EPA Declares Emergency in Asbestos-Poisoned Libby

This week the Environmental Protection Agency declared its first “public health disaster,” and it’s in Libby, Montana, home of the W.R. Grace mining operation that doused the community in asbestos. The EPA promised to finish a cleanup job left undone for nearly a decade.

If a decade-old cleanup job doesn’t sound like an emergency, consider that mining and manufacturing have been drizzling asbestos throughout the community for 70 years. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer first reported on the asbestos contamination of Libby in November, 1999. At that time, according to the Seattle P-I, at least 192 people had died and another 375 had been diagnosed with fatal asbestos-related diseases. Many more have become ill since then.

The Department of Health and Human Services is making $6 million available to help provide medical care for people with asbestos-related diseases. HHS estimates there are at least 500 people currently living with asbestos-related illnesses such as mesothelioma and asbestosis in the emergency area, which has a total population of about 3,900. A spokeswoman for HHS said 50 new cases of asbestos-related disease are diagnosed every year in the community. Among the diagnosed are adults and children who were never inside the mines.

Last month three W.R. Grace executives were acquitted of charges that they knowingly released asbestos into the community. Cornelia Dean writes in the New York Times that “Grace agreed last year to pay the federal government $250 million for cleanup efforts around the mining site.”

The mine in Libby was closed in 1990. However, at one time the Libby mine may have produced 80 percent of the world’s supply of vermiculite. It supplied most of the vermiculite sold in the United States in the 20th century. Vermiculite is widely used in insulation. However, the Libby vermiculite came with an extra ingredient — a naturally occurring and toxic asbestos called tremolite. The EPA believes that about 35 million homes in America contain insulation made with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite from the Libby mine.

Barbara O’Brien
June 22, 2009

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