93-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve Show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news update with Kathy Romano.

It is Thursday, September 12th.

Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is calling for a $100 million investment to eliminate lead in asbestos from every school building after they say a long-time teacher was recently diagnosed with mesothelioma, which is caused by long-term exposure to asbestos.

The fact that our schools could be the culprit in this and other causes is alarming and unacceptable.

We need the funding that will allow us to remove these materials from every school, and we need

it now, said the president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Jerry Jordan.

Jordan was joined by other local leaders and elected officials on Wednesday to discuss

the apparent problem.

The teachers union says that the school officials who

were recently diagnosed, worked at Meredith Elementary School. The school district of Philadelphia

also held a press conference on Wednesday to address the issues saying 29 schools had asbestos

programs over the summer, but that Meredith Elementary was not part of that. The district couldn't

give an exact number on how many of its schools have asbestos or lead, but the majority of their 220 schools are over 70 to 80 years old. It's kind of wild because, like, here they were doing the demolition as they're doing the rebuild out of the station and doing all the work here. And they discovered some asbestos, I think, over in one part of the building. Yeah.

You know, a lot of these buildings are built and they... And then didn't tell us and let us walk down here.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there was asbestos here. Oh, great. Yeah, I know, right? Why would they not tell us? At least inform us. They figured they just put a wall up. Right. I've had post-nasal drip for about a year now.

Is that a...

A sign of asbestos.

...