MISSOULA — Seven years after asbestos was found in University of Montana’s daycare facilities, parents who said their children were exposed received settlements from the State of Montana.
“We don't want this to happen to any other families,” said Lisa Davey, a parent involved in the incident.
In December 2018, university employees discovered asbestos on the second floor of McGill Hall, a building which also housed the ASUM childcare center, and sealed it for clean up and testing. At the end of January 2019, they found more in the childcare center’s HVAC system and on surfaces inside. The university relocated the childcare services the next day.
“It was described to us by people on the maintenance staff as like piles of asbestos in the vents that have been blowing out and around,” she said. “To find out that there was that much asbestos that was loose and free floating in the daycare was really scary. There's basically no research on what happens to kids who get high levels of asbestos exposure at such a young age and how that impacts their developing bodies.”
Davey and 16 others sued, saying their children were exposed to unsafe levels of asbestos and that they should have been told when asbestos was initially found in the building. They said they felt betrayed by the university.
After mediation, the cases were just resolved. The university did not admit to any wrongdoing. The families received settlements totaling in $850,000 dollars. Both Davey and University of Montana said this brings some form of closure.
“We've been working with the families, been working through the legal system, and we're really glad that this has come to a conclusion so that the university can move on and also a lot of the families involved can too,” said Dave Kuntz, UM's director of strategic communications.
Kuntz said that university staff and outside experts regularly test for asbestos in campus buildings, both before and after this incident. Those results are available to the public.
“We think that we've provided a lot of transparency through the air testing, through community meetings. We continue to do that and publish those results as needed and are ready to make those available to anybody who looks,” he said.
Kuntz stressed that the daycare facilities are safe and the asbestos has been remediated.
“Our childcare areas are safe. We're constantly monitoring them as other areas on campus, especially in some of our older buildings,” Kuntz said. “These are opportunities that we're going to use going forward to make sure our practices, our ability, our procedures are up to speed and folks can come to campus every day, regardless if they're a student, an employee or at a daycare center, and do so as safely as possible.”
Since 2019, the children who were in the daycare have continued growing. Davey’s are in middle school. None have been diagnosed with related diseases, but asbestos-related diseases can take years to present.
“We still probably won't know for another 15 years, but all of us expressed that when our kids get a cold and the cough lingers, it's this ‘Do we get an extra chest X-ray? Like what if something is developing in their lungs?,’” she said.
Davey and other parents said, for them, the cases were not about the money. They hope these cases bring some healing for the families and more safety for those that come next.
“Even though there's some closure, it's not ever going away. I think it's gonna be in the back of our minds forever,” she said.
