From an unprecedented census on the presence of asbestos in schools, carried out by the teams of the series “Vert de rage”, broadcast on France 5, franceinfo publishes a search engine to find out the situation in your school.
Asbestos fibers in a slab that cracks, in partitions or toilets… More than 20 years after the ban on asbestos, thousands of schools still house this insulation which is dangerous for the body. How many establishments exactly? Nobody knows for sure, despite the serious public health problems posed by these fibers for decades. The teams of the documentary series Green with ragebroadcast on France 5, therefore wanted to know more, and embarked on a gigantic census with all the primary and nursery schools in France.
“It was a long job to contact the 50,000 schools and the 35,000 town halls that are responsible for it”emphasizes Mathilde Cusin, co-director of Green with rage. Despite these thousands of requests, journalists have often come up against a wall of silence: nothing is known about the presence (or absence) of asbestos in two thirds of the schools. Of the 15,804 schools for which the teams of Green with rage obtained information, we learn that 5,505, or more than a third, show traces of asbestos. Conversely, we know that 4,771 schools do not contain any. For the others, we have information concerning the diagnoses made, but not their conclusions.
Is your child’s school affected? And those where you studied, or perhaps worked? In collaboration with the teams of Green with rage, franceinfo publishes a new search engine. You can search for the name of your municipality to obtain the list of establishments there, and their situation regarding asbestos.
Explore the data in detail in your municipality
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Please search for a town above.
Select a school below to view its status.
The Asbestos Technical File is a legal obligation for any school built before 1997.
Details from the “Vert de Rage” team:
You wish to request a modification, and have verified information on the presence of asbestos in a school? You can send an email to the teams of Green with rage who carried out this census, at [email protected]. The presence of asbestos in a school does not necessarily represent an immediate danger. To find out more about the location and condition of asbestos-containing materials, you are entitled to consult your school’s asbestos diagnosis.
Tens of thousands of asbestos-related deaths between 2009 and 2050
Since many schools present an unknown situation, the real toll of asbestos in primary schools could be much darker than that presented here. Until 1997, asbestos was a material widely used in the construction of educational establishments, as in construction in general. “Asbestos has been used for everything. It is a good heat and sound insulator, it is very resistant, lists Maxime Misseri, geologist and asbestos specialist. But as soon as it deteriorates, you can have emissions in the air. Either passively or via a mechanical action, if you tap on it for example.” Thus, a fiber visible to the naked eye can release millions of smaller fibers.
There is no threshold below which breathing asbestos fibers is not dangerous, and the health consequences are now established. Asbestos would be responsible for the death of 70,000 to 100,000 people between 2009 and 2050; causes between 150 and 170 laryngeal and ovarian cancers each year; and, within education, 20 to 60 teaching staff declare mesothelioma, ie cancer of the pleura, each year. The consequences on the health of the youngest remain little known, while the diseases generally appear several decades after exposure.
To limit these risks, the various regulations that appeared after 1997 oblige schools and town halls, on which they depend, to keep an asbestos technical file (DTA) up to date, consisting of one or more diagnoses. A check can reveal the presence of asbestos, without this presenting an imminent danger to users. But if the asbestos is in degraded and fiber-emitting materials, it may also require work and monitoring measures. The conclusions of these diagnoses can in theory be consulted by the parents or any staff of the establishment.
No transparency, even 20 years after the ban
The last extensive census carried out on this subject dates from 2016. It is for this reason that part of the information in our search engine dates back to that time. They come from a survey conducted by the National Observatory for the Security and Accessibility of Educational Establishments (ONS), an organization attached to National Education that was abolished in 2020. Its conclusions, drawn up from of a sample of approximately one third of the establishments, showed the existence of asbestos “in more than three quarters of colleges and high schools built before 1997”, date of asbestos ban. And 38% of public schools were also affected. As of February 2020, the data leading to this report was obtained by Releaseand published in open data.
It is therefore to complete and update these seven-year-old figures that Green with rage launched its own census. The journalists even insisted for eight months with the services of the 100 largest cities in France. But the subject of asbestos is still sensitive: only seven of them responded. “We suffered a lot of refusals, received a lot of elements of languagesays Mathilde Cusin, from Green with rage. We even learned that some schools had been instructed not to respond to us. While some teachers are overwhelmed by the situation and want to talk about it.
Among the good students is the municipality of Strasbourg, which agreed to send the teams the complete details of its schools. “We have every interest in these documents being public”, argues Jérémie Leymarie, school heritage manager for the city of Strasbourg. “The worst would be that there is a lack of knowledge of the subject and that people do work where there is asbestos”.
Funding and prevention that are lacking
If the problem persists so much, it is partly because of a lack of funding. “Some mayors called us to tell us that they knew there was asbestos and work to be done, resumes Mathilde Cusin. But they don’t have the budget to do it.” Several specialists interviewed by franceinfo also point to the issue of lack of training, sometimes crying out in small towns. “The heads of establishments are poorly trained”, deplores Cyril Verlingue, co-founder of the Urgence Amiante Ecoles collective. “Some do not master the technical issues, or do not have information on the subject, because the DTA cannot be found”.
And when the first diagnoses are made, “it’s the monitoring of potential material degradation that may not be up to scratch to ensure there are no fiber emissions”, believes Maxime Misseri, asbestos specialist. “What is missing is the follow-up to these observations“, abounds Jean-Marie Schléret, former president of the ONS. “QWhen it does not communicate well between the school management and the town halls, these files sleep, or we pass the buck.
What solutions to provide? Cyril Verlingue and the Urgence Amiante Ecoles association are asking for a major school building rehabilitation plan. “We are aware of the financial stakes. It is not up to the communities alone to solve the problem”, he presses. Like others, he also campaigns for the existence of a transparent database, listing all the schools and accessible to all, like the one that Green with rage.
In a ministerial document on the strategic orientations for the year 2020-2021, it is also planned to create a “digital logbook centralizing all essential information” concerning asbestos in particular. Where is this project? Contacted on this subject, as well as on that of asbestos monitoring in general, the Ministry of National Education has not yet responded to franceinfo.
Waiting for, Green with rage continue his work. In addition to this census, the journalists took several samples from schools where asbestos had been detected. Classrooms, dormitories, canteens… The tests were carried out using standardized wipes and laboratory analysis. Out of 14 schools studied, 11 samples revealed the presence of asbestos, including 5 above the alert threshold of 5,000 fibres/cm2 in force in the United States. There is no threshold for this method in France.