Asbestos silica

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1 22 an hartmann

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/corporate-crime-in-america/

[list of damage]...Those who perpetrated the lies that led to this must be held to account, both financially and with the force of criminal law.

On top of that, now that climate change is here and walloping us, we must harden our nation’s infrastructure and relocate both vulnerable people and those who lost their homes and communities to wild weather, drought, and floods.

Shouldn’t the fossil fuel companies and the millionaires and billionaires they’ve created pick up that bill, too?...>We’ve been having a similar conversation around other 20th century corporate crime for decades, and generally we’ve screwed it up....America is pock-marked with mansions and estates owned by families enjoying multi-generational wealth that came from their ancestors or parents lying to the American government and the public in ways that killed people....For example, in 1943 Samac Laboratory told the nation’s largest asbestos producer, Johns-Manville, that caused the excruciatingly painful and always-fatal lung cancer called mesothelioma. The company’s executives made the corporate decision to cover the science up and then lied about it to their employees, customers and the government for two generations.

That was eight years before my father dropped out of college in 1950 and went to work in a Grand Rapids steel mill because Mom got pregnant with me; he was surrounded every day with a cloud of asbestos dust that his bosses told him was “safe.” Dad died of mesothelioma in 2006.

One of the best known of the many fabulously rich heirs to the Manville fortune was Tommy Manville, who became famous for marrying eleven blonde 20-something showgirls thirteen times. Seriously. The first paragraph of his obituary in The New York Times reads: “Tommy Manville, who took 11 wives in 13 marriages and was heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune, died of a heart attack yesterday at his estate in Chappaqua, N.Y. He was 73 years old.”

To this day, no asbestos fortunes have been attached and none of the criminal liars went to prison: we missed that opportunity a generation ago.

11 21 grab acsh

Health Scares Vs Health Threats

Thank You, Trial Lawyers, For Protecting Us from the Scourge of Baby Powder

Scientists say that talcum baby powder doesn't cause cancer. Trial lawyers say it does. As usual, the lawyers win. Scientists, common sense, and Americans lose.

Coronavirus: Fear of a Pandemic, or a Pandemic of Fear?

We must eliminate both. Here's one group's plan to do that.

95% of Baby Food Tainted with Toxic Metals? Don't Panic

The Centers for Disease Control says that the “American food supply is among the safest in the world.” But a read of some recent news reports about toxic metals in baby food may have you feeling somewhat concerned. So what's really the state of the supermarket aisle? Let's take a closer look.

Everything Goes to Pot: Myths Are Driving FDA, CDC Vaping Policy

While an investigation is underway into the exact nature of the problem, so far the likeliest explanation is that improper use of vaping devices has led to illness, or the death, of some users. But that sort of nuance isn't governing the thinking of the FDA or CDC officials, both of which are allowing myths and fearmongering to drive their policies and public statements.

Precautionary Principle:We Must Ban Driving to Whole Foods

Better safe than sorry. That's a great lesson for a child when a parent explains why she should wear a helmet when riding her bicycle. But that refrain makes for terrible public health policy.

CDC Misleads by Calling E-Cigarettes a 'Tobacco Product'

The CDC says "tobacco use by youth is rising." If that were to be true, it'd be horrible -- but it's not. Cigarette use is down. The only reason the CDC can make this claim is because the agency considers e-cigarettes and vaping devices -- which only contain nicotine -- to be tobacco products. This is misleading and undermines public health.

AAAS Runs Dishonest Glyphosate Story, Then Deletes It. Is Politics to Blame?

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the foremost pro-science organizations in the world. Not only does it advocate for good science and science policy, it publishes Science, the prestigious journal read globally by millions. Unfortunately, AAAS has gotten a bit weird in recent months.

UK Parliament Endorses E-Cigarettes to Help Smokers. Will U.S. Follow?

U.S. public health agencies struggle to endorse an obvious solution to a true public health menace. Hopefully, the UK Parliament will provide a much-needed boost to the forces of common sense.

Glyphosateand Pesticides: Et Tu, Live Science?

Normally a reliable source of information, Live Science published an article that is a dream for anti-pesticide and anti-chemical fearmongers.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour Misleads on Flint Water Crisis [recall BSS elsewhere on pb]

The recent reporting on Flint's water crisis by CNN's Christiane Amanpour has a tenuous grasp of the data and the reality.

New Study Refutes the 'Wine Will Kill You' Nonsense

A few weeks ago, a paper claimed that an extra glass of wine will shorten your life. The story circled the globe in minutes. A new paper, with better methodology, concluded what we all knew: Moderate alcohol consumption can be integrated into a healthy lifestyle. It, however, won't receive nearly as much attention as the sensationalist report. Such is the power of the academic PR hype machine combined with a gullible, sensationalist press.

Diarrhea Outbreaks: A Glimpse into Anti-Vaxxer Utopia

Despite the reality of measles, rotavirus, and a plethora of other infectious diseases, there's yet another anti-vaccine movement afoot in California. And its aim is to turn the clock back to the 10th Century.

an 921 thom h

...Dick Cheneyknew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein not only had nothing to do with 9/11 but actively hated and hunted down Bin Laden's Al Qaeda operatives so he could imprison or kill them. But Cheney had run Halliburton into trouble, betting that if he picked up Dresser Industries on the cheap that the Clinton administration would cover theirasbestos liability. When he lost that bet and Halliburton was in trouble, a nice war with billions in no-bid contracts for the oil-company-turned-defense-contractor was just the grift he needed to both bail him out and make him fabulously rich....

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-epa-2647067465.html

toxic 10 epa rollbacks ewg

From the beginning, the Trump administration has aggressively slashed environmental regulations. A New York Times analysis identified 100 environmental protections that have been reversed or are in the process of getting rolled back. The administration's record on chemical safety has been especially hazardous for the health of Americans, especially children.

One year into President Trump's term, EWG detailed how the Trump administration has stacked the Environmental Protection Agency with industry lawyers and lobbyists, undermined worker safety and cooked the books on chemical safety assessments. Midway through his second year, we reported how the EPA reversed a ban on a brain-damaging pesticide, delayed chemical bans and killed a rule to protect kids from toxic PCBs in schools. Last year, we reported that the EPA had rescinded safety rules at chemical plants, rubber-stamped untested new chemicals and silenced researchers.

As Trump's first term nears its end, things are even worse. Here are 10 more ways the Trump administration has continued to make life more toxic for Americans.

1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

The toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS contaminate more than 2,200 sites across the nation. Because they never break down in the environment, PFAS are often called "forever chemicals." They build up in our bodies and are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental harms and reduced effectiveness of vaccines. Even though the EPA has known about the risks from PFAS chemicals since at least 1998, they remain virtually unregulated.

In February 2019, the EPA released a toothless PFAS "action plan" that lacked deadlines for action and failed to address the use of PFAS in everyday products, contamination from PFAS air emissions or disposal of PFAS waste, among other concerns. A year and a half later, key goals from the plan, including regulating PFAS under the Superfund law and setting drinking water standards, remain unfulfilled.

When Congress stepped in and sought to designate PFOA and PFOS – the two most notorious and well-studied PFAS – as "hazardous substances" and to set deadlines for agency action, Trump threatened a veto. Trump's EPA also weakened a rule designed to regulate PFAS in consumer products.

2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water

Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel that also frequently contaminates drinking water sources. Perchlorate can interfere with thyroid function, which can also harm childhood brain development.

Almost a decade ago, the EPA determined that these harms warranted regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency then dragged its feet for years. In 2016, the Natural Resources Defense Council sued to force the EPA to finally set a legal limit for perchlorate in drinking water. In a court-approved consent decree, the EPA agreed to propose a standard by October 2018 and finalize it by 2019. However, the EPA sought extensions and failed to meet these deadlines.

The EPA finally proposed a drinking water standard in June 2019 but also suggested that it might not regulate perchlorate after all. A year later,the EPA withdrew its decision to regulate perchlorate in drinking water.

3. Allowed Scores of New Chemicals, Including New Toxic PFAS, Onto the Market Without Adequate Oversight

In 2016, Congress substantially changed the way new chemicals are approved under the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA.

Under the old law, chemicals were frequently approved by default, often without any health and safety information. As a result, unsafe chemicals were allowed to be used for years or decades before the health and environmental hazards came to light. Inadequate oversight of new chemicals can also lead to regrettable substitution – when chemicals are finally found to be unsafe, they are often replaced by unstudied chemicals that may be just as or even more toxic.

The 2016 update was supposed to fix the new chemicals program by requiring the EPA to make an affirmative safety finding on new chemicals and restrict use if industry failed to provide sufficient safety data. Nonetheless, the Trump EPA has approved scores of new chemicals in a process that lacks transparency and contravenes the 2016 law.The EPA has also ignored known health concerns, limited its consideration of worker risks and denied requests for public files in the new chemicals program.

The EPA has also exploited loopholes in the new law to quickly approve new chemicals, including toxic PFAS. A recent investigation found that the EPA has been quietly approving new PFAS chemicals, through a provision known as the low volume exemption in the new chemicals program. As a result, the EPA is greenlighting new PFAS chemicals on an expedited basis, without public scrutiny. One PFAS, used in ski wax, was approved despite a finding that the chemical could "waterproof the lungs," resulting in severe health impacts.

Since the law was updated in 2016, the EPA has reviewed more than 3,000 new chemicals submissions. More than 1,000 of these chemicals have been approved through the low volume exemption, and since 2016, manufacturers have begun producing at least 900 new chemicals, many without adequate safety data. Environmental groups have sued the EPA over its failures to protect the public and the environment from risks from new chemicals.

4. Failed to Protect Workers From a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical

Methylene chloride is a highly toxic chemical used in paint strippers that is responsible for more than 60 deaths since 1980. In the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed a ban on "methylene chloride for consumer and most types of commercial paint and coating removal."

After significant pressure from families who lost loved ones due to methylene chloride exposure, the Trump EPA eventually issued a final rule in 2019. However, the EPA narrowed the rule so that it would apply only to consumeruses of methylene chloride, not commercial uses. That means workers are not protected, even though a Center for Public Integrity investigation found that most deaths from methylene chloride take place at work.

A separate EPA evaluation of methylene chloride found that manufacturing, disposal and several other uses of methylene chloride pose no "unreasonable risk." Environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging the rule and the recent evaluation.

5. Cooked the Books on the “Civil Action” Chemical

Trichloroethylene is a chemical solvent made infamous by the book and movie ." The EPA considers it to be a known carcinogen, and it is one of the primary contaminants that sickened scores of veterans who served at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina.

As with methylene chloride, in the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed banning three uses of TCE: spot cleaning, aerosol degreasing and vapor degreasing. In December 2017, the Trump EPA shelved these proposed bans, claiming that it would study those uses in a separate ongoing risk evaluation of TCE.

However, the EPA dramatically rewrote the accepted science on TCE in the draft risk evaluation released in February. As EWG warned in 2018, the solvents industry aggressively lobbied the EPA to ignore a key 2003 study finding that TCE causes heart deformities in developing fetuses. TCE's connection with fetal heart defects was an important basis for the Obama EPA's decision to ban three uses of TCE. An independent review of the EPA's science found that "prenatal exposure to TCE can cause human cardiac defects" and that the study "remains a valid choice" for assessing risk.

The lobbyists succeeded. The EPA's draft risk evaluation questioned the study's design and minimized its significance. An investigation by Reveal News compared the draft risk evaluation with a leaked earlier draft. It found that the earlier draft had relied extensively on the 2003 study and used it as a benchmark for the risk calculations. Reveal also reported that then-EPA chemicals safety chief Nancy Beck – "the scariest Trump appointee you've never heard of" – ordered that the risk evaluation be rewritten to downplay the risks of TCE. With the EPA giving significantly less weight to risks from fetal heart deformities, it's unlikely the agency will finalize the proposed bans.

6. Pressured EPA Scientists to Drop Evaluations of Toxic Chemicals – Including Formaldehyde

The Trump EPA is undermining the work of independent scientists within the Integrated Risk Information System program, known as IRIS. The program's work is supposed to be impartial and non-political. Its scientific assessments are intended to support the work of other EPA program offices and regional offices. IRIS is a frequent target of chemical industry attacks because its independent safety assessments often don't align with industry objectives.

In 2018, the Trump EPA tried to defund the IRIS program. EPA leadership also pressured IRIS to drop critical health assessments. In March 2019, a Government Accountability Office report disclosed that EPA leadership directed agency offices to limit the number of chemicals they wanted IRIS to review, and cut in half the number of IRIS's ongoing or upcoming assessments.

One of the halted assessments was IRIS's decades-long review of formaldehyde, a widely used chemical and known human carcinogen. This is surprising because former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt indicated to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in January 2018 that the report was complete and ready for release. However, answering questions for the record following a 2019 Senate hearing, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said formaldehyde was "not a top priority."

Instead of releasing the IRIS study on formaldehyde to the public, the EPA has instead decided that the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention – under the leadership of Nancy Beck – should conduct its own assessment of formaldehyde. As with TCE, this action will give the agency an opportunity to distort the science and minimize risks. Because these reviews take years, it will also significantly delay any EPA regulatory action on formaldehyde.

7. Rolled Back Clean Water Protections

Industrial chemical pollutants are often discharged into drinking water supplies. But the Trump administration has made it a priority to roll back theClean Water Rule, which more clearly defined which kinds of bodies of water are subject to the Clean Water Act. EWG's analysis found that the Clean Water Rule, if implemented as proposed by the Obama administration, would have protected drinking water sources for more than 117 million Americans.

The EPA's own science advisors have opposed the rollback of the Clean Water Rule, but the Trump administration repealed it in 2019, proposed its own rule in January and finalized it in April. The new rule covers far fewer bodies of water and would leave 234,000 miles of small streams unprotected. EWG estimates that at least 72 million Americans draw at least half their drinking water from small streams.

Because of the repeal, those bodies of water will no longer be subject to pollution limits. Protection for small and seasonal streams and wetlands is important because they often flow into larger bodies of water, including sources of drinking water. Polluted drinking water sources strain municipal water utilities tasked with filtering out contaminants regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and risk exposing the public to more contaminants that aren't regulated under the act.

8. Cooked the Books on Asbestos

Asbestos is a highly toxic, naturally occurring chemical linked to a particularly deadly form of cancer called mesothelioma.An estimated 40,000 Americans die every year from asbestos-related diseases. Although the toxicity of asbestos is well understood, the EPA has never actually banned most uses. The EPA attempted a ban in 1989, but most of the rule was overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991.

After Congress reformed TSCA in 2016, the EPA announced that asbestos would be one of the first 10 chemicals reviewed under the new law. Many hoped that this time, the EPA would finally ban asbestos.

Instead, when the EPA released its draft risk evaluation in May, it found that several uses of asbestos, including import of asbestos and asbestos-containing products and distribution of asbestos-containing products, did not pose an unreasonable risk. The EPA made its risk determinations by ignoring exposure from "legacy" uses of asbestos, such as old insulation and building tiles. Although in November the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the EPA to fix this error, it has yet to do so.

Instead of banning asbestos, in April 2019 the EPA published a rule requiring notice and approval before manufacturers could resume using it in some applications the agency considered abandoned. However, leaked documents show that more than a dozen EPA staffers urged an outright ban on asbestos instead.

9. Proposed a Loophole for Toxic Air Pollution

In July 2019, the Trump EPA proposed to reverse a longstanding policy requiring large power plants, refineries and other industrial polluters to always meet certain strict controls, even after reducing emissions. The new rule creates a loophole in the Clean Air Act regulations that would allow large industrial facilities to reclassify themselves, from "major sources" of air pollution to "area sources."

That change would allow them to opt out of strict pollution control standards, called "maximum achievable control technology," and substantially increase their emissions of dangerous air pollutants. EPA's own data shows that more than 3,900 large facilities that emit pollutants like mercury and :{benzene:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}: could take advantage of this loophole. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates the loophole could increase toxic air emissions by as much as 480 percent, or almost 50 million pounds per year.

This rollback is especially alarming in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. Studies have found that people who live in areas with high levels of air pollution are at greater risk for severe cases of COVID-19.

10. Continuing Its Quest to Censor Science

In 2018, the EPA proposed a disastrous rule significantly limiting the kinds of science the agency can rely on to justify environmental regulations. The rule would have prohibited the agency from using studies that don't make their underlying data publicly available or whose results can't be replicated. That change would prevent the EPA from including in its future risk assessments most human health studies, because personal medical data must remain confidential. The rule would undermine studies that are foundational to clean air regulations.

The proposal sparked enormous opposition from scientists, academics and environmental health advocates. More than 600,000 public comments were submitted to the agency, the vast majority in opposition. In September 2019, the EPA dropped the proposal from its regulatory agenda.

But the Trump EPA is at it again. In March, the agency issued a supplemental proposal that is actually worse than the original proposal. The 2018 proposal applied to all "dose response" studies, but the new proposal applies to all studies. The new proposal also applies retroactively, which means the EPA could use it to gut existing regulations.

As these actions – and dozens of others – show, the Trump EPA has aggressively worked to erode and eliminate vital environmental and public health protections. The public needs an EPA that will prioritize people and planet over polluters and profit.

black lung

NAS 220

Nathan Schactman is a lawyer who has published muchon evidence. Product liability lawsuits can range from bogus to strongly merited and either may have good or bad lawyers. He may or may not be a “product defense lawyer” (akin to Louis Anthony Cox) defending companies against legitimate complaints.

David Michaels in Triumph of Doubt(2020) (review) devotes a whole chapter, p.117-140 to “Deadly Dust (silica).” Hence, it is somewhat worrying to see this in Schactman's blog:

“Contesting An Erroneous Diagnosis of Silicosis,” for Harris Martin Seminars, in New Orleans, Louisiana (March 26, 2004) “Should an ILO 1/0 Be Compensated in Silica Litigation,” for Harris Martin Seminars, in New York, New York (January 29, 2003)

“State-of-the-Art Defense in Silica Litigation,” Chair and presenter at Mealey’s Silica Litigation Conference, in Atlanta, Georgia (October 13 and 14, 2003)

“Silicosis Litigation,” to Merrill-Lynch Institutional Investors, in Philadelphia, PA (October 7, 2003)

“Stop Silicosis Litigation – Now,” at Industrial Minerals Association – North America’s Semiannual Meeting, in Washington, D.C. (September 25, 2003)”

Also concerning are articles like The Trials and Tribulations of Two Historians: Adjudicating Responsibility for Pollution and Personal Harm (2009), by Columbia's David Rosner and CUNY's Gerald Markowitz, who wrote Deadly Dust(1991):

“For most of the 1990s the attempts to undermine our work were done in depositions, generally private meetings where we could defend our reputations by presenting the documents we had uncovered. While the depositions were trying, in fact we had the materials available and often provided thousands of pages to defence attorneys. But that began to change shortly after the turn of the new century. The first shot across the bow occurred at a meeting of lawyers sponsored by LexisNexis in Washington at which Nathan Schachtman, an attorney with McCarter & English in Philadelphia, gave a lengthy address attacking us and our book. In Mealey's Litigation Report: Silica, published in 2003, he castigated us for writing a “jeremiad” that “resonates to the passions and prejudices of the last century”. He took us to task for our “prejudice” that “silicosis results from the valuation of profits over people and for not pointing out that in Communist countries silicosis rates were much higher. “They fairly consistently excuse or justify the actions of labor … They excoriate the motives and actions of industry …”. Later on the same page, Schachtman argued that our “thesis ignores the practical … problem of motivating or mandating workers to take appropriate measures to protect themselves”.17 Schachtman saw no problem with accusing us of sloppy scholarship, arguing that we are little more than propagandists, all in the first page of his piece. … (much more).” [emphasis added]

This seems akin to Wood's style of attack....

wheeler toxic trifecta:

Suppressed an Inconvenient Formaldehyde Report

Last August, Wheeler disingenuously told a Senate committee that the EPA was holding up the release of a report on the risk of cancer from formaldehyde to confirm its veracity. “I am sure we will release it,” he said, “but I need to make sure that the science in the report is still accurate.” In fact, the report—which concluded that formaldehyde can cause leukemia and nose and throat cancer—was completed by EPA scientists a year before Wheeler testified, according to a Senate investigation, and their conclusion was hardly a surprise. Both the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program have already classified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen.

The EPA’s review process normally takes 60 to 90 days. The formaldehyde report has been in limbo for at least a year and a half, a blatant giveaway to the American Chemistry Council, the U.S. chemical industry’s premier trade association, which has blocked tighter restrictions on formaldehyde for decades.

Ignored EPA Scientists’ Advice to Ban Asbestos

Instead of heeding the advice of agency scientists and lawyers to follow the example of 55 other countries and ban asbestos completely, the EPA announced in April that it would tighten restrictions on asbestos—not ban it—despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its dangers. Manufacturers will be able to continue to use the substance if they obtain EPA approval Asbestos has not been produced in the United States since 2002, but is still imported for use in a wide range of commercial and consumer products, including auto brake components, roofing, vinyl floor tile, fire-resistant clothing, and cement pipes, sheets and shingles. One of the deadliest known carcinogens, asbestos kills nearly 40,000Americans annually, mainly from lung cancer.

Weakened the Mercury Emissions Rule

In late December, the EPA proposed to significantly weaken a rule restricting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by recalculating its costs and benefits. The Obama EPA, which issued the rule in 2011, estimated it would cost utilities $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually to install pollution controls and lead to $37 billion to $90 billionin health benefits by reducing not only mercury, a potent neurotoxin, but also sulfur dioxide and soot, thus preventing 130,000 asthma attacks, 4,700 heart attacks, and as many as 11,000 premature deaths. The Wheeler EPA ignored the “co-benefits” of limiting sulfur dioxide and soot, and flagrantly lowballed the health benefits of curbing mercury alone at only $4 million to $6 million annually.

Most utilities have already complied with the mercury rule at a fraction of the estimated cost, but health advocates fear that this new, industry-friendly accounting method, which makes it appear that the cost to polluters far outweigh the rule’s benefits, will set a precedent for the EPA to sabotage an array of other public health protections.

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-asbestos-ban-2636681458.html

Trump EPA Ignored Its Own Scientists' Calls to Ban Asbestos, 'Bombshell' Report Shows

Common Dreams May. 09, 2019 08:49AM EST HEALTH + WELLNESS

Bronwyn8 / iStock / Getty Images Plus

By Jessica Corbett

In a report that elicited calls for congressional action, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that "senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency disregarded the advice of their own scientists and lawyers in April when the agency issued a rule that restricted but did not ban asbestos."

Asbestos is a group of fibrous, heat-resistant minerals used in manufactured goods, particularly building materials. According to the World Health Organization, "All types of asbestos cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs)."

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement last month that the agency's new rule "gives us unprecedented authorities to protect public health" and block certain products from the market. However, environmental and public health advocates raised concerns at the time about loopholes that remain, with one critic calling the regulation "toothless."

Criticism of the rule resurfaced Wednesday when the Times reported on a pair of internal EPA memos from last August, in which more than a dozen agency experts wrote:

Rather than allow for (even with restrictions) any new uses for asbestos, EPA should seek to ban all new uses of asbestos because the extreme harm from this chemical substance outweighs any benefit — and because there are adequate alternatives to asbestos.

Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), was among those who demanded action from federal lawmakers following the "bombshell" report.

"The sheer number of lives cut short and families destroyed from asbestos exposure demand nothing less than an outright ban," Benesh said in a statement. "I can't think of an easier vote for members of Congress to cast than for a bill that bans a substance responsible for the deaths of so many."

The reporting came as a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing Wednesday morning to consider legislation that would amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) "to prohibit the manufacture, processing, and distribution in commerce of asbestos and asbestos-containing mixtures and articles."

"If Administrator Wheeler and the Trump administration won't act," said Benesh, "then Congress must by passing this critical piece of legislation that finally bans asbestos."

Sharing a link to the Times article on Twitter, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), the committee's chairman, said, "This is exactly why we need to ban asbestos and why my committee is holding a hearing today on legislation that would fully ban this toxic material."

Rep. Frank Pallone

This is exactly why we need to ban asbestos and why my Committee is holding a hearing today on legislation that would fully ban this toxic material. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/climate/epa-asbestos-rule-scientists.html …

6:42 AM - May 8, 2019

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Debris contaminated with asbestos was removed from a burned home in Coffey Park, Calif., in 2017.

E.P.A. Leaders Disregarded Agency’s Experts in Issuing Asbestos Rule, Memos Show

The rule, issued in April, restricted the use of asbestos, a known carcinogen, but agency scientists and lawyers had called in two memos for a ban.

nytimes.com

15 people are talking about this

During the committee hearing, Pallone noted that it has been 40 years since the EPA started its work to ban asbestos under the TSCA, 30 years since the agency finalized its ban, and 28 years since the ban was struck down in court — and yet, "asbestos is still being imported into the United States, it is still being used in this country, and it is still killing about 40,000 Americans every year."

"Twenty-eight years of frustration, of sickness, and loss," he said. "We have known the dangers of asbestos for decades. Enough is enough."

The hearing centered on H.R. 1603 — also known as the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2019. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), the bill's sponsor, took to Twitter Wednesday to highlight a testimony from the widow of the legislation's namesake.

After Alan Reinstein was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2003, Linda Reinstein and Doug Larkin co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO). Alan Reinstein and Larkin both died in the years that followed, but Linda Reinstein remains ADAO's president and CEO.

Suzanne Bonamici

@RepBonamici

May 8, 2019

Replying to @RepBonamici

Today @EnergyCommerce took a meaningful step to reduce the threat of asbestos by holding a hearing on the Alan Reinstein #BanAsbestosNow Act, which is legislation I introduced to finally ban the import and manufacture of this deadly fiber.

Suzanne Bonamici

@RepBonamici

Chairman @FrankPallone was right when he said at the beginning of today's hearing that “enough is enough… We don’t have time for more legal maneuvering in a drawn-out court battle while tens of thousands of people are dying.” We must #BanAsbestosNow.

9:21 AM - May 8, 2019

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See Suzanne Bonamici's other Tweets

"I'm honored to have H.R. 1603 named after my husband," Linda Reinstein told lawmakers Wednesday, "but it's really for the hundreds of thousands of Alans who have paid a price for this man-made disaster with their lives."

Linda Reinstein

@Linda_ADAO

Great article by @EcoWatch: Why #Asbestos Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S. by @orosane. @EPA @EPAAWheeler, Stop Imports and Use. Asbestos Kills. http://bit.ly/2L9VryN

3:26 PM - Aug 21, 2018

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Why Asbestos Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S.

The health effects of asbestos exposure were documented over a century ago.

ecowatch.com

See Linda Reinstein's other Tweets

Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.

Why asbestos litigation won’t go away: Because asbestos won’t go away

Jeb Barnes, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Asbestos litigation is the number one source of tort claims in the US, with many people decrying the filing of so many claims. But there's a reason the claims persist. Asbestos isn't going anywhere.

Why asbestos litigation won’t go away: Because asbestos won’t go away

Jeb Barnes, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Asbestos litigation is the number one source of tort claims in the US, with many people decrying the filing of so many claims. But there's a reason the claims persist. Asbestos isn't going anywhere.

It is tempting to dismiss asbestos as a problem of the past. The height of its consumptionwas in the 1970s, and asbestos litigation began over a half century ago. Many of its leading manufacturers and mining companies are long gone.

Yet asbestos litigation is back in the news.

A trial court ordered Johnson & Johnson in July, 2018, to pay US$4.69 billion for failing to warn customers that its baby powder contained asbestos, which naturally occurs in talc. The company now faces thousands of these suits, and its stock took a nosedive in December 2018 on a report that it knew its talc was contaminated. The company plans to appeal and continue to fight these cases, but, even if it eventually wins, their emergence raises the question: Why does asbestos litigation persist?

I have studied asbestos for decades and written books about its dangers and public policy around it. The issues surrounding asbestos or the material itself will not go away.

Stronger than steel, and potentially lethal

Workers remove asbestos-containing roofing material. Asbestos is used in many industries because of its strength and physical properties. Andre Quinou/Shutterstock.com

One reason for the persistence of the problem is that tons of asbestos remain in our communities, a legacy from when asbestos was prized for its remarkable commercial properties. It is a fiber made of rock that is stronger than steel, yet flexible enough to be woven into cloth. It is waterproof, corrosion proof and fireproof, as well as abundant and easy to mine.

Manufacturers found ways to add asbestos to everything from hair driers to battleships, roof shingles to children’s modeling clay, car parts to missile silos. Asbestos is still used legally in the U. S. for some purposes, despite efforts to ban it completely, like many other countries,including those in the European Union, Australia and dozens more.

Scientists now know that exposure to asbestos’ fibers can be lethal, causing a number of fatal diseases including mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer of the lining of organs, and asbestosis, a progressive scarring of the lungs. Asbestos exposure can also cause pleural plaques, fibrous thickenings of the membrane around the lung. This condition is asymptomatic and may not develop into serious diseases. But those who have been exposed face years of uncertainty because many of the worst asbestos-related diseases can take decades to appear.

And, yesterday’s asbestos can be today’s health hazard. Because it is a mineral, asbestos does not evaporate, and its dangers do not diminish over time. If anything, some asbestos products can become more dangerous as they become brittle and likely to release fibers into the environment.

Asbestos fibers can also be released when disturbed, a fact tragically illustrated by the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks when the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released a cloud of dust containing asbestos.

Finally, asbestos is part of the landscape of some communities, and epidemiologists have found higher rates of asbestos-related cancers in areas that are known to have deposits of asbestos-containing rock.

Accordingly, even if the U.S. followed the lead of other countries and prohibited its use, health risks from asbestos would continue. Consistent with this assessment, the World Health Organization reported that asbestos-related deaths have persisted worldwide, including in countries that banned it in the early 1990s.

Lawsuits, a result of politics?

A final reason for continued litigation is political. Asbestos is a global problem, but the American response has been distinct. Whereas other countries have addressed asbestos injuries through centralized benefit programs that pool costs and risks, the U.S. has relied much more heavily on litigation.

Consider the Netherlands. During the 1970s and 1980s, Dutch workers suffered five to 10 times the incidence of asbestos-related diseases compared to American workers. Dutch law allows workers to sue their employers for workplace injuries, yet there were only 10 asbestos-related lawsuits in the Netherlands in the 1990s. During the same period, one in three of all civil cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas were asbestos-related.

Dutch workers did not file lawsuits because they did not need to. They enjoyed much more comprehensive health and unemployment benefits, which were deducted from any recovery in the courts.

American workers also did not sue at first. Instead, they sought relief from state workers’ compensation programs. But these programs were designed to compensate workers for traumatic injuries, like broken arms and legs, and not slowly manifesting occupational diseases, like mesothelioma and asbestosis. As a result, these programs offered very limited relief.

With no relief, lawyers moved in

Roofing material that shows small asbestos fibers. When these indestructible fibers enter the lung, they can cause serious disease.tunatura/Shutterstock.com

Entrepreneurial lawyers stepped into the breach. Aided by favorable rulings and the discovery of decades of corporate efforts to conceal the risks of their products, asbestos litigation took hold and ramped up. By the early 2000s, an estimated 730,000 claims had been filed targeting over 8,400 companies in 75 of 83 categories of economic activity within the U.S. economy. Building on their early successes, lawyers created an extensive infrastructure to support these claims, giving rise to a cottage industry complete with extensive marketing campaigns and sophisticated strategies for finding new claims. The final price tag has been estimated at over $325 billion in today’s dollars.

Initially, this litigation illustrated the heroic side of the American legal system: its flexibility, innovativeness and ability to take on powerful interests. Over time, however, serious concerns emerged from lawyers, policy experts and judges about its costs and fairness. Numerous studies demonstrated that administrative costs of asbestos litigation gobble up over half of all compensation paid. These costs might be tolerable if asbestos litigation has delivered consistent and timely compensation to victims, but payments have been erratic and slow.

Meanwhile, claims now are often herded into massive settlements or bankruptcy compensation trusts, where compensation varies and claimants are offered little, if any, individual due process. Even worse, asbestos litigation has reportedly become plagued by questionable practices and accusations of fraudulent practices that displace consideration of those suffering the most and unfairly burden the courts and businesses.

Given these problems, judges, interest groups and members of both political parties have repeatedly begged Congress to create a national asbestos injury compensation fund along the lines of other economically advanced democracies. These efforts have all failed at the federal level for a variety of complex political reasons, which have thwarted compromises over who pays, how much and to whom.

As a result, the erratic beat of asbestos litigation will continue, as the problem of asbestos will not go away on its own. People without adequate health insurance and social benefits will continue to suffer, and lawyers will continue to find ways to bring claims. Just ask Johnson & Johnson.

CMD: June, we exposed how ALEC's deadly asbestos bills, which make it harder for terminally ill victims to hold companies accountable, benefit Koch Industries and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, which have asbestos-related liability.

EPA Is Failing to Protect School Children From Asbestos, Internal Watchdog Agency Says

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) isn't doing enough to protect the 50 million school children and seven million teachers and staff who spend time in U.S. private and public schools from asbestos exposure.

That's the conclusion of a report released Monday by the EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG), the agency's internal watchdog.

Keep reading...

no lnx map

Report: 140 House Members Vote Against Chemical Safeguards Every Time

The Environmental Working Group Action Fund, the political arm of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), released a first-ever report that scores how each member of the U.S. House of Representatives voted on chemical policy and safety.

The scorecard shows that 140 House members voted against chemical safeguards every time, while 149 members consistently voted for chemical safety protections.

"While no president has ever done as much to weaken safeguards for toxic chemicals as Donald Trump, too many members of Congress have collaborated with the Trump administration or cast votes in favor of policies that reversed or delayed chemical bans, gutted chemical safety rules, rejected sound science, weakened worker and consumer protections, and denied justice to asbestos victims," the report said.

The report specifically focused on 17 bills and amendments that were up for a vote during the 115th and 114th Congresses.

The EWG Action Fund also singled out several lawmakers, including Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.), Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), who the action fund says introduced or co-sponsored measures that weaken existing chemical safety laws.

"Over and over, too many legislators voted to support President Trump's agenda to eliminate toxic chemical safeguards," said Scott Faber, speaking on behalf of EWG Action Fund, in a statement received by EcoWatch.

"Too many members of Congress have collaborated with the Trump administration to advance policies that reject sound science and weaken worker and consumer protections," Faber added. "And many more stood by silently when Trump's EPA reversed or delayed chemical bans or gutted chemical safety rules."

Most Republican members of Congress were graded poorly in the report. However, the action fundpraisedthe lawmakers that bucked their party to vote for chemical safety, including Reps. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and others who voted to protect asbestosvictims.

The action fund also noted that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) voted for funding chemical reviews and against a farm bill that included pesticide safety loopholes. Florida Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted against efforts to weaken agency science, and Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis voted against toxic air pollution loopholes.

Why Asbestos Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S.

Reports surfaced this month that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had proposed a significant new use rule (SNUR) for asbestos in June, requiring anyone who wanted to start or resume importing or manufacturing the carcinogenic mineral to first receive EPA approval.

...

Career EPA Staff Objected to Trump Administration's Asbestos Plan

Attorneys and scientists with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) objected to the Trumpadministration's proposal of a "significant new use rule" (SNUR) for asbestos, according to internal agency emails obtained by the The New York Times.

Trump's former EPA boss Scott Pruitt quietly announced the proposal in June, framing the plan as an "important, unprecedented action on asbestos," a toxic construction material and known carcinogen that kills almost 15,000 U.S. citizens annually.

fun: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-slow-demise-of-asbestos-the-carcinogen-that-gave-the-wizard-of-oz-snow

http://www.ewg.org/research/asbestos-think-again/industry-hid-dangers-decades

MARCH 4, 2004

ASBESTOS: THINK AGAIN: INDUSTRY HID DANGERS FOR DECADES

SOMETHING IN THE AIR: The asbestos document story

[Excerpt | Full document]

1988 http://static.ewg.org/reports/asbestos/documents/pdf/Austern_Full.pdf?_ga=1.154647288.1350779693.1470690522

Nothing proves the culpability of the asbestos manufacturers in the death and injury of asbestos workers quite like internal documents from the companies themselves. These papers, just a handful of which we present here, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the companies and their insurers knew the hazards of asbestos and concealed this information from workers for decades. More than any other piece of evidence, it is the companies' own internal papers that have convinced juries of citizens across the country that workers and their families deserve compensation to help them manage the severe and often fatal health consequences of working with asbestos.

Document Gallery

Browse a selection of asbestos industry documents dating from 1948 through 1988.

The current push by defendant industries to establish a national asbestos victims trust fund is driven in large part by the fact that courts consistently find asbestos companies guilty, not just of exposing their workers to a substance — asbestos — that could kill or severely injure them, but of doing this with full knowledge of the fatal consequences of their actions, and of actively concealing this truth from these same workers.

The 1966 comments of the Director of Purchasing for Bendix Corporation, now a part of Honeywell, capture the complete disregard of an industry for its workforce that is expressed over and over again in company documents spanning the past 60 years.

"...if you have enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products, why not die from it."

— 1966 Bendix Corporation letter [view document]

SWEEPING CULPABILITY

Proponents of asbestos tort reform argue that companies that "had nothing to do with" asbestos manufacturing are being dragged into court unfairly. The documents presented here, while just a smattering, illuminate the dimensions of what was clearly, and remains today, a sweeping deception of American workers across entire sectors of the economy.

It took more than just Johns Manville and W.R. Grace lying to their workers to produce the ten thousand Americans currently dying each year of asbestos diseases. It took similar behavior at Exxon, Dow (Union Carbide), DuPont, Bendix (now Honeywell), The Travelers, Metropolitan Life, Dresser Industries (now Halliburton), National Gypsum, Owens-Corning, General Electric, Ford, and General Motors, just to name a few.The list is a roll call of major American corporations. What they did to their workers, the public, and their communities, we can only hope will never be repeated.

EARLY KNOWLEDGE THAT ASBESTOS WAS DEADLY

Asbestos diseases have been known and documented for over 100 years. During anautopsy in 1900, Dr. H. Montague Murray, a physician in London's Charring Cross Hospital, discovered asbestos fibers in the lungs of a thirty-three-year old man who had worked fourteen years in an asbestos textile factory and died of severe pulmonary fibrosis, which the doctor linked to his occupation (Brodeur, pg. 11).

UPDATE

W.R. Grace Company Indicted on Federal Criminal Charges

In 1924, the first clear case of death due to asbestosis was published in the British Medical Journal. Dr. W.E. Cooke, an English physician who gave the disease its name, reported the results of an autopsy on a thirty-three-year old woman who had worked in an asbestos textile factory for thirteen years. The publication led to years of intensive study of asbestosis in Britain, during which hundreds of asbestos-textile workers were examined. Doctors and scientists found that a quarter of the workers developed pulmonary fibrosis, the condition which Cooke dubbed asbestosis (Brodeur 1985, pg. 13).

In the United States, in 1917, Dr. Henry K. Pancoast, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, observed lung scarring in the X-rays of fifteen asbestos-factory workers. In 1918, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report by an insurance statistician noting the unusually early deaths of asbestos workers and revealing that it had become common practice for insurers to deny coverage for workers because of the "assumed health-injurious conditions" in the asbestos industry (Hoffman 1918). In 1927, the first workmen's compensation disability claim for asbestosis was upheld by the Massachusetts Industrial Accident Board; and in 1930 the first U.S. case of asbestosis was reported in the journal Minnesota Medicine (Brodeur, pg. 14).

By the 1930s, asbestos manufacturers and their insurance companies knew that asbestos was killing workers at alarming rates. In 1934, Aetna insurance company published the Attorney's Textbook of Medicine, which devoted a full chapter to asbestos exposure, noting that asbestosis was "incurable and usually results in total permanent disability followed by death." (Bowker, pg. 18)

In October 1935, the Eastern Underwriter reported on the "alarming increase of asbestos cases" in the United States (Bowker, pg. 18). Beginning in 1931 and throughout the 1930s, the asbestos industry commissioned research to determine the toxicity of various fibrous silicates such as talc and tremolite when inhaled (Michelbacher 1942, pg. 490).

So severe were the hazards of asbestos that by the eve of World War II, asbestos manufacturing was in decline. The war, however, reversed the fortunes of the asbestos industry and launched an era of massive use of asbestos in ships that led to an explosion of asbestos products for the next three decades.

The resulting atrocity has been described and documented in detail by Paul Brodeur, in Outrageous Misconduct; Barry Castleman, in Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects; and more recently by Michael Bowker, in Fatal Deception, and Andrew Schneider, in An Air That Kills, with a particular focus on the W.R. Grace asbestos mine in Libby, Montana.

"SO MANY EMBARRASSING DOCUMENTS"

We present here a small selection of insurance and manufacturing company documents made public through litigation. These papers reveal a brazen disregard for the men and women who, by the 1960s, were dying by the thousands each year for these businesses, a history of abuse and deception that is unparalleled in American industrial history. In large measure, it is the written words of these company executives that have convinced juries across America that workers and their families deserve full compensation for their suffering.

Both insurers and manufacturers understand the power of these documents. As litigation by asbestos workers began to heat up in the 1980s, industry officials recognized the potential significance of the documents being extracted from the companies by the courts. A 1988 memo written by an asbestos litigation fund trustee lamented that: "there are so many embarrassing documents that people disagree as to which group of any ten documents is the worst." [Excerpt | Full document]

As the author notes, more documents were certain to become public during litigation, and the outlook for the companies was bleak:

"The documents noted above, however, show corporate knowledge of the dangers associated with exposure to asbestos dating back to 1934. In addition, the plaintiffs' bar will probably take the position — not unreasonably — that the documents are evidence of a corporate conspiracy to prevent asbestos workers from learning that their exposure to asbestos could kill them. (One employee of Manville, who co-authored a 30-year-old document which is among the group of documents described above, was told by Manville's Chief of Litigation to hire his own lawyer after the document came to light because it was the opinion of the Chief of Litigation that the employee could be indicted for manslaughter.)"

— Memo from a trustee of the Manville Trust, 1988

[Excerpt | Full document]

INDUSTRY-WIDE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HAZARDS

During the 1950s and 60s, companies were fully aware of the potentially fatal consequences of working with asbestos, including its ability to cause cancer, yet millions of workers were exposed to asbestos on the job with virtually no health protections.

As early as WWII, ASARCO knew that asbestos permanently damaged the lungs leading to a progressive disease called asbestosis, which is sometimes fatal. "We knew very well then that inhalation of excessive asbestos dust over a period of time could cause asbestosis." [View document]

In a 1949 document, Exxon admitted that asbestos causes lung cancer, silicosis, fibrosis and erythema. This relatively early admission that asbestos causes lung cancer foretold literally hundreds of thousands of deaths from asbestos in subsequent decades, mortality that continues today in the United States at a rate of at least 5,000 deaths per year. In line with the policies of all asbestos users and manufacturers, this information was under the banner: "COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL: Not For Publication In Present Form." [View document]

National Gypsum was quite explicit about asbestos risks. In a 1958 memo, the company states:

"We know that you will never lose sight of the fact that perhaps the greatest hazard in your plant is with men handling asbestos. Because just as certain as death and taxes is the fact that if you inhale asbestos dust you get asbestosis."

— 1958 National Gypsum Memo [View document]

But perhaps the most authoritative account of the dangers of asbestos can be found in a blistering 1964 report from a medical doctor hired by Philip Carey Manufacturing, in which the doctor describes in no uncertain terms to the company's legal department the health hazards of asbestos to the company's workers and customers. (The doctor was fired soon after the company received his report.)

"There is an irrefutable association between asbestos and cancer. This association has been established for cancer of the lung and for mesothelioma. There is suggestive evidence... for cancer of the stomach, colon and rectum also. There is substantial evidence that cancer and mesothelioma have developed in environmentally exposed groups, i.e., due to air pollution for groups living near asbestos plants and mines. Evidence has been established for cancer developing among members of the household. Mesotheliomas have developed among wives, laundering the work clothes of asbestos workers. Substantial evidence has been presented that slight and intermittent exposures may be sufficient to produce lung cancer and mesothelioma. There should be no delusion that the problem will disappear or that the consumer or working population will not become aware of the problem and the compensation and legal liability involved." (Bowker, pg. 171)

INSURANCE COMPANIES TRY TO DODGE A BULLET

By the 1970s, the insurance industry was deeply concerned about its financial vulnerability to asbestos claims. In 1980, the American Insurance Association predicted that there would be between 8,000 and 13,000 claims a year from asbestos-caused cancer from 1977 through 1995 [View document]. This estimate did not include anything but pure occupational exposure to asbestos, even though asbestos was used in several thousand consumer and industrial products at that time, and exposure to the general public was not only staggering in size, but also essentially uncontrolled.

"Control of asbestos in the community air is impossible when you consider the contribution from brake linings, abrasion of piping, house siding or other materials widely handled by the general public."

— 1969 The Travelers Insurance Co. memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

Companies facing legal action were growing concerned about the implications of their extensive asbestos releases into the environment. The potential liability represented by environmental pollution with asbestos and the release of asbestos fibers in the home became a subject of grave financial concern within the industry.

"Asbestosis, lung or colon cancer claims whether comp or liability, from asbestos workers or those working with asbestos materials, are one thing, but the general public exposure and claim potential is much more serious."

— 1969 The Travelers Insurance Co. memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

Even worse, reductions of these exposures seemed futile:

"If indeed there is at least a causal relationship of asbestos to the cited diseases, which there appears there is, then a most serious loss potential to the Travelers exists. Even with the engineering controls we have available, the exposure will continue and the long development period of the disease suggests past exposures will continue to haunt us.

— 1969 The Travelers Insurance Co. memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

In 1968, The Travelers Insurance Company concluded that they faced major financial exposure from deaths due to non-occupational asbestos exposure near asbestos manufacturing facilities. In particular, the company concluded that it had "no chance of winning" a case brought by a resident living near the Johns Manville plant in New Jersey, who died of mesothelioma in June 1967. This certainty of defeat was no doubt solidified when a Manville attorney informed the Travelers that:

"Confidentially Johns-Manville has been contaminating the 'Hell' out of both the air and the water for quite some time."

— 1969 The Travelers Insurance Co. memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

A 1975 insurance industry memo summarized non-workplace exposure as a major risk facing the industry. Forty percent of housewives and 50 percent of blue-collar workers had identifiable asbestos fibers in their lungs at death. The author concluded that, "It is now found (that) the public in general is or has been exposed to asbestos products to a far greater degree than previously recognized." [Source: Insurance industry memo 10/09/75]

At the same time, the hazards of asbestos to family members were well known, and nothing was being done about it. Workers were taking home huge amounts of asbestos dust on their clothes, contaminating their homes and exposing their wives who regularly, and unsuspectingly, handled and washed the dust-laden garments.

A 1974 memo from Exxon declares:

"Not only are we violating the existing regulations concerning clothing by not providing such clothing and laundering it, but we are also failing to protect our employees and the families of our employees from asbestos exposure."

— 1974 Exxon memo [View document]

On June 18, 1975, The Travelers Insurance Company's Catastrophe Products Committee laid out "facts" well known to the asbestos industry and its insurers at the time:

"1) Asbestos causes cancer. Once asbestos fibers are ingested by a person, in no matter how small a quantity, they remain in the body and can be the cause of cancer 10 or 20 years later. There is no known way of removing the fibers from the body.

2) Asbestos is used in a wide variety of products: insulation, roofing, chemicals, wallboard, piping, etc."

— 1975 The Travelers Insurance Co. memo [View document]

Asbestos was clearly a potential catastrophe in the making for the industry. An Insurance Company of North America (INA) memo from the time predicts at least $20 billion dollars in payouts for asbestos-caused cancers alone. This figure assumes just $10,000 per case, a relatively low figure for asbestos cancers, which are almost always fatal. It does not include any deaths from non-occupational exposure.

"The attached article is an estimate of the possible numbers (plaintiffs) of Asbestos workers who will die from cancer in the next half century.

This figure does not take into consideration "other" possible cancer victims of Asbestosis such as wives of workers, persons living near asbestos factories, school children, etc."

"400,000 potential plaintiffs could generate 2,000,000 files (5 INA insureds per plaintiff).

INA's possible exposure: 2,000,000 x $10,000.00 = 20 Billion dollars"

— Undated INA memo [View document]

The goal of The Travelers' "Catastrophe Products Committee" was to study the potential for asbestos to wipe out the company's assets, and then, in the company's own words, "make the catastrophe reducible to a level which would not imperil the assets of The Travelers." [View document]

The question was how to do it. The decision, on the part of insurers, was to adopt the same strategy as producers: deny prior knowledge and admit no liability.

In 1977, the insurance industry's "discussion group on asbestosis" unanimously decided not to admit liability in asbestosis cases. The strategies considered by the insurance companies are also laid out in the minutes of the meeting, including the "possible use of governmental immunity as a defense" in an effort to place the blame on the government for not warning workers of the dangers of working with asbestos.

"The meeting closed with a unanimous rejection of a suggestion that liability in asbestosis cases be admitted..."

— 1977 "discussion group on asbestosis" memo [View document]

THE COVER UP

"KEEP THIS INFORMATION MOST CONFIDENTIAL"

By the late 1940s, asbestos manufacturers, industries that used significant amounts of asbestos in their operations, and their insurance companies all acknowledged internally that asbestos caused lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma. Rather than adopt safety standards, switch to safer products, or provide protections for workers, these companies went to extraordinary lengths to conceal the truth about asbestos from workers, the public and the press. In some cases company officials went so far as to monitor the health of workers while deliberately withholding the results of this monitoring from them. Typically, however, worker health was not actively monitored, but decisive information on the dangers of asbestos was held secret. In other cases, companies interfered with and even rewrote scientific study results, restricted key information on asbestos hazards to management while keeping it from workers, and deliberately failed to label, or altered labels on, products.

A 1949 Exxon document described above illustrates the point. The document lists the diseases from asbestos exposure as "Silicosis, Fiberosis, Erythema & Cancer of Lungs" under the banner "COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL: Not For Publication In Present Form." [View document]

Asbestos diseases are latent, taking decades to appear after initial exposure. This latency period allowed companies to use workers for decades, knowing they were being injured or perhaps even killed by their work, yet also knowing that the men and women on the job would have no early warning that they might die from the asbestos they were exposed to.

For companies like Exxon, DuPont, and Dow that were sufficiently removed from basic asbestos manufacturing, withholding this information was relatively simple — workers would not ordinarily think of asbestos risks — and concealing information was a very effective way to reduce compensation payouts.

As put in a memo from Johns-Manville's medical director to corporate headquarters:

"The fibrosis of this disease is irreversible and permanent so that eventually compensation will be paid to each of these men. But, as long as the man is not disabled it is felt that he should not be told of his condition so that he can live and work in peace and the company can benefit by his many years of experience." (Brodeur, pg. 102)

By the early 1960s, the hazards of asbestos were well known within the management level of most companies that dealt with it. Workers and customers, in contrast, were generally kept in the dark or even lied to. A significant part of the asbestos industry, represented by the member companies of the Asbestos Textile Institute, described their management-only information strategy this way:

"...this subject should not be brought to the attention of other than management of our several companies, as any general discussion on this situation by sales personnel with users of our products, could possibly aggravate the situation and result in individual opinions which could be damaging."

[Source: Asbestos Textile Institute memo 11/6/64]

EVEN WORK HISTORIES ON DECEASED EMPLOYEES WERE DEEMED TOP SECRET

In 1966, DuPonthoped a company doctor examining an "expired" worker's history of asbestos exposure would keep a lid on the information he was asked to produce for the company:

"We have on record that [blacked out name] a 36 year old employee of your plant expired sometime in 1964 from mesothelioma of the pleura.

Please do a careful investigation and let me know if this individual was ever exposed to asbestos in our employ, how long he was, in what type of work, or any other information that may be available. If at all possible, try to ascertain whether there is any information that this individual worked as a roofer, pipe coverer or any other type of asbestos exposure prior to joining Du Pont. This inquiry is for our own edification only, as no one outside of the Company has raised the question.

We are hopeful you will keep this information most confidential, and let me have your reply as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation."

— 1966 DuPont internal memo [View document]

Keeping employees in the dark meant leaving no stone unturned, even if it meant putting pressure on outside physicians. In November, 1980, DuPont sent a letter to a doctor asking him to remove the word asbestos from a rubber stamp used to mark X-rays which show changes in lung tissue, perhaps due to asbestos exposures. DuPont requested that the language of the stamp, which read "could be due to previous exposure to asbestos or other irritant materials" be changed to "could be due to previous exposure to irritant materials."[View document]

For at least 50 years, from the 1930s through the 1980s the unswerving goal of asbestos users and makers was to keep from workers the undisputed fact that asbestos was a major threat to their health. An internal memo from a W.R. Grace executive summed up the strategy quite clearly:

"The point I am trying to get across is that our present policy is to tell no one anything, no visitors, or discussion of our operations, period."

— 1972 W.R. Grace internal memo [View document]

MANIPULATING SCIENCE

Objective science was a big problem for the industry because it repeatedly showed how extraordinarily dangerous asbestos really was. In response, the industry manipulated results and eviscerated papers in largely successful efforts to bury or obscure results that might damage the bottom line. Some companies simply stopped conducting studies at all, knowing what the results would be and fearing that the public might find out.

A 1948 memo from a New York University professor of industrial medicine, himself a former Metropolitan Life Insurance Company employee, revealed that a report summarizing studies conducted by NYU College of Medicine scientists was revised prior to publication at the request of Metropolitan Life Insurance and other asbestos insurance companies in order to omit references to cancer:

"A meeting of the representatives of the underwriting companies was held in New York... It was the feeling of this group that all references to cancer or tumors should be omitted... It was decided that after these revisions have been concluded the report of these experimental studies should be published as promptly as possible, preferably in the Journal of Industrial Hygiene. Any report on human asbestosis should be separate and not a part of this report."

— 1948 NYU College of Medicine memo [View document]

In November 1948, a year after receiving promising results that their Kaylo asbestos product hadn't produced negative health effects in experiments on lab animals, Owens-Corning received a discouraging letter from the lab that had performed the tests. The lab's initial clean bill-of-health finding was premature, and in fact the animals had developed asbestosis as more time elapsed. In conclusion the lab wrote to the company:

"I realize that our findings regarding Kaylo are less favorable than anticipated. However, since Kaylo is capable of producing asbestosis, it is better to discover it now in animals rather than later in industrial workers. Thus the company, being forewarned, will be in a better position to institute adequate control measures for safe-guarding exposed employees and protecting its own interests."

— 1948 Owens-Corning memo [View document]

Yet, decades later in 1970, intra-company correspondence shows that Owens-Corning was still reluctant to properly label the product to indicate health hazards from asbestos:

"...regarding the warning label that should appear on Kaylo. Are you saying that we have to do this now? I naturally would like to delay this requirement as long as possible."

— 1970 Owens-Corning memo [View document]

A March 30, 1977 memo from a W.R. Grace health and safety official advised against conducting further study of asbestos-diseased workers out of concern that the information would become public:

"I believe that the results of a study of this nature would become public knowledge within a relatively short period of time regardless of confidentiality agreements. If we are not prepared to deal with that situation, I would advise against proceeding."

— 1977 W.R. Grace memo [View document]

KEEPING INFORMATION FROM CONSUMERS

Companies with significant asbestos sales used extreme measures to keep their customers in the dark about the risks of using asbestos products. The intimidation tactics and reassuring messages used by these companies no doubt led to complacency about asbestos hazards on the part of consumers, contributing to the incidence of clearly avoidable asbestos diseases now emerging among the general public.

In a 1970 W.R. Grace memo regarding sales of its Mono-Kote fire-proofing spray product, which contained twelve percent asbestos, an employee urged:

"Stay unscrupulous, unethical, mean and selling Mono-Kote."

[View document]

According to a New York Times investigation of Grace's Monokote product, the company continued selling "re-formulated" Monokote until the late 1980s, labeling it "asbestos-free" despite its knowledge that the product still contained up to 1 percent asbestos. Grace management instructed employees that inquiring customers were to be told the product did not contain any asbestos. Due to Grace's "asbestos free" claim, workers using Monokote stopped wearing protective respirators, believing the reformulated product was safe [The New York Times, 7/9/01].

A 1972 Union Carbide memorandum instructed managers to handle inquiries from concerned customers aggressively:

"If the customer is persistent and threatens to eliminate asbestos — a certain amount of aggressiveness may be effective. Words and catch phrases such as "premature", "irrational" or "avoiding the inevitable" will sometimes turn the table. The main objective is to keep the customer on the defensive, make him justify his position."

— 1972 Union Carbide memo [View document]

A year later, Union Carbide management instructed its sales personnel that customers should be told "asbestos is not a carcinogen." [View document]

In 1973, Union Carbide's own medical department advised the company to stop belittling the dangers of asbestos exposure in marketing literature for asbestos products, noting several "misleading" and "half truth" statements in the company's literature. Company doctors referenced government studies indicating asbestos exposures "as short as one day" had produced lung disease, contrary to the company's assertion that "massive long term exposure to asbestos" was required to produce asbestos diseases. [View document]

MANIPULATING THE MEDIA

As word began to trickle out to the mainstream media about the appalling hazards of asbestos, controlling information flow and manipulating the media became a top priority for the industry. In June 1973, at a meeting of the Asbestos Textile Institute, asbestos industry representatives predicted the deaths of tens of thousands of employees from asbestos disease, and then noted that "the good news" was that the public was still vastly unaware of the problem.

The meeting's guest speaker, an executive from the Asbestos Information Association, began his presentation by laying out the facts:

"First, there is no doubt that the inhalation of substantial amounts of asbestos can lead to increased rates of various types of lung disease, including two forms of cancer. These are facts which cannot be denied, even if they do not apply in all circumstances and under all conditions. The medical literature is full of solid evidence linking asbestos to disease. In my office, I have on file more than 2,000 medical papers dealing with the health risks of asbestos and hundreds more are published every year."

— 1973 Asbestos Textile Institute memo

[View document]

The presenter plainly stated that insulation workers "were and still are dying from asbestos disease at an appalling rate." [View document]

Figures were put forward about what the industry expected to happen to its workers:

"Our prediction is that approximately 25,000 past and present employees in the asbestos industry have died or will eventually die of asbestos-related disease."

— 1973 Asbestos Textile Institute memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

Then came the "good news:"

"And the good news is that despite all the negative articles on asbestos-health that have appeared in the press over the past half-dozen years, very few people have been paying attention."

— 1973 Asbestos Textile Institute memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

Finally, the guest speaker laid out his thoughts about media coverage of asbestos issues:

"The press relations battle will therefore be won, not when the media starts to print positive or balanced articles about asbestos, but when the press ceases to print anything about asbestos at all. As long as negative news on asbestos-health continues to be generated, the media will continue to eat it up. The media will only cease to carry such stories when the generation of negative news ceases. It is as simple as that. Positive or balanced stories are a chimera, since they are, by definition, not newsworthy."

— 1973 Asbestos Textile Institute memo

[Excerpt | Full document]

Anticipating a government investigation into its widespread knowledge of the dangers of asbestos, the industry worried internally and began to ready its defenses. A 1981 Dow internal memo marked "CONFIDENTIAL" had the following note scrawled across the top by a worried executive:

"We are in trouble and would be more so if we had an investigation. We need a crash program."

— 1981 Dow confidential memo [View Document]

REFERENCES

Bowker, Michael. (2003). Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos Is Killing America. Touchstone Books, New York.
Brodeur, Paul. (1985). Outrageous Misconduct: The Asbestos Industry On Trial, Pantheon Books, New York.
Hoffman, F. (1918). "Mortality from Respiratory Diseases in Dust Trades." U.S. Department of Labor Bulletin 231, pg. 178.
The New York Times. (7/9/01). "PROTECTING THE PRODUCT: A special report; Company's Silence Countered Safety Fears About Asbestos" By Michael Moss and Adrianne Appel.
Michelbacher, G.F. (1942). Casualty Insurance Principles. McGraw-Hill Books, New York.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2000/05/libbys-deadly-grace

Libby's Deadly Grace

W.R. Grace & Company knew all along that abestos from its Libby, Montana, mine was sickening workers and their families -- but said nothing. Only now, a decade after the mine closed, are the town's residents learning the painful truth.

MARYANNE VOLLERSMAY/JUNE 2000 ISSUE

The bottle-green Kootenai River rushes past the kitchen window of Gayla Benefield's log home on the outskirts of Libby, Montana. Wooded peaks rise up sharp from the river and curl around the narrow valley where Benefield has lived for most of her 56 years. When the clouds lift, you can see a patchwork of clearcuts and roads carved into the slopes. These mountains, like the people in them, have been used hard by the timber and mining industries that once ruled this region. Only a decade ago, before the bottom dropped out, most of the valley's 12,000 residents drew their livelihoods from the sawmill by the river, from W.R. Grace & Company's vermiculite mine outside of town, or from the businesses that served them.

The Benefields were no different. Over the years, Gayla worked for the power company as a truck driver and a meter reader, while her husband, Dave, was a labor union representative. Together they reared five children -- who all, along with 11 grandchildren, still live within five minutes of the Benefield home.

Under ordinary circumstances, Gayla Benefield should be looking forward to a peaceful retirement among neighbors and family. But Libby is no ordinary town.

For the past 40 years, Benefield has watched an epidemic of lung disease spread quietly through the valley. It killed both of her parents: First her father, a former miner, then her mother died of asbestosis, a cruel thickening of the lungs caused by exposure to asbestos. "It took my mother 17 months to slowly suffocate," Benefield recalls. "The oxygen she was getting was the equivalent to what you would give a newborn, because that was the size of the lung capacity she had when she died."

Other miners and their families were getting asbestosis too, along with malignant lung tumors and mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the pleural lining. They suspected a connection between their illnesses and the dust in the mine, but they could never be sure. Every day after work, the men would come home covered with a fine white powder. Their wives inhaled it as they scrubbed clothing and curtains and floors. Their children breathed it in as they played on the carpet. The miners were told it was just "nuisance dust," nothing to worry about -- even though W.R. Grace knew well that the dust they were breathing was loaded with microscopic asbestos fibers that could kill them and their families.

After their mother died in 1996, Benefield and her sister decided to sue W.R. Grace -- only the second such lawsuit to be decided by a jury in Libby. As many as 70 other claims, filed following a 1986 court ruling permitting miners to sue Grace for damages, had been silently settled, with a gag order attached to the cash amount in each case. But Benefield wasn't interested in money. "I just needed a jury to say they killed her," she says. "I felt that a guilty verdict would wake Grace up to help other people without forcing them to go to court. And that it might wake the town up."

Two years ago, a Libby jury -- after hearing a Grace executive testify that he knew there was asbestos up in the mine, and that it could kill the mine workers and their families -- awarded the sisters $250,000 in wrongful-death damages. But the verdict wasn't the wake-up call Benefield had hoped for. "It didn't even make the local newspaper," she says.

Years after the mine shut down, Libby is in many ways still a company town, with a company town mentality. People in this part of the country accept the notion that miners, loggers, and mill workers do dangerous work, and most are willing to swallow a dose of environmental degradation for the sake of their jobs. But once a Seattle newspaper got hold of the story last fall and put some numbers on the scale of the catastrophe, even the people of Libby were shocked.

Since the death in 1960 of Rudolf Engle, who had worked at the mine for 14 years, at least 88 Libby mine workers have died from asbestos-related illnesses; some sources estimate that the number may be significantly higher. Another 200 to 400 current and former area residents are now being treated. For a small town, the toll is staggering: At least 1 in every 40 residents of the valley has died from or suffers from illnesses related to asbestos. Because such diseases can lie dormant for 40 years before symptoms appear, many more cases are expected to surface.

After decades of neglect, the Environmental Protection Agency has finally started to investigate what is happening in Libby. Last December, an EPA emergency response team, spending Superfund dollars, rode into town to assess the damage. Although it has yet to complete its work, the team has already identified 33 asbestos deaths among Libby residents who had no occupational connection to the mine. "With this number of cases, there's no doubt that the link here is the Libby mine," says Paul Peronard, the EPA team leader. Asbestos in the mine led to asbestosis in the town -- and all the signs point to W.R. Grace.

Even before the Libby tragedy, Grace suffered from one of the worst corporate reputations in America, thanks in large part to the impact of the book and movie A Civil Action, which detailed the company's role in polluting the water supply of Woburn, Massachusetts. The collapse of the asbestos market means that Grace isn't in that business any longer -- but its involvement in the industry will likely occupy the company's attention for years to come. And it has left a legacy of sorrow in Libby, Montana.

You can't see the old mine from downtown Libby, but you can somehow feel its presence. The site itself lies across the river and nine miles by winding road northeast of town, gouged into a stubby peak known as Zonolite Mountain.Since Grace closed the mine in 1990, most of the torn earth has been "reclaimed," covered over with grass and planted with trees. The company razed the buildings, including the mills where, during the life of the mine, millions of tons of ore were crushed and screened to separate out a valuable substance called vermiculite.

Vermiculite is a shiny mineral, similar to mica, that pops like corn when heated. The puffy product, as light as cork, was once a popular form of building insulation and is still an ingredient in potting soil. Vermiculite itself is harmless: The problem is that the layers of igneous rock where it isfound almost always contain asbestos, exposure to which has been definitively linked to several fatal lung diseases for more than 70 years. The vermiculite deposit outside Libby is particularly dangerous because it is laced withtremolite, the most toxic form of asbestos. Tremolite's long fibers are barbed like fishhooks. They work their way into soft lung tissue, and they never come out.

Until the mid-1970s, the vermiculite mined in Libby was processed in the "dry mill," a place so dusty that workers often couldn't see their hands on their brooms. The mill workers suffered the worst exposure, but the rest of the miners and the townspeople got their share of dust as well. What wasn't swept out of the dry mill and dumped down the mountainside was spewed out a ventilation stack and into the air. By W.R. Grace's own estimates, some 5,000 pounds or more of asbestos was released each day.On still days, some of it settled back on the mine site. When the wind blew from the east, a film of white dust covered the town.

After passing through the mill, the vermiculite was trucked down the mountain, sorted by size, and sent by conveyor belt over the river to be loaded into open railcars. From there it was shipped out to "expansion plants" in other states, where it was heated and popped for commercial use under the brand name Zonolite. The EPA is now investigating 200 other sites across the country where ore from the Libby mine was shipped for processing -- ore that was packed with deadly concentrations of asbestos.

Not all the vermiculite left Libby. Grace had its own expansion plant and a bagging operation called an "export plant" in town, right next to the baseball diamonds. The area was ringed with spilled or discarded batches of Zonolite. Kids played in the piles, and people brought home bags of the stuff to pour into their attics or use in their gardens.

Now pink flags mark the sites where EPA team members have taken air or soil samples to test for asbestos contamination. They have flagged the ball fields and the abandoned export plant. Another set of flags marks the old riverside loading facility, now occupied by a family-owned nursery. More pink markers flutter every 1,000 feet or so along the twisting gravel road to the defunct mine.

The site is on private property and closed to the public, but the old tailings pile is easily visible from the road. Practically a mountain in itself, the terraced heap supports scraggly clumps of grass and not much else. The hill slopes down to Rainy Creek, where a half-dozen ducks float on one of two ponds created by a dam, a system that Grace engineered to keep mine waste out of the nearby Kootenai River. The lowland is lush with cattails and willows, and an osprey nest suggests the presence of trout.

But just below the surface of the abandoned tailings pile lies a toxic basin of tremolite "fines" -- asbestos particles so small they have to be buried or covered with water to keep them out of the atmosphere. By the EPA's calculations, the proportion of solid tremolite that remains in the pile runs as high as 40 percent. Early this year, the agency published preliminary results that show significant tremolite contamination in the air around the nursery, near the ball fields, and in one of the first 32 homes in town that have been tested.

The results from air samples from six local schools are due this spring, as are thousands of soil samples. "We've identified the specific fiber that's associated with W.R. Grace's mine," says Peronard, the EPA team leader. "Where we find it, we're going to try to compel them to pay for the cleanups."

Although the map of contamination in Libby is still being drawn, the paper trail of culpability is clearly marked. It has been pieced together by the lawyers and investigators who have used the courts to uncover volumes of internal memos, letters, and reports detailing W.R. Grace's well-established knowledge of the health hazards of asbestos -- and its failure to share that knowledge with miners in Libby.

The vermiculite mine at Zonolite Mountain was operated by a local company between its opening in the early 1920s and its acquisition by Grace in 1963. During that time, studies were published firmly linking exposure to asbestos with severe lung diseases. Zonolite executives knew of the threat, but did nothing to reduce the risk. In 1955, an internal company memo discussed "the dangers of exposing our employees to asbestos." Four years later, Zonolite ordered chest X-rays for 130 workers. More than a third of the films were judged "abnormal," with many showing early signs of asbestosis. The affected employees were never told the results.

The state also sounded an alarm. Benjamin Wake, the Montana board of health inspector, issued five reports on asbestos hazards at the Libby mine between 1956 and 1964. Although airborne dust in the dry mill contained 40 percent tremolite asbestos, Wake reported in 1962 that "no progress has been made in reducing dust concentrations in the dry mill to an acceptable level and that, indeed, the dust concentrations had increased substantially." A year later, Wake found asbestos concentrations six times the maximum level allowed at the time (five million particles of asbestos fibers per cubic foot of air).

The board of health had no authority to enforce its inspector's findings. Wake's reports were delivered to the mine's managers. Copies were marked confidential -- then buried in the state agency's files.

In January 1963, Zonolite sold out to W.R. Grace. Early the following month, Grace executive P.L. Veltman wrote a letter indicating not only that asbestos was present in the vermiculite compound mined at Libby, but that the company was already looking for ways to market the stuff.

Grace was less eager to find ways to safeguard miners and their families. It continued Zonolite's practice of offering workers respirators to protect them from asbestos-laden dust, even though the devices clogged up almost immediately and were almost entirely ineffective. Men judged to be ill were moved to less hazardous jobs -- not for their protection, but to keep them working. In 1968, the company's safety officer speculated that if Grace could keep sick workers from being exposed to more dust, "chances are that we may be able to keep them on the job until they retire, thus precluding the high cost of total disability."

All the while, Grace continued to monitor the health of its employees, initiating an annual X-ray program in 1964. By 1969 the company concluded that 65 percent of employees who had worked at the mine for 20 years or more had some form of lung disease. Once again, the workers weren't told the results.

Grace repeatedly ignored the warnings of local doctors that Libby miners were getting sick. What's more, the company covered up its own studies of asbestos toxicity, which showed that exposure to airborne tremolite not only produced asbestosis in laboratory animals, but led to mesothelioma and malignant lung tumors.

Eleven years after it bought the Libby mine, Grace replaced the notorious dry mill with a cleaner "wet mill," where water was used to separate the crushed vermiculite ore, cutting down on airborne dust. Other reforms were too little, too late. In 1983, the company decided not to spend $373,000 on showers, uniforms, and paid overtime -- the cost of giving miners the chance to clean the dust off their bodies before heading home to their families. The following year -- more than two decades after it bought the mine -- Grace finally issued coveralls to employees.

Helen Bundrock's life might have been different if Grace had decided to invest in safety. Her late husband, Arthur, worked in the mine for 19 years, until he got sick and went on disability in 1976. He suffered from asbestosis until he died in the summer of 1998. Now Helen has the disease too, as do four of their five children. "I think it would have helped prevent it if Art had been able to change his clothes at the mine," says Helen. "But he wasn't told the dust was dangerous. If he had known, he never would have worked there. Jobs were plentiful in those days."

At the federal level, the company plotted various strategies to circumvent stronger rules to protect workers and the environment. In 1980, for example, officials with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health announced they would conduct a study of disease in workers at the Libby vermiculite operation. In an internal memo, Grace officialsconsidered their options, which included efforts to "obstruct and block" the study, "be slow, review things extensively and contribute to delay," and "attempt to apply influence." As it turned out, the study was delayed for years.

Whatever its influence, Grace was unable to stop the growing nationwide backlash against firms that mined and marketed asbestos. As the dangers of the substance became public, workers and consumers sued asbestos manufacturers and distributors; more than 150,000 cases are still outstanding. Demand for asbestos shrank to nothing, leading Grace to close the Libby mine in 1990, dismantle the buildings, and hire a contractor to clean up the tailings pile and holding ponds below the old mill.

Then last year, Gayla Benefield learned that the state planned to release Grace from a reclamation bond designed to fund cleanup of the mine if the company were to run off and leave a mess behind. Knowing that asbestos from the mine could still be a threat to the community, Benefield decided to file a complaint. "I felt that the site had not been reclaimed properly and possibly still posed a hazard," she says. Benefield was especially worried because laborers were blasting rocks up on Zonolite Mountain to use for flood control along the riverbanks. "When I found out that men were working up there again, and possibly bringing it home and contaminating their families, it alarmed me," she says. "The cycle was starting all over again."

Her complaint caught the attention of theSeattle Post-Intelligencer,which published a series of articles last November exposing the public health disaster. Grace officials insist that they were caught by surprise. "It was shocking to hear that there were people out there who were making accusations that there was a problem in Libby from our past operations," says Alan Stringer, a company spokesman who moved back to Libby last winter to work as Grace's point man on the situation. "Sure, I knew there were issues with past workers and workers' families, but I didn't believe that there was a problem to the town in general."

State and federal officials express similar surprise. On a cold night last December, Governor Marc Racicotstood in the Libby High School gym before a somber crowd of 200 people looking for answers about the sickness that had hit their town. Racicot, now 52, spent many noisy evenings in the gym as a teenager, when he was a star on the basketball team. On this evening, Racicot had no trouble warming up the hometown crowd. He was raised in Libby, he reminded them, playing at the town ball field right next to the asbestos bagging plant, swinging on a rope and dropping into piles of vermiculite just like all the other kids. The stuff was everywhere when Racicot was growing up. "I remember moving what appeared to be giant bags of Zonolite into our house," he said. "They were very light, so that a small person such as myself could move them. I remember putting them into the attic and walls of our home, and emptying them into the garden."

Racicot insists that he was unaware of any health problems in Libby until recently, and defends the state's record. "I'm not altogether certain one could conclude that a specific individual or institution broke down," says the governor, who was responsible for punishing polluters as state attorney general from 1988 to 1992. "It's important to place this in the appropriate context. For many years, there was no regulatoryaccountability."

Many of Racicot's constituents find such arguments unconvincing. Bonnie Gestring, director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, a nonprofit organization based in Helena, the state capital, points out that Montana has released Grace from parts of its cleanup bond twice in the past seven years -- without any kind of air or soil monitoring. "Not only was it inappropriate," Gestring says, "it was counter to state law."

Asbestos manufacturers are also eager to exploit any elasticity in federal law, hoping to reduce the damages they face in court. Lawmakers from both parties have sponsored a bill called the "Fairness in Asbestos Compensation Act," which, they claim, would help victims get justice more quickly bysetting up a government agency to screen all asbestos claims. In fact, opponents say, the measure seeks to deprive most victims -- including three-quarters of those represented in the 125 cases pending in Libby -- of their day in court and to eliminate punitive jury awards against manufacturers.

In late February, Gayla Benefield traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress against the bill. She and some of her friends have also appeared in television ads designed to pressure Senator Conrad Burns, a Republican running for reelection this year, into withdrawing his support for the legislation. In one spot, an announcer intones: "For 30 years, W.R. Grace spread asbestos throughout Libby. Now Senator Conrad Burns is pushing legislation to let W.R. Grace off the hook."

The tactic seemed to work: In early March, after being hammered for two months by the barrage of ads, Burns withdrew his sponsorship of the bill (while pledging to help shape a substantially identical House version). Says Don Judge, executive secretary of the Montana AFL-CIO, which contributed to the grassroots campaign against the bill: "I think Senator Burns had enough pressure put on him by the citizens of the state to get him to back off the bill. This whole issue wouldn't be out there in front of Montanans and the whole of America if it wasn't for people like Gayla Benefield and the other victims of W.R. Grace."

Judge has felt the personal impact of the Libby tragedy: Two of the five most recent union presidents at the mine have died of asbestos-related illnesses, two more are dying, and the fifth is getting tested. He has taken to calling Libby "America's Chernobyl."

That kind of language infuriates Libby's business community. The valley's fragile economy, still struggling to survive declines in the timber and mining industries, has been starting to attract more tourists and retirees. In recent years, Libby has become a popular spot for fishing, rafting, hiking, and skiing; tourism has jumped an estimated 40 percent over the past three years. Now real estate prices have dropped off, and the community fears economic disaster.

"This issue has divided the town," says Mayor Tony Berget. "You have people arguing and fighting. Some are wrongfully mad at people who have asbestosis." Berget says he doesn't want to ignore or belittle the suffering of the asbestos victims, but he worries about the economic impact of newspaper headlines such as "A Town Left to Die."

Others are less circumspect. "We've been raped!" says Mike Cohan, a local businessman who sells geology books on the Internet. "Anyone from around the country who knows anything at all about Libby, Montana, knows that we're all dying from asbestos. And when this is all over, the article that says EPA finds Libby safe is gonna be stuck in with the classifieds." Cohan believes that low doses of asbestos are safe, and that the vermiculite around Libby isn't contaminated enough to harm anyone. As if to prove the point, he produces a baggie of shiny black chips and proceeds to eat one for a reporter.

But Cohan makes no excuses for the company that knowingly exposed its employees to high concentrations of tremolite dust. "Grace did a really dirty, bad thing to the miners," he says. "If the percentage of asbestos out there was so high, they should have closed the mine. Somebody ought to go to jail."

Whether anyone will is not certain. The state attorney general's office says only that it is keeping an eye on the situation. Special Agent Mark Measer of the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division would not comment on whether the agency is investigating Grace, saying his division is "reviewing" the Libby case.

Meanwhile, the EPA will continue to test for asbestos in and around Libby, particularly in the summer months when the air is much dustier. The agency also plans to spend $4 million on X-ray screening for more than 5,000 residents.

A decade after closing the mine, Grace is beginning to reach out to the community. The company has pledged to provide medical care for anyone in Libby who is diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease. In addition, Grace has promised to provide $250,000 per year to a local hospital for screenings.

Given the company's history, many residents remain suspicious of its belated gestures of support. "I always think there's going to be a catch here someplace," says Norita Skramstad. "We're leery, and this is a company that's really given us the right to be leery."

Both Norita and her husband, Les, have asbestosis, as do the two eldest of their three children. Les worked at the mine before it was acquired by Grace -- for all of two and a half years, between 1959 and 1961. It was long enough to make him sick. And since a company buys the liabilities as well as the assets of a business it purchases, a jury found Grace responsible for Skramstad's illness when he took his case against the company to trial -- the first person in Libby to do so.

The proceeding was held in 1997, before Skramstad learned that his family also had the disease. The jury awarded him $660,000 in damages, later reduced in a settlement to avoid a prolonged appeal by the company. "My life was bought pretty cheap," he says. "I didn't know then that Norita and two of my kids had it. Had I known, I would have been extremely hard to deal with. I still have trouble holding my temper, but there isn't too much it seems I can do about it except holler at anybody who will listen."

Skramstad has so little lung function left that some days he can't do simple chores, such as bringing in firewood. Sometimes on a weekend night he gets up the strength to play electric bass in a country band called the Sundowners. But at 63, he knows his time is limited. "My grandpa lived to be 88, my dad was 78, I might be looking at 68," he says. "And our son Brent's looking at 58."

Like Gayla Benefield and the other victims who have finally broken the long years of silence in Libby, the Skramstads mostly want to end the cycle of disease and death in their town.

"Our main goal is to stop it from going into the next generation," says Norita. "We have to see if it's still here. If it is, we've got to do something about it. All we can do is speak for those who have gone."

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Successor_Asbestos-Related_Liability_Fairness_Act_Exposed

2004, same yr as air bk?

hatch cannon 2003-4

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/asbestos/2865?congress=108

fla

https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2012/Chapter774/All

114th goodlatte Va

Rep. Goodlatte, Bob [R-VA-6] (Introduced 04/22/2015)	Rep. Goodlatte, Bob [R-VA-6] (Introduced 04/22/2015)	Rep. Goodlatte, Bob [R-VA-6] (Introduced 04/22/2015)
Committees:	House - Judiciary	Senate - Judiciary
Committee Reports:	H. Rept. 114-328	H. Rept. 114-328
Latest Action:	01/11/2016 Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (All Actions)	01/11/2016 Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (All Actions)
Roll Call Votes:	There have been 11 roll call votes	There have been 11 roll call votes

2015 Rep. Franks, Trent [R-AZ-8]*

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1927

ctrpunch: rev of mccumber bk:

Millions of us are still threatened by asbestos in out homes, where we work. Most of us believe that using asbestos is now illegal. It isn’t. The authors write “Nobody is sure how many homes contain Zonolite. Estimates range from 15 million to 35 million. But according to the EPA and U.S. Justice Department’s tally ofW.R. Grace invoices the company shipped billions of pounds of tainted ore to more than 750 processing plants throughout North America. Most of those companies produced attic insulation.”

Many automobile brakes are made with asbestosis. “About six million mechanics have been exposed to asbestos since 1940 those exposures are now resulting in 580 asbestos-related excess cancer deaths per year. Within 10 years, the expected rate of mesothelioma deaths alone will be 200 a year from exposure to brake dust.”

And here’s a a big surprise. The Bush White House, through its Office of Management and Budget, blocked the EPA’s long-awaited declaration of a public health emergency in Libby in April 2002, and an accompanying warning to millions of citizens that their homes and businesses might contain Grace’s deadly asbestos-contaminated insulation. A drastically watered-down memo was finally made public. The authors’ also reveal the Bush White House’s successful campaign to cover up the asbestos problem in lower Manhattan in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The authors write ” Documents from the White House Counsel on Environmental Quality showed a repeated pattern of downplaying the hazard to health even when the sparse information available showed just the opposite to the extent of ordering headlines of government news releases changed completely so no threat or hazard was ever conveyed.” One asbestosis-stricken Libby resident said, “Twenty years from now, when those New Yorkers start falling over dead, some young government bureaucrat will get all choked up apologizing for what the EPA and others didn’t do.”

Schneider and McCumber look at the ongoing debate on Capitol Hill over legislation to create a mechanism for resolving asbestos claims outside the judicial system. The authors show how one bill currently under consideration, proposed in 2003 by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, will prevent many current and future victims of asbestos from being eligible for compensation. They point out that jackals that infest the attorney profession are initiating class action litigation that offers victims small compensation while eliminated their rights to sue for future illnesses and wrong doings.

david mccumber an air that kills author talk

booktv and schneider 38 min 4/13/04

vermiculite mine in Va right now?

dr in 80's blew whistle, run out of town

crop

EPA scotts (turfbuilder used 1/4 of libby output, workers got lung disease) EPA filed report away; paper P-I (post-intelligencer) story 20 years later dug out; Grace Commission JP Grace RR get gov't off back, less intrusive; 1/4 ppl in town have lung disease

bill yellowtail pro indian epa region 8 "strictly personal hygiene " issue PO'd called in sci; found worse than PI

emergency 3 yr cleanup $40million, quick and dirty, $ running out; head f epa will visit next month; WRG april 2001 bankrupt, bought small co pkging co, transferred _ ~ epa forensic accountants; many lawsuits: Asbestos Fairness Act "Industry relief act" ; many friv suits, make couple k $, take 1/3; still legal to make, import, attempt to ban 90's, industry ~; still in brakes; in crayons (talc) ~

labs made 7m$ testing for ind; CPSComm corroborated, 1 wk said take out; vanderbilt talc co NY still fights regs; patty Murray rider on Oren bill; wallbd has it; RW presents as "scare"?

fmr nixon white house EPA guy bought mine; MMSA called PI said ashamed; send surprise inspect found some 99% asb; 1/20/01 signs taken down, full bore; 15-35 ill has loose fill, cable guy can disturb, when house demolished; piles of vermic ore downtown, kids wing onto it; track at HS ball fields, those cleaned up; quebec; big lie johns manville, grace, ... congress helps hide to preserve local jobs; clinton/browner not great; b2 worse 911 n manhattan CTW 2 days later said safe; epa res said was't , moonsuit decon own offices in manhattan; no one know when libby illnesses will peak b/c long incub; horrible and $$$ way to die (suffocate)[never leaves lungs]; 1800 plus diagnosed with lung abnormality; after screened, can't get insurance; // to oil and tobacco in pol pwr; NYT silent

Libby is a city in and the county seat of Lincoln County, Montana, United States. The population was 2,628 at the 2010 census.

memorial behind CoC out of sight?

The Asbestos Poisoning of Libby, Montana: A National Scandal - Lung Cancer, Mesothelioma (2004) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy-p_DvM6Jw

tallc contaminated, 911 towers, brakes;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BYDDLuZMSk

nevada

DEADLY DUST: Asbestos in the Backyard

nellis dunes off roading

===

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform just devoted much of an entire day to bemoaning the proliferation of breaches of Americans’ personal data.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform, established by Tom Donohue, prioritizes stripping rights away…

Posted by Asbestos Nation on Tuesday, October 27, 2015

My colleagues and I at Environmental Working Group Action Fund find it impossible to take these complaints seriously when the chamber and institute are among the most zealous proponents of the so-called FACT Act (H.R. 526 and S. 357), federal legislation that would require public disclosure of asbestos disease victims’ intensely personal information on the Internet. The FACT Act would force them to give their full names and partial Social Security numbers and tell the world about their medical conditions and employment history. They would be prime targets for identity theft.

This year, the chamber and institute have spent more than $63 million combined to lobby for numerous bills, including FACT Act.

Environmental Working Group Action Fund sent a camera and crew to the event (well, outside of the building) to gauge how some of the conference guests felt about violating sick Americans’ privacy. Chamber President Tom Donohue spotted our people and turned down an alley.

Here is what a few other attendees had to say about the implications of the FACT Act for the privacy and financial security of asbestos victims:

gangs of america: SPEECH = MONEY

Consider the case of Montana. For nearly a century, the state of

Montana was run as a virtual colony by the aptly named Anaconda

Copper Company. Anaconda was born in 1895 out of set of mergers

that followed an intense power struggle for industry dominance known

as the War of the Copper Kings, some of it literally fought as physical

combat in the tunnels of the mines at Butte in the 1890s. The company

had a tradition of corruption and hard-ball political tactics. At one point,

displeased with the decision of a state judge in favor of one of its rivals,

Anaconda shut down all its mines and smelters in the state for three

weeks, cutting off thousands of workers from their paychecks, until the

governor called a special session of the legislature to pass a new bill that

183

resolved the dispute in favor of the company. Over the next sixty years,

Anaconda maintained its grip on the state, owning all but one major

state newspaper and continuing to dominate the Montana legislature.

While Anaconda’s mines and smelters devastated large tracts of the

state, the company’s political allies quashed attempts to enact legislation

to protect the health of the state’s citizens. Other mining companies

took advantage of the anything-goes regulatory environment created by

Anaconda, with tragic results.

In the town of Libby, Montana, the W. R. Grace Company operated

a vermiculite mine that spewed 5,000 pounds of highly toxic asbestos

dust into the air every day, according to the company’s own tests.

The connection between asbestos and fatal lung disease had been

known since the 1920s, but efforts by the company to protect its employees

from exposure were minimal at best. Internal reports documenting

the problem were concealed, and the company told workers that the

type of asbestos contained in the mine’s dust was a non-hazardous variety.

By the 1960s, the evidence had become impossible to ignore: numerous

workers in Libby were dying slow, excruciating deaths caused

by debilitating lung ailments including fatal asbestosis (a thickening and

hardening of the lung tissue), mesothelioma (cancer of the lung’s lining),

and lung cancer (cancer of the lung itself). An x-ray survey in

1969 showed that almost half of the people who had worked at the mine

for 11 to 20 years had lung disease; among workers with 21 to 25 years

tenure, the rate was 92 percent. In 1999, a survey by the Seattle Post-

Intelligencer confirmed 192 deaths, with an additional 375 people diagnosed

with fatal lung disease.

The Junkman’s Answer

to Terrorism: UseMore Asbestos

Steven Milloy, the Cato Institute’s self-proclaimed

critic of “junk science,” took the attacks on the World

Trade Center as a cue to speak up for asbestos, which

is still a product liability concern for manufacturers

even though it was pulled off the market years ago due

to its link with lung cancer.

“Asbestos fibers in the air and rubble following the

collapse of the World Trade Center is adding to fears

in the aftermath of Tuesday’s terrorist attack,”Milloy

wrote in aSeptember 14 column for Fox News. “The

true story in the asbestos story, though, is the lives that

might have been saved but for 1970s-era hysteria

about asbestos.” He went on to speculate that asbestos

insulation might have delayed the steel framework of

the building from melting “by up to four hours.”

Milloy’s column inspired a similar piece in the

Times of London, followed by a New York Times story

that said “some engineers and scientists are haunted

by a troubling question: were the substitute materials

as effective in protecting against fire as the asbestos

containing materials they replaced?”

The only individuals quoted to support this theory,

however, were scientists who had previously worked

as paid expert witnesses for the asbestos industry

during product liability lawsuits filed by cancer victims.

None of these experts had actually done research

comparing asbestos to other heat-resistant insulating

materials in the event of a plane crash like the one that

destroyed the World Trade Towers, and in fact there

is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the

claim that asbestos would have delayed the collapse

of the towers by even five seconds, let alone four hours.

It may be some time before anyone can assess the

health consequences of the asbestos that was released

into the air of New York following the terrorist attack.

Asbestos was used in the first 40 floors of the World

Trade Towers and ended up in the ash which covered

the streets of the city and contaminated the air

around lower Manhattan after the towers collapsed.

Emergency personnel and others at the scene wore

surgical style masks during the relief effort, but many

said that even with the masks, breathing was very difficult

amid the choking, acrid smoke and dust blanketing

the area.

Like Milloy, the industry-funded American Council

on Science and Health (ACSH) went to pains to

downplay the hazard. “Some activists are raising concerns

about very low levels of asbestos in the air in

Downtown Manhattan since the WTC tragedy,”

commented an ACSH news release.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

reported initially that its air tests found low levels of

asbestos near the disaster, but a subsequent study by

independent researchers found that the EPA tests did

not detect all of the asbestos that was released.

“The study, by the Virginia firm HP Environmental,

found that the force of theexplosions apparently

shattered the asbestos into fibers so small that

they evade the EPA’s ordinary testing methods,”

reported Newsweek on October 5. “The EPA tests for

asbestos particles greater than a half micron in size....

But the study concluded that there is such an overwhelming

concentration of those ultrasmall particles

that many are being missed by standard microscopy

techniques. ‘This stuff was just crushed, just pulverized,’

says lead author Hugh Granger. ‘As it turns out,

when we now measure and look for these very small

fibers in the air and buildings, we find them, and we

find them in uniquely elevated concentrations.’ ”

Some evidence suggests that ultrasmall asbestos

particles may actually pose a worse health threat than

larger particles. Smaller particles tend to remain suspended

in the air where they can be inhaled, and they

may penetrate more easily into the depths of the lungs.

“We probably will find out a lot more about the health

aspects of asbestos from this event, unfortunately,”

said Dr. Alan Fein, chief of pulmonary and criticalcare

medicine at North Shore-Long Island Jewish

Health System, who has treated several patients for

“World Trade Center syndrome”: respiratory distress

stemming from relatively brief exposures of a day or

two near the collapsed buildings

http://www.prwatch.org/node/326

srcwtch

Matthew M. Swetonic (commonly referred to as Matt) is a prominent public relations operator, who specializes in countering environmentalism and health activism, and in providing crisis management for large industry groups and corporations with poisoning or polluting problems.

[hide]

Background

According to a biographical note, Swetonic graduated from Columbia Uni9versity's Graduate School of Journalism and then, in June 1965, "joined the public relations staff of the Johns-Manville Corporation" Co (J-M), then the world's largest asbestos manufacturer. J-M had long been fighting a rear-guard action to protect its asbestos business and to deny the serious adverse health effects of the asbestos fibres. This company also led the fight against adequate compensation for workers and others effected by the fibres. "My job was not very demanding. I was the number two man on the company's monthly employee magazine. Mostly I traveled around the country from J-M plant to J-M plant, taking pictures and interviewing plant personnel for stories on a new product line or plant addition."^[1]

In "the late summer of 1968" Swetonic was called into a meeting with his boss, Bill Raines and the vice-president for advertising and public relations,Jack Solon. At the conclusion of the meeting Swetonic had been promoted to the position of "co-ordinator of special projects." His initial task "was to learn all I could about the asbestos-health issue."

"He was named director of environmental affairs in 1971," a biographical note stated.^[1]

In 1972^[1] Swetonic set up for J-M a front organisation known as the Asbestos Information Association/North America, and ran it as the nominal Executive Secretary (he later claimed "Executive President").^[2] While described as "a trade association dealing with health and environmental problems in the industry,"^[1] the main purpose of this organisation was to counter, devalue or dismiss the growing scientific evidence implicating asbestos in serious disease conditions.^[3]

Swetonic resigned from AIA in August 1973 and "accepted a position at Hill & Knowlton. "Because of my background with OSHA, one of my first assignments was to work with the plastics industry, which had recently discovered that a basic chemical, vinyl chloride, used in the manufacture of PVC plastic resin caused a rare cancer of the liver called angiosarcoma."^[1]

From 1986 to 1991 Swetonic was Senior Vice-President and director of Hill & Knowlton's Division of Scientific, Technical and Environmental Affairswhere he "handled crisis communications for environmental health problems for clients in the chemical, mining, plastics, food and cosmetics industries." ^[1](H&K were the main PR company for the tobacco industry, among others).

In 1991 Swetonic joined the E. Bruce Harrison Company (EBH), which was then the most experienced PR company specializing in countering the environmental movement. EBH had been contracted for decades by the Chemical Manufacturers Association to protect their pesticide interests following the publication of Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring' in 1962, which is credited with having triggered the modern environmental movement.

In the early 1990s, EBH was swallowed up in a series of mergers and, not long after, Swetonic left to become a partner in the New York office of The Dilenschneider Group's, which had split off from Hill & Knowlton (H&K). This was at a time when most of the larger PR, advertising and polling companies were involved in mergers, leverage-buy-outs (LBOs), and take-overs, combining eventually into the current three global media conglomerates - WPP, Omnicom, and Interpublic Group. These three global conglomerates now dominate the misinformation business.

In addition to his asbestos and tobacco experience, Matt Swetonic was also employed on the Agent Orange and dioxin controversy by sections of the chemical industry (through H&K) for many years. He also spent many years working for the tobacco Industry -- specifically for [RJ Reynolds Tobacco] -- both on countering the movement to ban public smoking, and on the promotion of their 'Premier brand' nicotine delivery system. Later, with the Dilenschneider Group, he also worked for Philip Morris.

Asbestos Background

- During the years of World War II, and for nearly two decades after, asbestos was widely promoted as a "wonder material" because it could be woven or incorporated (as reinforcing) into other composite materials; it was inflammable and resistant to most chemicals. The first scientist to begin a crusade against asbestos was Dr. Irving J. Selikoff at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. This occurred at about the time that research into the health effects of smoking was also implicating cigarettes in lung cancer.

- World War II had massively boosted the mining and use of asbestos, and military service had also triggered a smoking epidemic. Asbestos- and tobacco-induced lung-cancer (and heart diseases) had relatively long incubation periods, but they began to make their presence known about twenty-years after the war exposure.

- In 1960 Selikoff was warning workers in theasbestosindustry (and those previously exposed) not to smoke because of the extremely high rate of lung cancers that each product produced. He was mainly concerned with the millions of US shipyard workers who had installed asbestos lagging, and with naval gunners who were showered with the fibres when their guns fired.

- Selikoff set the tobacco industry and the asbestos companies at loggerheads. Each industry began trying to lay the blame on the other for the cancer epidemic.

- Also in a study for the US Labor Department, Selikoff's associate Dr. William J. Nicholson estimated thatbetween 1940 and 1979, 18.8 million US workers had been significantly exposed to asbestos in their work. Nicholson concluded that this history of exposure would yield 432,000 excess cancer deaths in the following sixty years**[**1] since the major killer diseases associated with asbestos (asbestosis, mesothelioma and lung-cancer) had incubation periods of up to 40 years.

- Then in 1968 at the height of the initial cigarette-cancer scare, Selikoff wrote an article in a medical magazine pointing out that smoking asbestos workers had "92 times the risk" of dying from lung cancer as those nonsmoking, non-asbestos workers.By discovering the extraordinary synergistic relationships between tobacco and asbestos, Selikoff now became a primary threat to both industries -- and the PR attack-dogs were turned out to discredit him.

- He had also published a study implicating the IntraUterine Device (IUD) for contraception in health problems, which gave the tobacco industry an automatic ally.

Asbestos Problems

Johns Manville had refused to help the medical investigators from Mt Sinai, and in 1972 it both funded and organised the Asbestos Information Association to counter the growing scientific evidence, and attack the associated environmental and health activism. [[2]](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Decades+of+deception:+secrets+of+lead,+asbestos,+and+tobacco.-a056909661) This organization was directed by executives at Johns-Manville but run by Swetonic from Hill & Knowlton. So by 1972 [Hill & Knowlton] was working for both industries - asbestos and tobacco.

Matt Swetonic ran the asbestos industry projects(he acted both as spokesman and industry advisor) [3] while a number of other H&K operators (including Leonard Zahn (a scientific lobbyist and science-writer) worked through the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (later the Council for Tobacco Research). Both of these organizations occupied office space in the Empire State Building in New York on a floor directly below H&K's offices, and they shared H&K staff.

Through H&K's intervention, eventually there was a formal coming together of the asbestos and tobacco interests with an agreement to cooperate, rather than apportion blame. This was at the time when Congress was considering asbestos compensation legislation: DDT had just been banned,the tobacco industry was also under legislative threat to its broadcast advertising ... and there were new requirements to include health warnings on packets.

In this letter from Leonard Zahn to John Mansville's Vice President, FJ Solon(ccd to Matt Swetonic) Zahn comments on a scientific report by Selikoff which could generate trouble on both the tobacco and asbestos fronts [4]. This document came from the tobacco industry files (they were automatically copied on asbestos issues by H&K).

Not long after after, Solon made a public statement characterising Dr Selikoff as a"cruel showman", saying:"To terrorize people who worked in shipyards 30 years ago, and now can't do a God-damned thing about it - that's something I couldn't square with my conscicnce." [5]

The Tobacco Years

In the mid-1980s, the Business Roundtable organised an even wider coalition which included asbestos and tobacco, together with members of the Chemical Manufacturers Association and various energy trade associations. They wanted a joint effort with special projects to counter the growing environmental and health activism.

In particular, they decided to cooperated in legal and legislative actions to restrict pentalties for successful product liability and worker's compensation suits.Their sworn enemies were the 'plaintiff lawyers' who had combined in an association known as the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATRA) -- and so they formed the [American Tort ReformAssociation].

In 1983 the Business Roundtable also had its Task Force on Product Liability headed by Robert Malott, the CEO and Chairman of pesticide/chemical manufacturer FMC Corp. The US Chambers of Commerce had created a similar new organization known as the National Business Council on Injury Compensation, to develop a unified business position on toxic substances compensation issues. Asbestos was obviously one of their top priorities, but they were also trying to counter attacks over dioxins, DDT, Agent Orange, tobacco and a range of other harmful products.

At Hill & Knowlton, Matt Swetonic also worked for Dow Chemicals and helped coordinate the herbicide/pesticide subsection of the Chemical Manufacturers Association [6].

RJ Reynolds Tobacco

At the same time Swetonic was elevated to the position of Senior Vice President of H&K, acting primarily as a media strategist and training advisor to RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company on its litigation problems [7]. His working title (for use in the media) was "Health and Environment Advisor" and he helped Reynolds set up media advisory centers to counter adverse publicity in some of the early legal liability cases in different parts of the country. [8]

One of his assigned tasks was to "review the current medical literature on [ETS] ([Environmental Tobacco Smoke -- passive smoking]) ... to determine if there is a possibility of generating a national debate on the validity of the health claims being made against ETS." [9]. The main aim here was to counter smoking restrictions in the workplace and in public venues like restaurants, by generating doubt about the validity of the science.

He also assisted RJ Reynolds in the marketing and promotion of the ill-fated Premier smokeless cigarette (actually a nicotine delivery device). In the tobacco archives, the development of Premier is known (successively) as Project SPA and Project Q. [10] and later (with a 1988 re-launch) as Project Y and Alpha. He was to organize tame scientist and science journalists to write favorable reviews and editorials on Premier, characterising it as a 'safe cigarette' (since the company was prohibited from making this claim in public itself). He ghost-wrote articles himself to be planted on major newspapers as op-ed pieces under other names. [11] [12].

Swetonic was also called upon to defend RJ Reynolds in a claim make in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that the Premier cigarette could be used to smoke crack! [13] His defense plan included the suggestion that they "identify individuals or groups who are in opposition to the AMA" and "create a coalition" to attack the medical profession's organisation. [14]. [15]

When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to investigate the health and environmental problem associated with passive smoking (ETS), he created a public-persuasion project focussed on the slogan "Back-door Prohibition" [16]. The idea was toclaim that the EPA was trying to expand its empire and seize control of indoor air regulation standards using "perverted science". He successfully predicted that the EPA would eventually classify environmental smoke as a Class A Carcinogen [17].

Reynold's Premier cigarette was essentially a tube with heated taste beads and nicotine, and it was, in fact a catastrophe. [18]. By the mid 1980s the major media were well-conversant with smoking-and-health issues, but Swetonic worked very hard to persuade major media organisations (like the Reader's Digest) that this was, in fact, a 'safer cigarette' ... without actually making the claim himself. [19].

In government regulatory affairs the sale of cigarettes held a special privileged position through the strength of the tobacco farming lobby. The tobacco-growing states usually held the balance of power in the Senate and House, and their lobbying stopped tobacco from being considered an addictive drug -- it was excused from food and drug regulation on the grounds that it was an 'agricultural product'. However, the Premier tube-delivery system opened the industry to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration; clearly this was a'drug delivery system' more akin to a hypodermic needle than an apple or chocolate stick. [20]Reynolds quickly abandoned Premier when the FDA began to make their 'drug' argument to Congress.

E. Bruce Harrison

In 1991 he was also working on coalition problem with the chemical manufacturers and their trade associations. The growth of workplace smoking bans in chemical companies raised tensions between the coalition partners.[21], which is probably why he was shifted from the main H&K office to E. Bruce Harrison Co (EBH).In the late 1980s and early 1990s EBH had been successively taken over by the Pinnacle Group, and then by Ruder Finn, and these companies had close and cosy ties with Hill & Knowlton (which itself had been taken over a couple of times).

Swetonic retained theRJ Reynolds Tobacco account, and was officially entitled "Senior Vice President and Director of Environmental Operations" [22]. He now began running operations on behalf of the tobacco industry as a whole, while remaining under RJ Reynolds control.

Du Pont, one of the major makers of herbicides and pesticides, has implemented a smoking ban in its own workplaces, and Swetonic used his contacts with the chemical industry to try to have this smoking ban reversed [23]. He raises the possibility of having tobacco farmers boycott Du Pont's agricultural products, and since Du Pont also owned the Remington Arms Company,he suggests the possibility to RJR of requesting the National Rifle Association (NRA -- the most powerful special-interest lobby in the country) put pressure on the chemical company also. The NRA and the tobacco industry worked closely together on problems of product liability, and they were both highly active in their support for the Republican Party's policies of unregulated free-enterprise and small government.

In the following years Swetonic continued working with the tobacco industry, persuading tame scientists like Prof. Alvan Feinstein of Yale to write articles dismissing the regulatory science on passive smoking problems, and generaly supporting the tobacco industry's position [24]. He also continued his campaign against the American Medical Association (AMA) [25].

Total Indoor Environment Quality (TIEQ)

At EBH in mid-1991,Swetonic was instrumental in creating a front association known as the Total Indoor Environment Quality association (TIEQ).This was nominally a coalition under the National Environmental Development Association (NEDA). NEDA was itself created by EBH in 1973 with the intention of running business leadership seminars on health and environmental problems -- specifically with workplace Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).This was at the time when the tobacco industry was promoting the idea of the "Sick Building Syndrome" as an alternative to tobacco smoke as the cause of health and general well-being problems in offices and factories.

The TIEQ was a nation-wide front operation, nominally based in Washington (actually in New York), which was proclaimed as an "organization of environmental experts and concerned companies committed to finding solutions to the challenges associated with indoor air quality (IAQ)." [26]. The chairman of the "scientific advisory board", Dr Ronald E. Gots (the medical advisor to the National Association of Manufacturers and insurance companies and a critic of Selikoff's zealotry), said that the TIEQ's chief mission is to "try to ensure that good science drives whatever policies are developed to regulate indoor air, that we have good science information as much as possible before we decide about controlling things." [27]

The press release announcing the TIEQ's founding, claims that "the correlation between poor indoor environmental quality and adverse health effects hasn't been proven". These words come straight out of the tobacco industry's favourite phrase book.

RJ Reynolds appears to have provided the funds to establish the TIEQ, but the day-to-day operation were only part-funded by the tobacco industry in general [28] with Philip Morris joining the board later [29]. The coalition supporting the TIEQ also included fibre makers, synthetic carpet manufacturers, office-equipment manufacturers, and airlines -- all of which had indoor air quality problems. [30]. The Manville Corporation (the successor to [Johns-Manville]) was also a charter member [31].

The tobacco industry took the lead position, but preferred to hide behind coalitions in these "toxic tort" matters, and the actual TIEQ offices were in the same building as E Bruce Harrison Co. Matt Swetonic is listed by them as "TIEQ Staff".

The TIEQ was still operating as a lobby force on downplaying the adverse effects of poor indoor air quality in August 1999 [32]. It appears to have been listed as a tobacco ally by Philip Morris in Dec 1997 [33]and it is included in RJ Reynold's official Lobbying Report in 2000 - both well after the signing of the Master Settlement Agreement. [thus?]

Tort Reform and Toxic Torts...

http://www.prwatch.org/node/12424

Wisconsin could become the latest state to narrow access to the courts for asbestos victims in a bill up for a vote on March 20, joining a national coordinated effort that can be traced back to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Rep. Andre Jacque, a member of the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force, introduced Assembly Bill 19 in April of 2013. A version of the legislation passed the Wisconsin Senate last week on a nearly party line vote, and is now before the Assembly. It resembles the ALEC "Asbestos Claims Transparency Act," which was adopted as a "model" by members of the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force in2007. In December of 2012, Ohio became the first state to pass the legislation. In the 2013 session, nearly identical legislation has been introduced in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois and Texas.

The legislation would benefit corporations like Crown Holdings, a Fortune 500 company with over $8 billion in annual sales that has worked with ALEC for years to legislate its way out of compensating asbestos victims, as well as ALEC member Honeywell International, which has faced significant asbestos liability in recent years.

The bill could allow corporations like Crown Holdings or Honeywell to delay a lawsuit until a victim files claims with any other asbestos or personal injury "trust funds," which are accounts set up after a company goes bankrupt to pay claims to injured parties. This requirement, advocates say, is intended to drag out a case until after a sick victim dies -- an especially pointed concern given that asbestos cancer victims usually die within a year after being diagnosed. Families often don't continue litigation after the victim dies, and juries change their assessment of the case, advocates say.

Asbestos-related diseases kill at least 10,000 Americans every year, in many cases from mesothelioma, an incurable and painful cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. For decades, asbestos was used for insulation and industrial purposes, and the diseases particularly affect veterans, firefighters, construction workers, and individuals who worked in factories with high-heat machinery. In Wisconsin, veterans groups have been some ofthe most vocal opponents of the legislation: veterans make up just 8 percent of the population, but are 30 percent of mesothelioma cases.

ALEC, Chamber Connections Are Clear

When the legislation was introduced in Texas in 2011, ALEC sent a so-called "issue alert" to ALEC legislators in that state urging the bill's passage. Like many ALEC bills, the model language was slightly amended to make it consistent with Texas statutes, but ALEC still acknowledged H.B. 2034was an ALEC model bill. "This legislation is based on ALEC's Asbestos Claims Transparency Act and would reduce the potential for fraud and gamemanship with respect to asbestos claims. ALEC strongly supports H.B. 2034," the message reads.

Wisconsin's legislation, Assembly Bill 19, even more closely tracks the ALEC model legislationthan the Texas bill.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board -- which at the time included Stephen Moore, an ALEC "advisor" --published an editorial in support of the Ohio bill after it passed in 2012, and has acknowledged that the Ohio bill was based off of ALEC model legislation.

Sponsors Say the Bill Has Nothing to Do with ALEC?

The Wisconsin bill's sponsors, Rep. Andre Jacque and Sen. Glenn Grothman -- both ALEC members -- deny that ALEC had anything to do with AB 19. Andrew Cook of the Wisconsin Civil Justice Council also said his group did not consult with ALEC on the bill.

According to the drafting files, Rep. Jacque asked the Legislative Reference Bureau to draft a bill based on the Ohio legislation. Yet as a member of the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force, Rep. Jacque surely knew that the Ohio bill was based off of the ALEC model.

In fact, at ALEC's meeting in Chicago last summer, Mark Behrens of the DC law firm Shook Hardy & Bacon gave a presentation to the task force titled "Asbestos Bankruptcy Trust Reform: Fighting Fraud and Preserving Resources."

The Wisconsin Civil Justice Council, which is pushing the bill in Wisconsin, is also no stranger to ALEC. In 2011, for example, just a few months after Wisconsin passed a comprehensive tort reform bill that tracked ALEC model legislation (which ALEC lobbied onand whose passage it celebrated), the Wisconsin Civil Justice Council's Cook gave a presentation to the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force titled "Wisconsin: Straight Out of the Gates."

Like the ALEC-supported voter ID laws that spread across the country in recent years, supporters of the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act claim the law is necessary to stop fraud, despite no persuasive evidence of significant fraud or abuse from asbestos trusts. In fact, there are hardly any cases in Wisconsin, period: just nine asbestos claims were filed in 2012, despite the state having around 80 asbestos related deaths each year.

haliburton?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/libertarian-style-capitalism-killed-my-best-friends

alec 2013 This year, there were 12, which is down from 15 last year. This year's sponsors at the Director level include stalwart ALEC funders like Takeda and Crown [38] (which is pushing legislation to escape responsibility for people injured or dying from asbestos),

38] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/07/12172/justice-denied-71-alec-bills-2013-make-it-harder-hold-corporations-accountable-ca

...

Average Americans Pay the Price

An increasingly major player in advancing the ALEC tort reform agenda is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its Institute for Legal Reform, both of which are members of the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force.

A big priority for the Chamber this year has been legislation narrowing access to the courts for asbestos victims. The ALEC "Asbestos Claims Transparency Act" was first adopted by members of the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force in 2007 and was introduced in four states in 2013, in many cases supported by testimony from Shook Hardy & Bacon attorney Mark Behrens on behalf of the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform. The effort would benefit corporations like Crown Holdings, a Fortune 500 company with over $8 billion in annual sales that has worked with ALEC for years to legislate its way out of compensating asbestos victims, as well as ALEC member Honeywell International, which has faced significant asbestos liability in recent years.

Asbestos company executives knew from at least the 1940s that asbestos was deadly but covered it up for half of a century. For example, an internal memo from a subsidiary of ALEC member Honeywell in 1966 stated, "if you have enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products why not die from it?" The disease can take between 20 and 50 years to manifest, so individuals exposed decades earlier are only discovering the illness now.

Like the ALEC-supported voter ID laws that spread across the country in recent years, supporters of the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act claim the law is necessary to stop fraud -- despite no persuasive evidence of significant fraud or abuse. The law is couched in terms of "transparency," but is actually designed to save corporations money by delaying justice for asbestos victims and enacting unnecessary procedural hurdles for getting their day in court.

In December of 2012, Ohio became the first state to pass the ALEC asbestos bill, which the Chamber publicly applauded: "'As Ohio goes, so goes the nation,' and we hope this will result in a domino effect," said Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform. The Wall Street Journal editorial board -- which includes Stephen Moore, an ALEC "advisor" -- published an editorial in support of the legislation.

Consumer and worker advocates expect more states to introduce versions of the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act in 2014. A parallel bill has been introduced on the federal level and recently passed the House Judiciary Committee (prompting a response from the New York Times Editorial Board). Testimony presented to Congress from attorneys at Caplin & Drysdale has identified the ALEC connection.

...

Asbestos silica

1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water

3. Allowed Scores of New Chemicals, Including New Toxic PFAS, Onto the Market Without Adequate Oversight

4. Failed to Protect Workers From a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical

5. Cooked the Books on the “Civil Action” Chemical

6. Pressured EPA Scientists to Drop Evaluations of Toxic Chemicals – Including Formaldehyde

7. Rolled Back Clean Water Protections

8. Cooked the Books on Asbestos

9. Proposed a Loophole for Toxic Air Pollution

10. Continuing Its Quest to Censor Science

Why asbestos litigation won’t go away: Because asbestos won’t go away

Why asbestos litigation won’t go away: Because asbestos won’t go away

Stronger than steel, and potentially lethal

Lawsuits, a result of politics?

With no relief, lawyers moved in

EPA Is Failing to Protect School Children From Asbestos, Internal Watchdog Agency Says

Why Asbestos Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S.

Career EPA Staff Objected to Trump Administration's Asbestos Plan

ASBESTOS: THINK AGAIN: INDUSTRY HID DANGERS FOR DECADES

SOMETHING IN THE AIR: The asbestos document story

SWEEPING CULPABILITY

EARLY KNOWLEDGE THAT ASBESTOS WAS DEADLY

"SO MANY EMBARRASSING DOCUMENTS"

INDUSTRY-WIDE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HAZARDS

INSURANCE COMPANIES TRY TO DODGE A BULLET

THE COVER UP

EVEN WORK HISTORIES ON DECEASED EMPLOYEES WERE DEEMED TOP SECRET

MANIPULATING SCIENCE

KEEPING INFORMATION FROM CONSUMERS

MANIPULATING THE MEDIA

REFERENCES

Libby's Deadly Grace

W.R. Grace & Company knew all along that abestos from its Libby, Montana, mine was sickening workers and their families -- but said nothing. Only now, a decade after the mine closed, are the town's residents learning the painful truth.

Contents

Background

Asbestos Background

Asbestos Problems

The Tobacco Years

RJ Reynolds Tobacco

E. Bruce Harrison

Total Indoor Environment Quality (TIEQ)

Tort Reform and Toxic Torts...

ALEC, Chamber Connections Are Clear

Sponsors Say the Bill Has Nothing to Do with ALEC?

Average Americans Pay the Price