Utah Health Department Dropped Ball for Vermiculite Miners
The editor or the Salt Lake Tribune believes that the Utah Department of Health has done a great disservice to the city’s vermiculite miners by not informing them that they could contract serious respiratory diseases from their work in the city’s former asbestos-laden mines.
The Department of Health, says the editorial, never informed former employees at the now-defunct W.R. Grace mines that they were conducting a study to determine if cancer clusters exist in a two-mile radius of the three plants. Little attempt was made to contact the miners themselves and the media was never informed of the 2001 search. The editor believes that notification by the Dept. of Health would probably have resulted in locating a number of former workers and the issuance of early warnings to those individuals about the dangers of asbestos exposure.
“Unable to acquire payroll records from the defunct owner, W.R. Grace and Co., the department called the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration,†points out the editorial. “It contacted the Utah Tax Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and various business licensing agencies. But it never called the news media, which would have publicized the warnings to former employees for free.â€
“Now, six years later, after the study has concluded and news accounts were written, several former employees have learned of the danger and contacted the health department. They are advised to see a physician, and are questioned about the whereabouts of their co-workers,†the editorial explains. “But with diseases for which early detection is crucial to survival, the department shouldn’t have been dragging its feet.â€
The lead epidemiologist in the study, Dr. Wayne Ball, says it isn’t normal procedure to contact the media about such research. He said the study took six years and the final reports were delayed because the federal grant only paid for a part-time employee.
