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.

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)

By Paul Peters

For a short time, it seemed certain the federal government had crossed into a new period of openness and transparency.
Early in his term, President Barack Obama reversed a Bush-era policy that discouraged federal agencies from releasing documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption,” Obama said. “In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”
On April 23, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new administrator, Lisa Jackson, released a memo calling for greater openness in her agency. This memo included a section that seemed to call for greater access to EPA employees for the media.
Encouraging results from these actions were seen on April 28, when the EPA Office of the Inspector General released a memo that had become known as the “Rumple Report.”
This report revealed that science was being ignored in the EPA’s cleanup of the nation’s worst Superfund site, in Libby, Mont., where more than 250 people have died from exposure to amphibole asbestos, and thousands have been sickened.
The Rumple Report was written by OIG agent Cory Rumple in April of 2006, but the OIG refused to release the document for three years. When it finally did so, it cited Obama’s new policy on FOIA
At that moment, it seemed Obama’s calls for openness in government had been heeded. But it doesn’t appear there has been a sea-change within the EPA, or its Office of the Inspector General, just yet.
In the course of reporting on the report’s release, Asbestos Watch attempted to interview Rumple, perhaps the most obvious source for any story about this important document.
It is clearly in the public’s interest, dealing with pollution that has killed hundreds of people, to hear more from an investigator like Rumple.
In particular, Asbestos Watch would like to learn more about his reasons for writing the report in the first place, his treatment within the OIG after it was written, and whether the issues he has addressed have truly been answered.
But the response from the OIG’s head spokesman, John Manibusan, was that Rumple would not be made available for an interview.
“The report was released last week, and at this point that’s everything we have to say on the issue,” Manibusan said.
Asked why, especially in light of Jackson’s memo, Manibusan responded that, “I can’t give anymore than what I’ve said-that it was a decision internally not to make Cory available.”
Asbestos Watch then appealed directly to the EPA, hoping they would push for Jackson’s memo to be upheld. But on May 14, EPA spokesman Dale Kemery responded via email, writing that the OIG is independent of the EPA, and that his agency could not force the OIG to comply with the memo.
Asbestos Watch has since requested that Montana Sen. Max Baucus, who has prompted inquires into the state of the Libby cleanup in the past, look into the matter. As of now, there is no other apparent recourse for interviewing Rumple.
Part of the reason openness is not prevailing may be that the OIG is still headed by Bill A. Roderick, a holdover from the previous administration, who may still cling to closed government ides of the past. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure, as the Rumple Report is, for now, the agency’s last word on the subject.

A version of this story was published in the Missoula Independent on 12/07/2006.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has confirmed allegations aired by four men in the July 27 Independent regarding the Libby asbestos cleanup.

A vermiculite mine operated by W.R. Grace and Co. contaminated the town of Libby with deadly asbestos fibers for several decades. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began cleanup of the site in 1999, after asbestos exposure had claimed more than 200 lives.

In a report released Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006 the OIG states, “EPA cannot be sure that the ongoing Libby cleanup is sufficient to prevent humans from contracting asbestos-related diseases.”

This despite seven years, $110 million dollars worth of cleanup and EPA claims that Libby was safe.

The report states that EPA cannot ensure the cleanup is sufficient because it has never assessed the toxicity of amphibole asbestos, the type of asbestos found in Libby.

According to the OIG’s report, such assessment is usually standard procedure.

“[W]e determined that EPA had not followed its own guidance regarding the conducting of a toxicity assessment,” the report states.

The EPA has 30 days to respond to the OIG report.

For years, Libby residents Clinton Maynard, Gordon Sullivan and others asked the EPA for just such an assessment.

The OIG report credits U.S. Sens. Conrad Burns and Max Baucus as the impetus for its report.

Sullivan says he’s satisfied with the OIG’s findings, but frustrated at the difficulty of getting the report done at all. After four years spent asking the EPA to follow its own guidelines, he complains, “We had to go to a U.S. Senator to prompt an investigation to protect our own damn health.”

He also asks an ominous question:

“Who is responsible for exposures between 1999 [when the EPA began its cleanup] and today?” he asks. “Is that on W.R. Grace or is that on the EPA?”

By Paul Peters
Editor

A version of this story originally appeared in the Missoula Independent on 04/27/2006.

Gordon Sullivan finally felt some hope of vindication for his criticisms of the Environmental Protection Agency’s work cleaning up the asbestos-contaminated town of Libby when a federal investigator interviewed him about two weeks ago.

Sullivan quit his job as Libby’s technical advisor last year over his concerns about the EPA’s cleanup of cancer-causing tremolite asbestos, rained upon the town by the W.R. Grace Corporation’s nearby vermiculite mine.

As technical advisor, Sullivan was paid to study EPA reports and present his findings to Libby’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG), which is funded with federal Superfund money to make the EPA aware of the community’s technical issues.

“I saw the process being overwhelmed by the EPA,” Sullivan says of his decision to quit. He thought that by working from the outside, he’d find other ways of helping with the cleanup. As it turns out, other ways found him.

Should the investigation justify his concern that the EPA has flubbed its Libby cleanup, Sullivan says, eventually “Libby will be a cleaner, healthier place.”

The EPA, on the other hand, could find its efforts tainted.

The investigation, according to Sullivan and other community members, is being carried out by the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a branch of the agency that conducts internal audits and investigations.

John Manibusan, a spokesman for the OIG, says the office performs two types of investigations, aimed respectively at efficiency and criminal concerns. Manibusan says that the OIG is not engaged in an efficiency investigation in Libby, and that the OIG’s policy on criminal investigations is to neither confirm nor deny their existence.

Sullivan says he was interviewed by an investigator named Cory Rumple who, when contacted by the Independent, declined to comment on whether or not he is taking part in an investigation. Rumple did confirm his role as a criminal investigator for the OIG. Peggy Churchill, project manager of the Libby cleanup, confirmed the existence of an investigation, and Dr. Gerry Henningsen, technical advisor to TAG since Sullivan quit, acknowledged meeting with an investigator in March, and said “many others” have been interviewed as well.

Henningsen says he and the investigator discussed “concerns about various parts of the cleanup,” although he declined to specify those concerns.

Sullivan says he was also asked to explain his concerns about the cleanup, of which he has many, ranging from the technical to the personal.

Sullivan’s personal issue is that he and his wife Kathy’s home, like approximately 2,500 other homes in Libby, was insulated with asbestos from W.R. Grace’s mine. The EPA has remediated the Sullivans’ home, and contained hard-to-reach asbestos behind its walls.

But on a sunny Friday afternoon, Gordon stands at one corner of the log home, looking for glints of sunlight in spider webs. From the webs he pulls shiny bits of what he says is vermiculite, the asbestos-containing mineral from W.R. Grace’s mine, that he says have fallen through the walls of his home. Above the fallen vermiculite he points to a spot where cardboard was apparently used to hold it inside the walls.

The EPA has scrubbed about 550 homes in Libby since cleanup began in 2002. Sullivan says his isn’t the only home leaking vermiculite. His concerns about the way local homes were remediated goes to the heart of his problems with the cleanup.

In 2002, when Sullivan was first hired as TAG’s technical advisor, he says the plan was to completely remove asbestos from the town. That initial plan, Sullivan says, was steadily eroded by the EPA, from removal to containment to minimization of asbestos release. Now, he says, “It’s gone from minimizing release to ‘You clean it up.’” That comment refers to the EPA’s provision of HEPA-filtered vacuum cleaners to Libby residents so they can suck up any asbestos dust that escapes containment.

Sullivan’s other major problem with the cleanup is more technical. Before the cleanup even began, he says, the EPA should have done a risk assessment, a baseline study to determine how dangerous a toxin is, and how people might be exposed to it. Without such a baseline study, Sullivan says, it is impossible for the EPA to really know how safe anything in Libby actually is. It could turn out that it’s safe to leave some asbestos in people’s homes, and have them clean up spillage with vacuum cleaners. Alternately, that could turn out to be a deadly mistake. The problem, he says, is that nobody knows.

Sullivan says that while he served as technical advisor, he tried repeatedly to get these concerns dealt with by the EPA, with no success, which eventually led to his resignation as technical advisor.

Project manager Peggy Churchill says she’s unable to comment on Sullivan’s concerns, as they are part of an ongoing investigation.

At this time, it remains unclear what criminal charges might eventually arise from the investigation. What seems evident to Dr. Henningsen, Sullivan’s successor as technical advisor, is that the investigation itself will ultimately be good for Libby, no matter what investigators find.

“Everyone will benefit from a solid, clean, accusation-free process,” he says. “This should be seen as a chance to alleviate concerns.”

Note: A version of this story originally appeared in the Missoula Independent on 06/30/2005.

It appears even Libby’s trees couldn’t escape the asbestos pouring out of W.R. Grace’s deadly vermiculite mine.

According to a recent report prepared by University of Montana’s Center for Environmental Health Sciences, bark samples taken from three locations in Libby yielded “substantial amphibole fiber contamination.” Amphibole fibers are the ones responsible for asbestosis in Libby residents.

But Dr. Tony Ward, who prepared the tree study, noted that the word “substantial” may not have much meaning when it comes to the health of Libby residents, because the human threshold for exposure to the fibers is unknown.

“No one knows the amount needed to cause disease,” Ward says.

Ironically, this news comes on the heels of an announcement that $1 million worth of new wood-burning stoves, chimneys and services are being donated by the wood stove industry in an effort to help curb an air pollution problem that makes air quality in Lincoln County among the worst in the country. Outdated woodstoves in Libby were identified as the culprit in the bad air.

But fiber contamination in the bark may make Libby trees useless for burning in stoves. Ward said he will continue studying the bark this summer, and hopes to provide Libby with enough information by this winter to decide whether or not to burn the wood.

Michael Crill, a Libby resident dying of asbestosis and an activist in Libby’s fight for justice, raised more questions about the contaminated bark.

Crill pointed out that logging could also be affected by this latest discovery. Crill’s wife, sister, brother-in-law and son all worked in Libby’s lumber mills. Crill wonders if dust from timber-cutting operations may have polluted the air mill workers breathe. He also mentioned the possibility that Libby bark may have been sent around the country for landscaping.

The effect of the bark on loggers and people who use the bark as landscaping is unknown, but Crill hopes that studies will eventually give more concrete information.

In the meantime, the discovery of asbestos fibers in tree bark makes one thing clear in Crill’s mind: the EPA is wrong to say that Libby is in the clear.

“You can’t declare Libby clean, because it’s not clean; you can’t declare Libby safe, because it’s not safe.”