Asbestos Watch » Monokote

Grace’s “Post-Asbestos Bankruptcy Play”

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:23:04 +0000

by Paul Peters

On July 13, Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, advised investors to start buying stock in W.R. Grace & Co. He did this, he says, after he “went back to do more homework” on the business, on the advice from a viewer’s email.

“So what’s with this amazing Grace?” he asks. “The real story here is that W.R. Grace is a post-asbestos bankruptcy play.”

“W.R. Grace went into bankruptcy not because the business was awful, but because of asbestos lawsuits,” he says.

The company, he says, settled all those claims back in April.

The first thing Cramer leaves out is that Grace settled in April 2008, one year ago, meaning his tip is based off of old news (this information does briefly pop up on a little tag at the bottom of the screen, well after he mentions the date).

He then leaves out all the more recent good news W.R. Grace has received, such as settling with the town of Libby, Montana for what critics believe was way to little, or beating charges that it knowingly poisoned the same town with asbestos.

Finally, he points out how other companies that have emerged from asbestos-related bankruptcy saw a brief surge in stock value, which dropped off because of the companies ties to the housing industry.

“Remember,” Cramer says, “asbestos went into housing… For W.R. Grace, the bad housing news is in the past.”

Grace was, of course, involved in housing and building products, producing Zonolite, which went into tens of millions of U.S. homes, and Monokote, which was sprayed on building across the U.S., including the former World Trade Center buildings. Both of these products were contaminated with Libby asbestos.

Grace was certainly “in housing” and its products are still in a lot of homes and businesses across the country. Cramer, if he did in fact do his homework, may have decided the truth was a little tacky, and is asking his viewers to bet that Zonolite, Monokote, and Libby, Montana have all been put in Grace’s past.

Rumple Report Reviewed

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:41:17 +0000

By Paul Peters

As evidenced in the Rumple Report, many observers of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Libby cleanup believe the agency’s policies could still be exposing people to amphibole asbestos, which has killed hundreds and sickened thousands.

It is documented that public health statements made by Bush administration officials, which downplayed the risks posed by Libby amphibole asbestos released in Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, were used by W.R. Grace to lower the standards of the Libby cleanup.

It is also documented that, despite spending more than $110 million on the Libby Superfund cleanup, EPA still has no idea exactly how dangerous amphibole asbestos is, and yet portrayed to the community that Libby asbestos was safe in small quantities.

Eventually, pressure from the public, media reports, and congressmen pushed the EPA to retract information it released to the community that minimized risks of asbestos, and caused the agency to begin the process of investigating the risk posed by amphibole asbestos.

Gordon Sullivan says one of the most important revelations of the report is that the EPA’s own scientists were intensely critical of how standards had changed in Libby post-9/11.

“The most extreme issue in that entire report comes from inside the EPA,” he says. “When your head toxicologist says it’s unconscionable, you’ve got a problem.”

Sullivan refers to Chris Weis, Senior Toxicologist of the EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center. According to the report, OIG Special Agent Cory Rumple asked Weis about a brochure entitled “Living with Vermiculite” which was mailed to all Libby addresses, and states that low-level, short-term exposure to asbestos is not dangerous, and that it is perfectly safe to vacuum up “small releases” with HEPA vacuums, or wipe them up with damp cloths, as New Yorkers were told to do.

Weis, according to the report, “stated the language within that document contained ‘double speak,’ adding in his opinion it was ‘unconscionable’ to write a document with such language.”

Every little bit hurts

admin — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:34:48 +0000

By Paul Peters

A version of this story appeared in the Missoula Independent on 10/11/2007.

In 1976, W.R. Grace & Co. convinced the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider products containing less than one percent asbestos as non-asbestos containing products.

What became known as the “Grace rule” allowed the company to continue selling Monokote, a fireproofing spray used in the construction of many U.S. buildings, including the World Trade Center. It also promulgated the asbestos industry assertion that asbestos is dangerous only in high quantities, even as some branches of the EPA declared it unsafe at any level.

But now, according to a story in New Jersey-based newspaper The Times of Trenton, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report being released later this week will declare the Grace rule is based on an “arbitrary number” and that even low concentrations of asbestos can be harmful.
When EPA first began cleaning up the asbestos left in Libby by W.R. Grace vermiculite mining, it adopted the stance that asbestos was unsafe at any level.

But, when the World Trade Center buildings fell shortly after the Libby cleanup began, the Grace rule was embraced by the EPA as the standard for safe levels of exposure in Manhattan.

W.R. Grace seized on the discrepancy between the Libby and Manhattan cleanups to argue that the one percent rule, if it was good enough in Manhattan, should be good enough in Libby.

Grace’s argument seemed to work. The company sent letters to former EPA Chief Christine Todd Whitman pointing out the discrepancy. And, according Libby resident Gordon Sullivan, who once served as a liaison between the EPA and the town, the cleanup plan there went from the EPA removing all asbestos to “You clean it up.”

The EPA distributed brochures to all mailboxes in Libby telling residents that it was okay to clean up asbestos with a HEPA vacuum cleaner and a wet rag, which is exactly what the agency was telling Manhattan residents to do.

The EPA eventually withdrew the brochures in Libby after citizen complaints, but never backed off the Grace rule in Manhattan.

The GAO report will likely provide ammunition to activists in Manhattan, and other places where Libby asbestos was sent, to demand stringent cleanup standards.

Libby meets Manhattan

admin — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:40:05 +0000

Connecting the dots between a New York terrorist attack and a Montana mining disaster

Cover photo: Masked workers at Ground Zero. (Photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution).
By Paul Peters

A version of this story appeared in the Missoula Independent on 08/02/2007.
Some of the destruction terrorists inflicted on Sept. 11, 2001, was immediately obvious, even if you were watching it on television thousands of miles away in Montana. The twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) collapsed. Thousands of people died.

What was less obvious was the collapsing towers’ collateral function as a sort of dirty bomb, pulverizing or igniting all the hazardous substances of a small city, the poisons contained in computers, fluorescent light bulbs, windows and any number of construction materials, and blasting them through the city’s streets with the percussive force of two falling skyscrapers.

Post-9/11 photos show residents of Manhattan covered in layers of white ash so thick they look like ghosts. Residents in neighborhoods near Ground Zero reported finding inches of dust in their cars and homes. A plume of smoke rose from the burning debris for weeks. But on Sept. 13, two days after the towers fell, EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman told New Yorkers their air was safe to breath.

Asbestos, some of which came from W.R. Grace & Company’s vermiculite mine in Libby, was one of the many substances released by the attacks.

As the towers fell, Libby had just begun to come to terms with its own tragedy. The EPA had begun considering the town for Superfund designation earlier in 2001, following revelations that thousands had been sickened, and hundreds had died, due to asbestos exposure.

But while the EPA seemed at last to recognize the dangers of asbestos exposure in Libby, it ignored those same dangers in New York, apparently at the direction of the White House.

The discrepancy has given ammunition to activists who want a more thorough cleanup in New York, and it also offered a lifeline to W. R. Grace, which was arguing for less stringent standards on asbestos exposure and cleanup, in Libby and in Manhattan. The discrepancy also reveals an EPA of two minds about asbestos cleanup, and the mind that prevails – for better or for worse – could set regulatory precedent for a whole host of toxic baddies.