So, to keep things from getting moldy, I’m changing the Breaking News section to the Breaking News Blog. It will essentially be a regularly updated short blog, like this one, linking out to stories concerning asbestos, public health, and the agencies, companies and people involved in these issues.

This week, I’ve been interested in this story published by nonprofit news source Pro Publica, and written by Abrahm Lustgarten. On it’s surface, it would appear to have nothing to do with asbestos issues. The story covers the practice of “fracking” in Wyoming. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals thousands of feet below the earth’s surface to force natural gas to come up. Large natural gas drilling companies, especially Canada-based EnCana, have been doing a lot of fracking in over the last few years in Wyoming, where large amount of gas below the surface have brought about a natural gas boom.

For at least 15 years, according to the Pro Publica article, Wyoming residents have been complaining about strange illnesses in humans and animals, and have been wondering if this could be connected to the chemicals used by companies like EnCana in natural gas drilling. The companies have refused to name the chemicals used in the fracking process, partially because the federal government never asked them to. Furthermore, fracking has been exempted from the Safe Water Drinking Act since 2005. This is where the issue gets interesting to anyone who has followed asbestos issues. According to Pro Publica:

Before hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005, the EPA assessed the process and concluded it did not pose a threat to drinking water. That study, however, did not involve field research or water testing and has been criticized as incomplete.

So, no list of the chemicals used to determine this, no field research, no water testing. Yet somehow, the EPA’s 2004 study of drilling determined that there was no danger. This seems to be a pattern with the federal government. I the 1980s the EPA studied Libby, Montana, and issued no warning. Years later, it has become the deadliest Superfund site in the nation. The same type of asbestos found in Libby can also be found in El Dorado, California, yet the EPA allows people to live on it. Same thing with popular beaches near Chicago. Stepping away from asbestos again, take a look at what happened when the Centers for Disease Control studied trailers provided to the public after hurricane Katrina were contaminated with formaldehyde.

You can find example after example of cases where federal agencies, entrusted with protecting public health, have instead made it easy for the public to be endangered. What gives? Is it the nature of the institutions? Politics? Outside pressure? Someday, I hope to be able to provide an answer.

Paul Peters

Warning label from the back of a Zonolite bag.

When it comes to asbestos, you’d think the Environmental Protection Agency would at the very least try not to kick up any more dust to add to the contaminated sites it is still trying to get its arms around.

But, according to The Republican, the agency has offered to clean an area contaminated with tremolite asbestos from Libby, Montana in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Once the EPA has done the cleanup, the city plans to put in a 1,000-foot section of bike path on the property. The bike trail is being supported by the federal Rails to Trails program. The city also plans to place a sewer line under the path. According to the article, $750,000 in federal money has been approved for the work.

In Libby, according to the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, hundreds have died and thousands have been sickened from exposure to tremolite asbestos there. Libby asbestos has been shown time and again to be extremely dangerous to human health, even in low doses according to at least one study.

So at first glance, the EPA’s offer to “clean” Libby asbestos sounds like a good thing. But consider that in In 2006, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General issued a report declaring that EPA had no way of knowing whether or not 7 years and $110 million of cleaning by the EPA had managed to reduce risk posed by tremolite in Libby, because the agency has not done any risk analysis on its own for tremolite asbestos. The risk analysis is currently underway, and is expected to be completed in 2012.

From 1963 to 1984 (according to an ATSDR report attached further down in this story), the site for the proposed Easthampton bike trail was a Zonolite processing plant for W.R. Grace & Company. Zonolite was the name given to vermiculite ore mined in Libby after a heating process had expanded it and made it suitable for use as a home insulation product. Vermiculite, and products made from it, were contaminated with tremolite asbestos from Libby. Grace also processed Monokote fireproofing material in Easthampton, which was made using Libby asbestos and used to fireproof buildings. Both of these products have been banned.

Grace’s activities at this site seem to have heavily contaminated it, according to this December 2006 report made by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Testing on the site found significant asbestos contamination. The report notes that asbestos was even detected in air samples taken off the property.

The report notes that in as early as 2000 the bike trail proposal for the site had already been made, and that, “Exposure concerns with regard to asbestos will need to be addressed before construction.”

The EPA’s webpage on the Easthampton site states that it is “unknown” by the agency if human exposure to asbestos there is currently under control.

It would seem that, in order to adequately address a cleanup of this sort, the EPA would first have to have the risk analysis its own office of the inspector general has said they need. Apparently, neither lack of information nor the deadly history of tremolite asbestos will stop the EPA from poking a stick into this hornet’s nest.

Fake snow made from asbestos.

by Glenn Daigon

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral fiber classified into two groups, Serpentine and Amphibole.  Chrysotile asbestos is the most common of the Serpentine group to be used commercially. (Source: www.asbestos-mesothelioma.com/asbestos-fibers.html).
The less common Amphibole group includes Amosite, Crocidolite, Tremolite, Actinolite, and Anthophyllite. (Source: www.asbestos-mesothelioma.com/asbestos-fibers.html).

History

The word “asbestos” comes from the Greek word meaning “inextinguishable.”  The first asbestos mine was located in Greece on the island of Ewola and was established around the first century A.D.  Historians note that during the time of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, engineers used asbestos in building materials, due to its fire-resistant properties. (Source: www.maacenter.org/asbestos/history/php).

The Industrial Revolution represented a huge boom for the asbestos industry.  Factories opened up everywhere and their owners devised new uses for the miracle mineral on a regular basis.  Commercial asbestos mines sprung up in the late 1800s.  The railroad industry was among the first to make extensive use of asbestos and asbestos-containing products.  As the railroad industry grew, so did the demand for asbestos products.  Railroad engineers began to use asbestos materials to line refrigeration units, boxcars, and cabooses, and the material was found to be especially useful as insulation for pipes, boilers, and fireboxes in that era’s steam locomotives (Source: www.maacenter.org/asbestos/history/php).

The shipyard industry also made extensive use of asbestos for insulating boilers, hot water pipes, and incinerators.  The auto industry also used asbestos widely, namely in brake and shoe pads as well as clutch plates.  Asbestos was also used in the brakes in skyscraper elevators (Source: www.maacenter.org/asbestos/history/php).

But the use of asbestos in those latter two mentioned industries paled in comparison to its use by the building industry.  Asbestos was soon to be found everywhere in homes and commercial buildings in an effort to make them fire-proof.  It was used in wall insulation, for floor and ceiling tiles, in exterior siding, and in roofing tar and shingles.  Because of asbestos fabric’s strength and resistance to heat, it was considered safer than standard fabric. Schools and theaters boasted of using asbestos curtains.  When asbestos use was at its greatest in the mid-twentieth century, an estimated 3,000 products made use of its unique properties.  You could find asbestos in hair dryers, irons and ironing board covers, toasters, coffee pots, and electric blankets (Source: www.maacenter.org/asbestos/history/php).

Health Issues

Asbestos diseases have been known and documented for over 100 years.  During an autopsy in 1900, Dr. H. Montague Murray, a physician in London’s Charring Cross Hospital, discovered asbestos fibers in the lungs of a 33-year-old man who had worked 14 years in an asbestos textile factory and died of severe pulmonary fibrosis, which the doctor linked to his occupation. ¹

But it was not until 1924 that the first clear case of death due to asbestosis was published in the British Medical Journal. Dr. W.E. Cooke, an English physician who gave the disease its name, reported the results of an autopsy on a 33-year-old woman who had worked in an asbestos textile factory for 13 years². This is the first diagnosed case of asbestosis. The publication led doctors and scientists to examine hundreds of asbestos textile workers. They found that a quarter of the workers developed pulmonary fibrosis, the condition which Cooke dubbed asbestosis.³

In the United States, in 1918, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report by an insurance statistician noting the unusually early deaths of asbestos workers and revealing that it had become common practice for insurers to deny coverage for workers because of the “assumed health-injurious conditions” in the asbestos industry.⁴   In 1927, the first workmen’s compensation disability claim for asbestos was upheld by the Massachusetts Industrial Board.⁵

In 1932, the U.S. Bureau of Mines sent a letter to asbestos manufacturer Eagle-Picher stating, “It is now known that asbestos dust is one of the most dangerous dusts to which man is exposed.” ⁶

The Industry Suppresses the Evidence.  Asbestos industry companies did not sit idly by as the medical evidence against their product built.  Here are just a few examples of how the industry tried to suppress it:

_    1936—-A group of asbestos companies agrees to sponsor research on the health effects of asbestos dust, but requires that the companies maintain complete control over the disclosure of the results.⁷

_    1942 or 1943—-The president of Johns Manville says that the managers of another asbestos company were “a bunch of fools for notifying employees who had asbestosis.”  When one of the managers asked, “Do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?”  The response was reported to have been, “Yes.  We save a lot of money that way.” ⁸

_    1951—Asbestos companies remove all references to cancer before allowing publication of research they sponsor.

_    1972—An internal W.R. Grace memo states:

“The point I am trying to get across is that our present policy is to tell no one anything, no visitors, or discussion of our operations period”  [with regard to asbestos risks].

Regulation

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) first started regulating exposure to asbestos in the workplace in 1971. Over the years, OSHA tightened this standard several times to further restrict exposure of workers to asbestos fibers. The last time the standard was tightened was in August of 1994, cutting permissive exposure in half for nearly four million workers (Source: www.mesothelioma-mesothelioma.org/regulation.htm).

Since asbestos exposure was not merely limited to the workplace, but the general public as well, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also began to regulate exposure.  In 1973, the EPA announced a regulation banning spray-on asbestos insulation as a pollution hazard. In 1979, the EPA announced its intention to issue a rule that would ban all uses of asbestos.  Those rules did not go into effect until 1989 when the EPA announced its intention to issue a rule banning asbestos in most of its major uses. In 1991, however, the asbestos companies won a lawsuit against the EPA’s 1989 ban, and the regulation was blocked.

The Senate considered a complete ban on asbestos in 2007, but heavy pressure from the industry diluted the bill to exempt products containing less than one percent asbestos.  This bill, sponsored by Senator Murray of Washington State, passed the Senate in 2007.   But public interest groups argued that all levels of exposure to asbestos, even products containing less than one percent asbestos, were a grave health risk.  These groups are continuing to press Congress for a complete ban on asbestos, with no exemptions or limits.

Jeff Camplin (center) walks the shore of Illinois State Beach Park with Paul Kakuris and NBC Chicago's Carol Marin. Photo provided.

by Paul Peters

Jeffery Camplin and Paul Kakuris believe that the beaches of Lake Michigan in Illinois, from Chicago up to the northeastern edge of the state, may pose one of the greatest environmental health risks in the country.
The beaches, they say, contain several forms of asbestos in high levels.
This includes amphibole asbestos from Libby, Montana, a remote town of about 2,600 in the northwest corner of a sparsely populated state. According to the Center for Asbestos Related Disease Libby amphibole has caused the death of at least 290 people and the sickening of almost 2,000 more, and has been shown to cause a deadly form of cancer, mesothelioma, even at low doses.
To this day, CARD says 10 new cases of asbestos disease are diagnosed each month in Libby, and it is widely considered to be the most deadly Superfund site in the nation.
Yet Camplin and Kakuris believe what they have discovered in Illinois may be worse, as 2 million people are annually visiting beaches contaminated with Libby amphibole, and studies have shown that the counties along the shore have some of the highest asbestos disease rates in the country.
They also believe that, should the International Olympic Committee discover this pollution, it could jeopardize the Chicago’s chance to hold the 2016 Olympics.
And they assert that government agencies, like the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (U.S. EPA), and several offices in the state of Illinois know about this problem and are actively covering it up, with the ATSDR committing scientific fraud in an effort to hide the dangers of this contamination.

A statement like this naturally invites skepticism. And, at first glance, it would be easy to dismiss Camplin and Kakuris as conspiracy theorists.
The ATSDR completed its most recent report on Illinois State Beach Park (ISBP) on March 10, 2009.
The report draws its conclusions using data from a September 2007 U.S. EPA study. It concludes that “recreational use of the beach is not expected to harm people’s health.”
The EPA study, which made the same conclusions, was proceeded by another ATSDR report released in 2007, a report by the University of Illinois, Chicago released in 2006, a report done by ATSDR and the Illinois Department of Public Health in 2000, and finally a 1998 report by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR).
Each report states the same thing the 2009 report did, i.e., the park poses no threat.
On top of that, the site was been declared “a success story” by the EPA in 1991, when the agency finished its Superfund cleanup there.

When Jeff Camplin first heard about possible asbestos contamination at the Illinois Beach State Park (IBSP) in nearby Waukegan, he was a skeptic.
Camplin knows quite a bit about asbestos. Since 1988, he’s been an EPA-accredited asbestos abatement instructor. He is a certified professional environmental auditor, president of an environmental services company, and was named Environmental Safety Professional of the Year by the American Society of Safety Engineers in 2006.
In the late 1990s, while teaching asbestos abatement classes in Mundelein, Illinois, he heard about pieces of asbestos containing material (ACM) being found by workers at nearby Illinois Beach State Park (IBSP), and the cleanup effort underway.
At the time, he says, “I thought it was a waste of taxpayer’s money.”
He had heard from the local news, and from students who had worked cleaning the beaches that the asbestos was “non-friable” meaning it was safely contained in pieces of cement or other materials, and could not turn into breathable dust.

(Story Continues)

Detail of W.R. Grace Zonolite insulation bag. Andrew Rich photo.

by Paul Peters

This week, Spokane, Washington made the news when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began testing yards near a former plant where W.R. Grace & Co. processed vermiculite contaminated with tremolite asbestos.
The vermiculite had come from Libby, Mont., where, according to the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, nearly 300 have died from asbestos exposure. Once processed, Grace sold the vermiculite as Zonolite brand attic insulation, which eventually found its way into millions of homes across the U.S.
The EPA had studied the yards and the site of the former plant back in 2000 and 2001, and at the time had only found “trace amounts” of asbestos in the yard soils.
Exactly what the “trace amounts” were is unclear, but it has been well established that tremolite asbestos, a component of Libby asbestos, can cause mesothelioma at low exposures.
This would seem to be enough to justify not just another round of testing, but a cleanup of these yards.
According to several news accounts, the EPA was retesting the Spokane yards for three reasons. Because of the public health emergency declared by EPA in June, because there are new health standards, and because there are new testing methods.
But interviews with EPA employees involved with the site, as well as a review of the records, show that none of these reasons hold true.
Julie Wroble, the risk analyst for the site, says that the testing they plan to use, known as California Air Resources Board method 435, “isn’t anything new.”
In fact, documents indicate it was developed in 1991. Incidentally, these documents specify that method 435 be used for serpentine family asbestos. Asbestos from Libby is of the amphibole family.
Likewise the “new” standards are fairly old. The “old” standard, which had been used by the EPA to declare places like Libby, Illinois Beach State Park, and post-9/11 Manhattan safe, was never meant to be a health standard, which the EPA stated outright in this 2004 document.
Finally, Greg Weigel, the EPA’s on-scene coordinator for the site, says the impetus for reviewing the site dates back to a study done in October 2008, which recommended revisiting previous sites that processed Libby vermiculite, and is not related to the Public Health Emergency.
The plans for re-testing this site, he says, were in the works for months.
The Spokane site is just one of more than 200 places where Libby vermiculite was processed. In 2006, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General stated that the EPA had no way of knowing whether or not Libby was clean.
The EPA has yet to develop a standard for exposure to tremolite asbestos.

Asbestosis normally occurs after heavy exposure to asbestos for a long period of time in industrial settings. Even then, it normally effects asbestos workers when they have reached their 50s or 60s. If the 35-year-old does indeed have asbestosis, the exposure would likely have been massive.

The suit alleges that asbestos was used in the plant as recently as 2004. In the AP story, the plaintiff’s lawyer notes that DuPont stopped using asbestos in U.S. nylon plants in the 1970s. The plaintiff’s lawyer says he expects suits from more former workers to follow. You can read the AP story here. Look for more reporting on this issue from Asbestos Watch in the near future.

Montana Senator Max Baucus (center) with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (left) and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, right, at a press conference announcing Public Health Emergency for Libby.

by Paul Peters

When the EPA first tried to declare a public health emergency in Libby, Montana in 2002, they were particularly concerned about Zonolite, a type of attic insulation from vermiculite mined in Libby which contains Libby amphibole asbestos.
Zonolite is a product that was manufactured by W.R. Grace, the same company once accused of knowingly exposing the people Libby to deadly asbestos. Zonolite can be found in approximately 30 million homes and buildings in the U.S. It was also processed at several sites around the country.
Furthermore, tremolite asbestos, one of the main constituents of the asbestos type found in Zonolite, occurs in residential areas like El Dorado Hills, Calif., and has been found on Oak Street Beach in Chicago.
In 2002, Grace, with help from the White House Office of Budget Management (OMB), stymied efforts to declare an emergency. At the time, the EPA wanted to remove Zonolite attic insulation from Libby homes. To remove a commercial product like Zonolite from homes and businesses, the EPA was required by law to declare an emergency.
Although the EPA announced in 2002 that it would remove attic insulation from Libby homes, Grace and the OMB had stopped the emergency declaration and kept the Zonolite name out of the press. Click here to read more about the first attempt at an emergency declaration.
Although the EPA finally declared a public health emergency in Libby last week, the word Zonolite was never uttered, or written.
None of the official documentation accompanying the decision (which you can find here), including the press release, mention Zonolite.
EPA head Lisa Jackson did not use the product name in her press conference on the emergency declaration, although she did say that, “Today EPA is launching a national education program focused on vermiculite insulation to ensure the continued education and safety of all Americans.”
(continued)

W.R. Grace promotional products for asbestos-containing Zonolite Attic Insulation. Photo courtesy Anthony Rich.

by Paul Peters

Eight years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tried to do what it finally did on June 17, 2009. That is, declare a public health emergency in the town of Libby, Montana.
In Libby, about 290 people have died and another 2,000 have been sickened due to asbestos exposure from a former W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine just outside of town.
The declaration contains several flaws which you can read about here.
It does not, contrary to most reporting, provide any additional money to Libby. In answers to a host of questions from Asbestos Watch, the EPA stated that money for the cleanup is actually coming out of funds it had already received from W.R. Grace one year ago (EPA answered these questions on the condition that Asbestos Watch would not attribute them to any one official). There is no “new” money going to Libby as a result of this public health emergency declaration.
And it’s more than a little interesting that the declaration comes now, after W.R. Grace, the company responsible for releasing the contaminants that poisoned Libby, has safely cleared the deck of all lawsuits pertaining to its operations in Libby, and has reached a settlement with the federal government that protects the company from future health care and cleanup costs in Libby.
(story continues)

According to the EPA press release, this is the first time that the EPA has declared public health emergency.

The press release also states that:

During her Senate confirmation hearing, [EPA] Administrator [Lisa] Jackson committed to review the situation at the Libby asbestos site based on current site information, sound science and EPA’s legal authorities. As a result of her review, the Administrator has decided that conditions at the site present a significant threat to public health and that making a public health emergency determination is appropriate.

Exactly what information led Jackson to make the emergency declaration, and what specific actions will result from it are unclear. The press release addresses a high occurrence of asbestosis, a disease normally associated with long-term asbestos exposure, as one of the public health concerns in the area. The release does not mention mesothelioma, a disease that has been connected to short-term exposure to amphibole asbestos, as a concern.

To read in-depth coverage of this issue, click here.