EPA Prepares to “Clean” Tremolite Asbestos in Massachusetts

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.