**Terry
Trent------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**

**6185 Barbara Lane**

**Auburn, California 95602**

**Tel: (916) 745-2073**

**Fax: (916) 745-1050**

**[Personal Note to the Reviewers:]{.underline}**

Although I make previous mention of the situation in Calaveras County
with the dump sites, I should mention that this is not the worst
situation existent in California. Beginning in 1986 in El Dorado County
California, the full might of Government was brought to bear in the
imposition of asbestos exposures upon large groups of people. The most
forceful but by no means the only such imposition at that time was
accomplished by one Judge with the Superior Court of California against
four plus families seeking protection.

This culminated in 1996 when me and my family had a second Judge with
the superior court impose exposures upon us followed by policemen
standing in the front yard of our home, demanding our silence and
acceptance of imposed Tremolite asbestos exposures. Said Judge of the
Superior Court having been so afraid of what he had done that he edited
the court transcripts and removed filed documents from the court files,
so that nobody could ever see what had truly happened. Fortunately, such
things can not be completely removed. These imposed exposures, on both
occasions, occurred at the exact site where animal lung burdens have
been tested and found to contain higher levels than that of goats in
Corsica, where environmental mesotheliomas are occurring. Since that
time I have worked on two environmentally induced mesotheliomas in El
Dorado County, of which you have not heard and it is unlikely that you
will ever hear. They have died in near complete silence, leaving behind
others to inherit their continued exposures.

The role of EPA, who were informed all the way along over the many
years, has been more that of obstructionist than anything else. It has
not simply been a complete lack of enforcement, although that has
occurred too. To this day, in El Dorado County, EPA continues to
obstruct the conduct of meaningful science and refuses to truthfully
inform the public, which comprise future victims. It has been ten years
that EPA has been aware of the Tremolite exposures, but that is dwarfed
in retrospect, by the nearly 40 years they were aware of Libby Montana,
before any action was taken. That action was then only through public
embarrassment.

I mention that I anticipated this day at the front of my informal
comments regarding my experiment. It was not hard to do. With the
discovery of surface Tremolite asbestos deposits in residential areas
and schools of El Dorado Hills and the neighboring town of Latrobe
California, and the subsequent publication on the front page of the
regional newspaper of this information, the lead investigator for EPA
immediately proposed, and to the neglect of any additional study in the
Tremolite areas, the super funding a residential Chrysotile site some 30
miles from El Dorado Hills and Latrobe! His efforts were belligerent and
resulted in the moving of some 30,000 additional residents directly atop
uncontrolled Tremolite asbestos deposits during the years that he
deflected attention away from that area.

This culminated in his announcement at the 2002 Oakland California
International Asbestos Conference that "there is no Tremolite asbestos
in El Dorado County". So the idea of EPA spending huge amounts of money
and more importantly irreplaceable time, effort and your talent on a
project such as the current proposed Alternative Method to Remove
Asbestos was a given. It was also a given that whatever EPA came up with
would somehow involve surfactants, since that appeared to be the latest
gimmick that required further justification. It was also apparent that
the wide spread use of surfactants in California, was well under way,
and that anyone familiar with surfactant science should speak up about
it.

Please forgive me, but I am truly disgruntled that EPA, at a time when
obvious and proven exposures are uncontrollably occurring in places such
as Amador, Tuolumne, El Dorado and Calaveras Counties California,
Fairfax Virginia and Mendham New Jersey, with associated mesothelioma
death rates already visible in Amador, Tuolumne and El Dorado, that EPA
chooses to exhaust resources on revisiting the old and very tired
subject of building demolition. A subject which already has in place
sufficient regulatory safeguards if they were ver utilized, to protect
workers and the public. At least protect workers and the public at
exponentially higher levels than the protections afforded in the places
I mention above. Furthermore, I am exasperated that EPA does not have
the common decency to inform those who are in the very worst situations
such as Amador County and certainly Mendham New Jersey, of their plight
and necessary adjustments that must be made.

The complete and total failure of EPA in Libby Montana and the hundreds
of vermiculite satellite plants dotted across the United States had
nothing at all to do with insufficient safe guards in building
demolition. It had to do with a philosophical flaw that exists even
today in EPA's approach to asbestos protections. Similarly, the current
proposed alternative method has little if anything to do with major
building demolitions in places such as Las Vegas or any high rise
deconstruction anywhere downtown USA Nor does it have anything at all to
do with the largest uncontrolled exposures to the most toxic form of
fibers to the largest numbers of people occurring in the United States
today.

To legitimize this proposed process, even if the flaw of utilizing
surfactants to control mineral fibers was overlooked, is to turn a blind
eye towards huge injustices promulgated by EPA's continued inaction and
continued faulty philosophies. Which one of you will allow a Superior
Court Judge or Policeman with guns to impose asbestos exposures upon you
or your family or any other family you know of, while feeling safe that
small building demolition has been made cheaper for small contractors.
Which one of you actually believe that this is simply one step among
many that EPA must take in order to protect the further health of
American citizens, in light of what I have just explained? Please keep
in mind that it will not be long in the western United States until
residential properties are being dug up at surface Erionite deposits.
Shall we then ask EPA to revisit and make cheaper it policies regarding
interoffice memorandum usage, without mentioning the grave oversight
they are making?

Thank you for your consideration, I look forward to seeing your
findings.

Best regards,

Terry Trent