The small town of Ovid rests in the far northeast corner of Colorado near the Nebraska border. The town retains a significant historical landmark: the gleaming white storage silos containing beet sugar from what once was the Great Western Sugar Company’s finest factory.

As they did the hard work of removing floor tiles, insulation and other materials at what was once an elementary school, employees of two Illinois companies were unaware that they were exposed to deadly asbestos fibers.