He is afraid of the consequences for his health from exposure to the material. Now he is obsessed with removing the poisoned soil. “This project has generated a great deal of knowledge, and also anger,” he says.
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The project is scheduled to come to Gershoni’s home next month. If it were up to her, she would go on living with the material. “I didn’t want to have it removed,” she sighs. “It will make such a mess. What’s the point? It happened already. The asbestos has already scattered. You can’t undo what’s been done.”
The first survey turned up 40 sites in which asbestos waste was buried, but Varga and Lachman quickly realized that this was only a fraction of the contaminated locations. “From the moment we launched the project,” Lachman says, “we were approached by dozens of people who said there was asbestos in their locale. We still don’t know everything. The moshavim were concerned about the real-estate implications. Who wants people to know that they are living on top of asbestos waste? People didn’t come forward with the information that there was asbestos next to their home. They sold houses without saying a word. As long as you hadn’t become sick, no one had to know about the asbestos.”
It is now known that asbestos particles in the air can enter the lungs and sink into them. Two diseases are characteristic of the presence of these particles in the lungs: asbestosis, which develops about 10 years after exposure and causes the scarring, shrinkage and destruction of the lung tissue; and mesothelioma, an incurable cancer that erupts 20 to 40 years after exposure to asbestos particles.
Varga’s response: “Two supervisors are in charge of the work of four crews, so sometimes it takes time. The delay at the start of the work at Nir’s place was due to the fact that we got delayed at another site.”