Making the World a Little Less Hazardous

Making the World a Little Less Hazardous with Kathleen Pane

“The work you do should reflect protection and conservation because we are all products of our environment.”

Kathleen Pane and her team make the world a little cleaner and a little safer every day. Let’s learn a little more about what she and her Hazardous Building Materials Department do!

Q: What are hazardous building materials?

A:

A building is made up of a lot of parts. Some of these things are completely harmless on their own: wood beams, metal pipes, doors, nails, etc. – things you can see walking down the aisle at a home improvement store.

But some of the materials used when actually constructing a building have to cleaned or removed in controlled engineering ways as part of maintenance, renovation, or demolition.

These controls are performed for the safety of those removing them and those who will occupy the building.

Hazardous building materials include such things as asbestos, lead, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). My team and I are trained and certified, and understand how to test and design the abatement of these materials.

Q: When you say “abatement”, what do you mean?

A: Abatement is a fancy word for either removing these materials altogether or managing them safely. We can conduct monitoring during abatement and ongoing monitoring of materials that remain intact.

Q: It sounds like what you and your team do can be pretty messy?

A: Well, I guess that depends on your definition of “messy” (laughs). We have suits and other PPE (personal protective equipment) that keep us safe while we perform our duties. Sometimes PPE can get pretty messy, but that’s what they’re designed to do. We’re safe, protected, and clean underneath.

Q: Do you like your job?

A: I do! I like that I’m helping people. I enjoy working on large multidiscipline projects that we can provide creative solutions to achieve the end goal. I work for a lot of schools, municipalities, and housing developments, so the work that we do creates safer environments for people in their daily lives. I like knowing that I’m a part of that.

We hope you enjoyed learning about Making the World a Little Less Hazardous with Kathleen Pane