Recently, a school janitor was awarded more than $193,000 in damages and lost wages following retaliation by her former employer – a school district in Detroit.

Theresa E. and her coworker Rob S., who was also a custodian, were required to sand floors in a room in preparation to wax them in June 2012. They later discovered the floor tiles contained asbestos.

The pair of coworkers claimed they learned after the fact that the tiles they sanded caused their asbestos exposure and that they never received training on proper removal procedures even though asbestos safety classes were offered to other workers in the school district.

Theresa said that months later, she began to worry that there was asbestos contained in the floor tiles that were sanded once she learned a cook who had been a long-time school employee reportedly died of asbestos cancer.

The janitors worried that the dust that was released as a result of sanding the floors contained asbestos and by disturbing the material, they may have unleashed asbestos on school staff and students who were at the location for summer school.

Theresa then reported the situation to Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) who came out and investigated the situation.

MIOSHA found that the employees did in fact suffer from asbestos exposure when they sanded the floors. They issued violations to the school district for failing to provide asbestos-awareness training for custodians as well as for failing to prohibit the sanding of asbestos-containing flooring.

Theresa claimed that following the MIOSHA inspection, she was reprimanded and told to stop telling her coworkers that the buildings contained asbestos, putting them at risk for asbestos exposure. She was also reprimanded two years later.

Federal OSHA stepped in to investigate whether Theresa was being punished for being a whistleblower on the asbestos exposure, and Theresa sued the district in federal court accusing the district of violating her First Amendment rights.

Following Federal OSHA’s investigation, the agency ordered the district to pay Theresa $8,139 for wages she had lost and an additional $185,000 for emotional distress, future medical bills, her loss of reputation, and the humiliation she suffered as a result of the district “deliberately labeling her a troublemaker” in emails that were sent district-wide and “subsequently refusing to retract this statement when in possession of multiple reports indicating her concerns were legitimate,” according to OSHA’s report.

Asbestos was declared a hazardous pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971, and there is no safe level of asbestos exposure that has been declared.

Asbestos exposure can lead to the development of asbestos cancer in affected individuals. Because the cancer is slow-growing, it is often not detected until decades later.

Asbestos exposure is linked primarily with two types of cancer: asbestos lung cancer and mesothelioma. While the two cancers are used interchangeably in discussions about asbestos exposure, they differ in terms of the body parts that are affected.

Lung cancer affects an individual’s lungs directly. Mesothelioma, on the other hand, affects the mesothelial lining that surrounds the lungs and abdomen of the body. Where lung cancer can be caused by a number of triggers, mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure.