A Dangerous Lie

Déjà vu

Andrew Schneider and David McCumber’s epic work on Libby and its asbestos disaster, An Air That Kills, gives a comprehensive history of asbestos and its use by mankind. Asbestos was used by ancient Romans and Greeks who weaved it into a strong, fireproof fabric. Even then there was an awareness of the potential harm asbestos could cause to those who worked around it. Slaves, the reporters write, wore “respirators” made from a thin membrane taken from goat or lamb bladders to protect themselves. The authors go on to document numerous scientific studies, starting in the late 1800s, showing asbestos’s risks.

They also cite various letters and discussions that show companies mining and processing asbestos were aware of the risks these reports revealed. But that information never seemed to work its way down to the people who handled asbestos. This pattern was repeated in 1982 and 1985, when the EPA wrote reports acknowledging asbestos exposure in Libby, but failed to warn workers there. Not until 1999, when Schneider and other journalists began writing stories describing what had happened to the people in Libby, did the EPA step in.

“We are there again today,” Gordon Sullivan says of the buried OIG report, frustration straining his voice. “We have a significant document that deals with public health and safety, and we’re now at the same juncture we were at with [the 1982 and 1985 reports].”

“Why?” is the obvious question. Henningsen believes bureaucratic bungling was the ultimate cause of the botched cleanup, but Sullivan, Troyer and Maynard see the EPA’s decisions more cynically. They say the EPA and companies that mined and processed materials containing amphibole asbestos don’t want to study amphibole asbestos, for fear of learning how toxic it may really be. The EPA’s negligence over the years, Troyer, Sullivan and Maynard say, is a result of money to be made by powerful corporations as long as asbestos products kept selling, and money to be lost in lawsuits by the millions of people potentially exposed to dangerous amounts of the fiber.

Indeed, information the reporters gathered shows that various corporate executives hid the risk of asbestos in order to protect profits. So far, more than 70 U.S. companies have declared bankruptcy in the face of asbestos-related lawsuits, and the federal government has spent hundreds of millions cleaning up various sites contaminated by asbestos. Troyer, Sullivan and Maynard also think that the EPA may have been trying to shave its own costs, pointing out that the agency began changing its policies on cleaning up asbestos in Libby, moving from complete removal to partial containment, in 2003. Before 2003, it was costing the EPA about $200,000 to clean each asbestos-contaminated home in Libby. That was when they were completely removing contamination from each house. In 2003, the EPA decided it was okay to leave contamination contained behind walls and in the attics of homes, and the price suddenly dropped to $25,000-$30,000 per home.

In the end, the three men say, it was money, not science, that drove decisions on the EPA cleanup of Libby. But Troyer, Sullivan and Maynard allow that it’s possible to argue that those cost savings came as a result of the EPA becoming more efficient over time, and because the worst homes were cleaned first. Likewise, while conspiracy theories about the EPA and other governmental agencies working with asbestos companies may seem reasonable, given the unsettling history of asbestos dangers being hidden from the public, they are far from proven. A U.S. General Accounting Office study of the EPA’s failure in Libby concluded that the agency “misjudged the extent of the contamination in Libby,” and says, “we did not find any evidence that EPA officials were pressured to shift the agency’s focus.”

In the end, it seems the only available evidence supports Henningsen’s theory of bureaucratic ineptitude. Broken promises Maynard, Sullivan, Henningsen and Troyer aren’t the only ones critical of the EPA’s work. On Dec. 20, 2001, then-Gov. Judy Martz visited the Libby High School with some unexpected and much-needed good news. In the weeks before her visit, she had been the subject of public derision in Libby for not firing the state’s only Superfund silver bullet.

That night, Martz fired the silver bullet and became Libby’s hero. During her speech, Martz said she’d reached her decision in part because the EPA had made specific promises regarding the cleanup, including that it would take just two years, followed by one year of testing to ensure its effectiveness.

“As you know,” she told the audience, “I have struggled deeply with whether or not to use the silver bullet in Libby…While I am confident that cleanup would progress with a normal Superfund listing process, the risk of that delay is unacceptable to you, and it is also unacceptable to me.”

In a recent interview with the Independent, Martz said that her dealings with the EPA led her to believe that Libby would be a nearly asbestos-free town after those three years had passed. Six years later, it’s clear that the promised timeline didn’t hold, and it’s clear to Martz that EPA promises about the quality of cleanup Libby would receive haven’t held either.

“They have not kept their word on Libby,” Martz told the Independent. “The EPA clearly has not done what they said they would do.” Martz isn’t sold on the idea that learning the true risk of amphibole asbestos is what Libby needs. She points out that people like former gover- nor and Libby native Marc Racicot grew up in the same asbestos-contaminated environment as their neighbors, and never got sick. Because of the apparently variable way in which exposure affects people, she asks, “How can we point to what is a safe level in good conscience?” “I think no exposure is the best thing,” she concludes. Martz wasn’t afraid to say what is the possibly the second-worst thing some- one could say about Libby, that there remains the possibility that the town will have to be evacuated permanently.

“Maybe the problem is so big that it can’t be cleaned up,” she told the Independent. “You have to face that possibility.”

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