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.

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.

The seven men had been charged with violating the clean air act and knowingly exposing the people of Libby, Mont. to dangerous levels of asbestos. To this date, 290 people have died of asbestos disease in Libby, and another 1,800-2,000 have been sickened by asbestos exposure there, according to Dr. Brad Black, director of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby.

Grace attorney Favorito had been part of the original case against the managers, but had his case separated because he was also the other six defendant’s legal counsel, which could have created a conflict of interest.

The government’s move to dismiss the case comes as no surprise, considering that a unanimous jury dismissed all charges against the other executives on May 8, 2009 (click here for a good story on that case).

What may be interesting now is that many employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been under a gag order, restricting them from talking to the media about issues regarding Libby. The lifting of this order may free up some important sources for future investigative reports about continued issues with asbestos pollution in Libby.

Click here to read the full story in Missoulian.

by Paul Peters

St. Louis resident Julie Gundlach’s life changed forever in August of 2006, when she was diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer at just 35 years old.
Her diagnosis with this deadly disease is unusual, but may be part of a growing trend.
Mesothelioma normally strikes older men who were heavily exposed to asbestos in occupational settings-at plants where it was processed, in mines, or in professions that brought them into contact with insulation and other building materials in which asbestos was heavily used.
This may have been the case with Gundlach’s father, who died in 2005, at the age of 63, from lung cancer. Gregg Gundlach had worked for 30 years as a commercial electrician, coming into contact with insulation and fireproofing materials on a frequent basis. Asbestos was routinely used in these types of materials until the mid-1980s.
The lungs are one of the primary places mesothelioma attacks, and from there it spreads very quickly. People diagnosed with mesothelioma in their lungs, which is known as pleural mesothelioma, generally live for just weeks or months.
Gregg Gundlach died only six weeks after diagnosis.
At that time, Julie Gundlach says her family was not aware of asbestos or the diseases it can cause, and so they never had any tests done to determine whether it was the culprit in his death. Gregg Gundlach’s body was cremated, without a biopsy or an autopsy ever having been performed.
Then, two years later, Julie Gundlach became ill. She discovered the link between mesothelioma and asbestos then, and now thinks her father’s death and her sickness may have been connected.
When she was a child, Gundlach says her play area was also the laundry room, where her dad’s possibly asbestos-laden clothes were washed and dried. She believes that to be the source of her exposure, although it’s impossible to know for sure.

A Rare Diagnosis

Gundlach laughs telling the story about how she first discovered she had mesothelioma.
“I was constipated,” she says bluntly. “I tried a bunch of herbal stuff, ate prunes, drank prune juice, and nothing was making it any better, so within a week I went to the doctor.”
Her doctor ordered a CT scan for Gundlach, which revealed an unusual tissue mass inside her pelvis, and fluid in one of her lungs.

The companies that owned the Zonolite mine shipped vermiculite all over the country for years in a variety of products. It was used to insulate at least 35 million homes in the U.S., and more in Canada betweenn1960 and the mid-1980s.
It was also used in Monokote, a fireproofing spray developed by W.R. Grace & Co., the last owners of the vermiculite mine.

In the U.S., builders used Monokote to fireproof 60 to 80 percent of steel-frame buildings constructed during the 1970s and 1980s, including the bottom 40 floors of the main World Trade Center buildings (the twin towers) and all of World Trade Center 7, which also collapsed on 9/11.

Vermiculite from the mine was also shipped to at least 245 sites across the U.S., 28 of which were processing plants. The mine was closed in 1990, and in 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency began investigating health problems in Libby, Montana, and soon initiated a Superfund cleanup there.

Libby now has the highest asbestos-related mortality rate in the U.S., with more than 200 people dead from exposure, and thousands more sickened.

According to health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fatalities from asbestos-related diseases are rising in the U.S. The reported 18,068 fatalities between 1999 and 2005 occurred as a result of mesothelioma, a cancer directly associated with asbestos exposure. During this time, the frequency of mesothelioma deaths annually rose by 222 per year.

Studies have shown that people with low-level, non-occupational, exposures to amphibole asbestos are developing lung disease. In other words, you didn’t need to live in Libby, or have worked work at a mine or processing plant to receive deadly doses of amphibole asbestsos.

Asbestos related disease has a long latency period, meaning that adults exposed to the toxin today could see health effects in 20 to 40 years.

A version of this story appeared in the Missoula Independent on 07/27/06.

In November 1999, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported the news that 192 people had died and another 375 had been sickened by exposure to asbestos from W.R. Grace & Company’s Libby vermiculite mine, which closed in 1990. The ill effects were not limited to miners, but struck down many who had never even been to the mine. The newspaper posited that Grace executives, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other government agencies knew the dangers of the mine, but did nothing to stop exposure. The EPA began its cleanup of Libby almost immediately afterward.

Dr. Gerry Henningsen, Gordon Sullivan, Abe Troyer and Clinton Maynard say the worst thing anyone could possibly say about the Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup of Libby: That after six years of abatement, at a cost of $110 million, and with Montana’s one-time shot at an expedited Superfund cleanup spent, exposure to asbestos, which has now killed approximately 300 and sickened 2,000 in Libby, continues.

Furthermore, they say the EPA has intentionally misled Libby residents about the potential danger of that ongoing exposure and enacted unscientific cleanup policies that will lead to continued exposure and a huge financial burden for Libby and Montana. The men say their claims are supported by a report, created by the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), that has been buried. They say the report was written by OIG investigator Cory Rumple in early May, after he had interviewed Henningsen, Sullivan, Troyer and Maynard about their complaints with the EPA cleanup, and then corroborated those complaints through his investigation.

The Independent submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the OIG on May 2, complete with a number identifying Rumple’s report (2006-8004), and on June 30 received a particularly evasive answer: “With respect to the information requested, this office can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any documents responsive to your request. An official acknowledgement from this government entity could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy.” U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns’ office had also been told of the report’s existence by Gordon Sullivan and, after requesting a copy and receiving a similar answer, Burns has demanded the OIG come clean about the report and provide a timeline as to when it will be released to the people of Libby.

Whether the report ultimately sees the light of day or not, Henningsen, Sullivan, Troyer and Maynard say they know what it is likely to contain. The men say they learned of the report’s findings in an April 21 conference call with Rumple, who outlined his report’s contents. While he told them it would speak to their concerns over the cleanup, he also assured them it would not affect the current federal case against Grace’s former executives that seeks to hold them accountable for what happened in Libby. Finally, he told the four men that he expected the OIG to try and bury the report.

Rumple declined to speak to the Independent on the record. Frustrated that efforts by the Independent, Sen. Burns, and themselves to obtain a copy of Rumple’s report had been rebuffed, the four men revealed details of their complaints about the EPA, and Rumple’s description of his report’s contents, to the Independent in a July 12 meeting at Flathead Valley Community College’s Libby branch.