November 1 , 2005

A former Washington DC Department of Health Inspector has been sentenced for almost three years in a federal prison for accepting bribes intended to relax standards of asbestos removal in a city dump.

Jeffrey Dewhite Edwards, 43, of Bristow, VA was convicted on criminal charges of bribery and extortion in US District Court last year. Last week he was sentenced to 33 months in prison for his role in not cleaning up cancer causing asbestos from public land.

According to testimony and evidence uncovered during the trial, Edwards had asked for the money, $10,000 in all, from a consultant for the Keystone Plus Construction Company. Keystone had been hired to clean and demolish incinerators at a solid-waste facility. Edwards asked for the money in lieu of less strict standards for the company in its day-to-day asbestos removal operations.

The former inspector was in charge of several asbestos related abatement programs, including one at the Watkins Elementary School, also in DC, where high levels of asbestos were still found after contractors and officials claimed the problem had been taken care of.

The consultant that Edwards approached told law enforcement about the bribe and Edwards was arrested in 2003. Edwards had since lost his job, his home, and is having family troubles stemming from the bribe offer and his resulting conviction.

The asbestos removal was part of Washington DC's publicly funded efforts to remove the dangerous substance from possible public exposure. Asbestos is a substance used in many pre-1970s buildings that has recently been linked to the development of serious cases of cancer.

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