Asbestos HELP

Libby, Montana has become an icon in the story of the destructive power of asbestos. The W.R. Grace Company’s vermiculite mine located there operated until 1990 extracting vermiculite ore that was contaminated with asbestos. The health impact on the community has been long established by a long history of asbestos cancer and other asbestos related diseases occurring at a high rate. The prospect of asbestos liability claims for related illnesses and deaths drove W.R. Grace into bankruptcy.

The federal government has provided emergency medical care for residents in the area along with other support needed by a community suffering from widespread illness and displacement. The EPA has declared the mine a federal Superfund Site, one of the nation’s top priorities for the cleanup of toxic waste. At that point, it seems, things have begun to slow down.

The frustration boiled over Tuesday at a meeting in Libby where federal scientists were long on technical explanations but short on answers about how toxic Libby’s unusual form of asbestos really is. “What is a safe dose for Libby?” Lerah Parker asked. “I want to know when it’s safe to bring my family back to our property.” EPA toxicologist Dave Berry had no answer for her. According to Montana’s Daily InterLake, Ten years ago Parker and her husband, Mel, were forced off their land — the former vermiculite screening plant for W.R. Grace & Co. — and had to close down a thriving nursery business.

Berry was on hand to explain the federal agency’s risk-assessment process for the Libby Superfund site. Risk assessments have been completed for Operable Units 1 and 2, but assessments for other portions of the Superfund site continue. They include the city of Libby, the vermiculite mine site, the former Stimson lumber mill, railroad and highway corridors and the nearby community of Troy.

The federal government mobilizes cleanup efforts once the risk assessment shows one death per 10,000 people, Berry explained. A local writer pointed out that the population of the Libby area is about 10,000 and at least 31 residents have already died from mesothelioma.

Complicating the issue from the EPA’s viewpoint is the fact that the type of asbestos contained in the vermiculite ore was relatively rare in industrial use. Risk assessments for Libby amphibole asbestos — a more deadly needle-sharp fiber than the less-toxic and more common chrysotile asbestos — are based largely on old science, EPA officials admitted.

But the astonishing statistic in all of this is that the epidemiology and toxicology studies of Libby asbestos are a minimum of five years away from being completed. Libby residents feel that the EPA is ignoring other epidemiological studies of asbestos and engaging in an academic exercise that ignores the evidence, provided by the hundreds of local residents who have asbestosis and other related respiratory afflictions.

The Washington Post reports today on a former exhibit specialist who work at the National Air and Space Museum during his 28 year career with the Smithsonian Institute and who developed asbestosis as a result. Richard Pullman, 54, has settled a lawsuit with the institution for $233,000, according to records obtained by The Post this month from the Department of Labor under the Freedom of Information Act.

Pullman said he frequently sawed and drilled into interior walls to install and update exhibits for more than 25 years. In 2008, he and other workers were told for the first time that the walls contained asbestos, Pullman said. Asbestosis, a lung disease linked to breathing asbestos fibers, was diagnosed in Pullman by his physicians.

This story broke in March, causing Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough to order an investigation of the facility’s potential asbestos exposure by an outside consultant. The Institute chose to make the report public because the Post had obtained a record of the lawsuit settlement during their document search.

The report’s findings include the observation that the Smithsonian failed to keep a complete record on asbestos-containing material. Workers often did not have adequate information on the location of asbestos or how to work around it, according to the report. Workplace exposure has subsequently become an important issue at the museum, in large part due to the news stories.

Pullman asserted that he was often assigned the task of drilling through walls to mount exhibits when those walls contained asbestos or asbestos joint compound. Joint compound used for finishing out wallboard was a widely used asbestos product through the 1970s. In 1992 another consultant retained by the museum reported that there was 1 to 5 percent asbestos in the joint compound used in two dozen Air and Space museum rooms. A level above 1 percent is supposed to trigger worker-safety requirements; the Smithsonian has acknowledged that worker warnings rarely occurred.

The documents obtained by the Post show a pattern of non-concern on the part of Smithsonian’s management. The 2007 plans to replace the electrical system misled contractors about the amount of asbestos found in the walls. The museum maintained asbestos levels were less than one percent, at that time. Pullman collected dust samples from the museum that showed high levels of asbestos content.

A high-visibility, high interest criminal trial has opened in Italy over asbestos exposure that killed at least 2,200 former employees of the firm Eternit. On trial are one wealthy Swiss national and an 88 year old member of Belgian nobility, both of whom worked with the company or served on the board at some point in the 1970s.

The company in question is the Italian firm Eternit, a corporation that turned out products made from cement reinforced with asbestos fiber. The case has developed intense interest in Europe; on the trial’s opening day the courtroom had to utilize the space of four courtrooms because of the presence of 400 asbestos victims, family members, and 150 attorneys.

The victims – who died of mesothelioma or fell sick over at least the past four decades – were either Eternit workers or residents of towns where the firm’s four Italian plants were based. The two defendants are accused of negligence because there were no warnings to employees or anyone else about the potential hazards of asbestos. The plants were all closed in 1986.

According to various European news agencies these defendants were high executives with the company and ignored the developing awareness of health problems associated with inhaled asbestos fibers. The number of deaths attributed to these four plants suggests that not only workplace exposure but widespread distribution of asbestos dust to surrounding areas occurred during the years of plant operation.

There has been only one federal prosecution of asbestos company executives in the United States – similar charges of negligence filed against six W.R. Grace executives – and that case ended in acquittal in early 2009. Nevertheless W.R. Grace has been in bankruptcy for years due to asbestos claims and has established a $2 billion trust fund to reimburse former employees. The record of civil litigation in these Eternit cases is not clear, but the public anger over perceived negligence may be the precursor for substantial asbestos litigation yet to come.

A jury in Baltimore Circuit Court has found Scapa Dryers, Inc. liable in the asbestos-related mesothelioma and lung cancer of former paper worker Carl Saville. In the 1960s and 1970s, Saville was exposed to asbestos-containing dryer felts produced by Scapa as well as pipe, cement and block insulation installed by insulation contractor Wallace & Gale. The jury awarded $1.718 million to Saville, who has waited for this retrial since the 2003 trial and verdict for the plaintiff was overturned on appeal.

During the mid 1960s and 1970s, he worked on drying machines in a paper plant which utilized Scapa-manufactured dryer felts containing chrysotile asbestos. Wallace & Gale, an insulation contractor to the paper mill where Saville worked, was added as a new defendant in the retrial after its emergence from bankruptcy. In 2002, Saville was diagnosed with lung cancer and a malignant mesothelioma tumor was discovered during the lobectomy. Saville has since gone without cancer recurrence for the past six years.

Mr. Saville is one of the lucky few to have had a case of mesothelioma go into remission. The average survival term for malignant mesothelioma is eighteen months or less after diagnosis. Most plaintiffs in asbestos litigation don’t live long enough to see an appeal completed on the initial verdict.

Scapa Dryers, Inc. manufactured the 200-foot long dryer felts used in Saville’s paper plant. Wallace & Gale is a Baltimore-based manufacturer of sheet metals, fiber sheets and alloy sheets. The company served as an insulation contractor for the installation and repair of several types of asbestos containing insulation at the paper mill where Saville worked.

Another couple that sued Scapa Dryer Fabrics and an additional co-defendant was awarded $10.2 million in November due to workplace exposure in the Crown Zellerbach paper mill in Camus, WA. Henry Barbin worked as a pulp tester, and paper tester at between 1968 and 2001. Exposed to asbestos fibers from dryer fabrics for almost 40 years, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer in 2006.

Henry and Geraldine Barbin’s asbestos lawsuit claimed that the asbestos dryer fabrics were defectively designed and failed to carry warnings about the dangers of asbestos exposure. Henry Barabin was awarded $700,000 for medical expenses, lost income and household services and $8 million in non-economic damages for pain and suffering. Geraldine Barbin was awarded another $1.5 million for her loss of consortium claim.

Asbestos was one of the most common industrial materials put to use in the twentieth century. It has also proven to be one of the most lethal, as inhaling asbestos fibers can lead to a wide range of pulmonary problems such as asthma and asbestosis - and can also be the direct cause of mesothelioma.

What is mesothelioma? It is a lethal cancer that attacks the membranes around the lungs, the heart and the abdominal cavity. Mesothelioma cancer of the lungs is by far the most common form. Perhaps its most unusual characteristic is that mesothelioma diagnosis usually occurs decades after the initial exposure to asbestos.

It takes years for the asbestos fibers to work their way into those membranes; after an extended presence they begin to cause fluid accumulation and tumor development. However the first mesothelioma symptoms are such afflictions as a persistent cough or shortness of breath - symptoms that are often mistaken for evidence of more common lung problems, which delays the mesothelioma diagnosis even further.