Oakland, Calif. — Many rail cars now running on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system may contain asbestos, Environmental Working Group said in a letter sent today to BART general manager Grace Crunican.

EWG acted in response to press reports that Washington Metro Area Transit Authority officials had discovered asbestos in nearly 300 rail cars made by Rohr Industries in the 1970s. In the same period, Rohr manufactured more than 400 cars for BART.

“Like WMATA, the BART fleet has Rohr train cars that entered service in 1972,” Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, wrote Crunican. “As a resident of the Bay Area and a regular BART rider, I am concerned that the Rohr A- and B-cars may expose riders and BART employees to asbestos, a known human carcinogen.”

If inhaled, asbestos fibers can lodge into the lungs and can cause chronic, even fatal diseases, including mesothelioma and asbestosis. EWG Action Fund estimates that up to 15,000 Americans die each year from asbestos-related disease. According to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, there is no safe level of asbestos exposure. The agency’s guidance for potential workplace exposure says:

Every occupational exposure to asbestos can cause injury of disease; every occupational exposure to asbestos contributes to the risk of getting an asbestos related disease.

“BART employees who work in the cars and the hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors who ride BART trains each day have a right to know whether they may have been exposed to asbestos,” Cook wrote, urging the BART officials to “conduct a car-by-car inspection to assess the condition of all cars that may contain asbestos” and make those findings public.

Cook’s letter to Crunican can be found here: