A $750,000 Sculpture Made More Than A Dozen FBI Agents Too Sick To Work

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In 2015, the FBI scored what it thought was a major public art coup for its Miami bureau. Ursula von Rydingsvard, an artist known for her work with large pieces of wood, created a beautiful piece called “Cedrus,” a series of wooden beams designed to resemble a tornado, at a cost of $750,000, well below the sculpture’s market value of $1 million or more. One small problem, though: It’s making more than a dozen agents too sick to get their jobs done.

Why? It’s made from Western red cedar. Woodworkers and lumberjacks are already wincing, but if you’re not a rugged outdoorsy type, Western red cedar is one of the most toxic woods regularly handled in the United States. Packed full of plicatic acid, it’s notorious for causing work-related respiratory problems and OSHA requires very limited exposure across eight hours, classifying it as “highly allergenic.” It’s estimated roughly 5% of the population is allergic to it.

To give you an idea of how bad this sculpture was, the facility’s sole nurse was so ill she had to be transferred to another building entirely, and one worker was hospitalized for eleven days. If you’re wondering where OSHA was in all this, they came in and tested the air quality… but they were examining American workplace air quality standards, which don’t generally measure toxic wood dust.

After a fight over whether the sculpture made of toxic wood was, in fact, making everyone sick, it’s currently in storage with a tarp hanging over it, presumably well away from people. On the bright side, this fiasco has only cost $1.2 million, so far, including the sculpture. They’ll probably be able to get most of that back when they sell it off, provided it doesn’t make any buyers sick.

(via Politico)

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