trained certified asbestos abatement professional, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In response to the illegal East Wing White House demolition phase, Mesothelioma.net issued a press release, “Asbestos Released by White House East Wing Demolition Raises Mesothelioma Fears.” They express fears and concerns over workers likely exposure due to the White House’s period construction being largely pre-1970s. They echo the recent strongly worded letter written by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) regarding the heightened risks all the construction workers and visitors to the White House face. Of course the White House has downplayed the risks, and in fact, in the past, Donald Trump, as a real-estate developer, has openly advocated the use of asbestos as a flame-retardant material.
“The only visible effort to protect against mesothelioma was the use of water hoses to prevent dust clouds, but this measure alone falls far short of proper asbestos abatement and mandated safety standards. In Washington, D.C., asbestos abatement can only be performed by licensed contractors who must notify the Department of Energy and Environment at least 10 days in advance of work and post notices around the work area three days beforehand. These requirements were apparently not met in the East Wing Demolition.”
However these sorts of criticisms will run counter to the drive by industry, developers, and oligarchs toward the bottom line of maximal profit at the public’s expense. This philosophy is encapsulated in the blithe attitude toward the poor, homeless, and needy recently demonstrated in Trump’s repeated requests to block court rulings ordering SNAP using available emergency funds. As commentators have wondered, if Trump claims he has obtained a record $20 trillion dollars in investment, then why can’t it afford to feed its poor? Who is hoarding the money?
The Trump philosophy has its parallel in Fact Sheet: “President Trump is Delivering Historic Permitting Wins Across the Federal Government.” In this June 30th report from the White House, the Executive Office promises to “fix a broken permitting system, ensuring that burdensome Federal environmental reviews cannot be weaponized to stall the growth of the American economy or halt energy infrastructure construction.“
America First Policy Institute, Secret Braintrust to Makeover America
Through America First Policy Institute Trump-loyalist types, the White House is establishing and using the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to dramatically reduce environmental impact reports, public reviews, permit processes, and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Many federal agencies interfacing with NEPA authority and compliance are now required to shorten and simplify their NEPA processes. While the gist of cutting red tape can be a boon for developers and engineers, the blowback comes when segments of the population are threatened by adjacent buildouts on properties that are de-listed former Superfund waste sites. In fact, there are already reports that in states such as Virginia, a number of AI-data centers are being built directly over toxic brownfields, emitting vibrations that impact the neighborhood.
These hundreds-of-acres-sized data centers require independent water treatment, energy systems, and chill facilities, but the entire campus can become an overspill of toxic pollution in the event of severe rainstorms, earthquakes, or snowstorms. However, if all that matters is bragging rights over what was produced and how much, especially for purposes of digital coin speculation, then of course the public must become accustomed to being uninformed and risk all kinds of ramifications.
Footnote:
[1] There was an excellent example of the care that the industry is capable of in the recently completed redevelopment project of the former Metro Headquarters on 600 5th Street NW built by Clark Construction that included what was described above. Located close to Capital One Arena, one could not help notice the vast air-blowing machines set up for removing asbestos. Obviously the DCDOEE and DOT were on the ball in enforcing EPA rules and regulations. Bear in mind that according to ENR News, the 90,000-sq-ft East Ballroom is being built by Clark Construction Group with AECOM as engineer and McCrery Architects as designer through what appears to be fast-track design-build construction.
Report and photo by AGN Editor, Christine H. Kroll, M.A., P.E.