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Asbestos study is expanded nationwide
Montana problems may have spread elsewhere
Tuesday, January 18, 2000
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
LIBBY, Mont. -- The Environmental Protection Agency is expanding its investigation of asbestos-related death and illness from a vermiculite mine near here to include sites across the nation that received the tainted ore.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last month that during the past 40 years, millions of pounds of the ore were shipped from the northwestern Montana mine to at least 60 processing plants throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
The P-I documented that workers at many of those plants became ill and died from exposure to asbestos-tainted ore, and that the W.R. Grace Co. and the Zonolite Co., the first owner of the vermiculite mine, kept information about the lethal nature of the tremolite asbestos fibers from the men expanding and processing the brownish-pink ore.
"It is obvious that people died from exposure to the ore in Libby, and . . . it is only logical to examine whether a danger still exists at the plants around the country that processed the same ore," said Paul Perdnard, EPA's on-scene coordinator heading up the Libby investigation.
Later today, Perdnard's boss, Max Dodson, the assistant administrator of EPA's regional office in Denver, will hold the first of what he says will be weekly telephone conferences with his counterparts in other regions.
On Friday, Dodson contacted Superfund and emergency response managers in all 10 EPA regional offices.
"We feel that . . . coordination of EPA's investigation of other processing plants is critical at this juncture," Dodson wrote in a memo to his counterparts.
"The findings of these investigations can have serious policy and resource implications for the agency," he added.
EPA's national response to asbestos problems is chaotic at best and varies dramatically from region to region when it comes to deciding what actions if any should be taken to resolve a problem. However, Dodson says he's confident the agency will take needed action.
"I look at these expansion-plant sites as potential public health problems that could be covered under (Superfund) statutes. If we find a problem, I'm sure the agency will respond appropriately," he said.
The agency has asked Grace to supply additional information on the plants, additional locations and quantities processed, Dodson said.
Perdnard said his team is collecting names of additional sites across the country that processed the vermiculite from Libby.
Grace closed the Libby mine in 1990 and says it shipped the last of the ore in 1993. Some of the processing facilities are still in operation, using ore from Grace's remaining vermiculite mine in South Carolina. Grace says that vermiculite from that mine is not tainted with asbestos.
"We're not saying that there is any health hazard remaining at these plants that Grace and the others used," Perdnard said, "but it's worth the effort just to check and see if any large quantities of the contaminated ore remain at these sites."
Both Dodson and Perdnard said that some of the regional Superfund managers may want to wait until the preliminary studies at Libby are available.
Meanwhile, the EPA team, working with Montana state health officials and the Public Health Service, has completed testing on 35 homes in Libby that are insulated with Zonolite or expanded vermiculite from the old mine.
"We've monitored the air in these homes and have taken soil samples from their gardens, yards and driveways," Perdnard said.
"We've also done the road going up to the mine, the export plant and the railroad loading station. We should have the initial results on this first testing by early February."
The frigid Montana winter is making the testing difficult.
"You should have seen our teams using ice picks to collect samples," Perdnard said, adding that many of the more crucial tests to determine whether dangerous levels of asbestos still imperil the town cannot be conducted until the spring thaw.
In November, the P-I first reported that asbestos from the mine on a mountain near Libby that opened in 1924 had killed more than 192 people and left at least 375 with fatal diseases. The series of stories showed that Grace, the Zonolite Co. before it and government regulators ignored the signs of widespread asbestos contamination that doctors say will be killing people for many years to come.
Hard freeze or not, more experts are joining the EPA team in Libby.
Tomorrow, health experts from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta are expected to arrive in Libby to help sort out the specific hazards of the asbestos fibers that contaminate the vermiculite.
Tremolite, the rare asbestos found in Libby's ore, is one of the least studied of the six known asbestos fibers. Some doctors who have worked with patients whose cancer or asbestosis is blamed on tremolite, say the thin, needlelike shape of the tremolite fiber makes it one of the most lethal. Other doctors disagree.
"We've gathered this panel of experts to review the information as we collected it and offer up opinions," Perdnard said. "Libby and the people in the town who are sick and dying will offer a real time laboratory that can help us determine how hazardous this tremolite really is."
EPA's response to the tremolite contamination in Libby has been immediate and comprehensive. Elsewhere, the agency is being criticized for its handling of tremolite contamination from a stone processing operation in Sparta, N.J., and a county where new homes are being constructed in an area of naturally occurring tremolite in the El Dorado area near Sacramento, Calif.
P-I senior national correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattle-pi.com
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