From Libby, to Wilder, Ky., with dust
Workers in Wilder, Ky., Zonolite plant among the many exposed to higher concentrations of asbestos than even the miners of Libby
By CARLY FLANDRO
Reporter
To Jeff Sanders, an attorney who specializes in environmental law, Libby, Montana, was a place with a problem.
Even from his home, two time zones away in Kentucky, he knew why the Libby mine workers were getting sick, and why some had died. For years, they had been digging up ore that was contaminated with asbestos, a mineral that, turned to dust, could cause cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
In the early 1990s, Sanders also knew the asbestos was affecting more than the miners — it was affecting their wives and children. Working as a lawyer for Kentucky’s environmental rules office, he learned that people in Libby who had nothing to do with the mine were being diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases.
But still, Libby was a town tucked away in Montana’s northwest corner – far from Sanders’ home in northern Kentucky.
Not for another decade would he realize that the same asbestos-contaminated ore from Libby had been in his own neighborhood for 40 years, just a few blocks and a river’s width from his high school.
“I did not think the asbestos issues touched upon my local community,” Sanders wrote in a blog last April. “I was just plain wrong.”
Vermiculite. It was used in insulation and potting soil; it was put into people’s houses and gardens. Harmless on its own, the Libby mineral was often contaminated with asbestos.
The asbestos fibers were released into the environment during the mining process, and eventually found their way into the lungs of many workers and Libby residents. Once there, they could lead to diseases such as lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis.
But for most of the mine’s operating years from the early ‘20s to 1990, many workers and residents didn’t know that the environment they were working in was dangerous – even though corporate documents suggest company executives, lawyers and supervisors did.
W.R. Grace purchased the Libby mine in 1963 from the Zonolite Company. In the 27 years that Grace owned the mine, documents suggest its top supervisors and executive came to realize the effects asbestos was having on people’s health. The company’s own studies and health exams revealed that the materials at the mine were endangering the lives of miners, their families and possibly consumers of vermiculite products.
But, in 1999, a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote an article exposing the situation in Libby. The article, written by Andrew Schneider, drew national attention to Libby.
The Environmental Protection Agency responded by sending a team to Libby to investigate the claims made by Schneider. They eventually found that there was a serious problem in Libby.
Now, 10 years later, W.R. Grace and five of its former executives are being tried on criminal charges for conspiring to hide lethal workplace risks from workers and community members. The case, which could be the largest environmental crimes trial in the history of the United States, will begin on Wednesday, Feb. 19.
Libby’s mining operation raised the dust, but it didn’t settle in scenic Lincoln County.
The vermiculite from Libby was distributed to processing plants throughout the United States, leaving its mark from one coast to the other. In many of these plants, the workers were exposed to higher concentrations of asbestos than the mine workers in Libby had been.
The plant across the river from the high school Sanders attended was the worst. Monitoring by W.R. Grace showed that the average level of asbestos-contaminated air was eight times higher than it was at the Libby mine.
It was an expansion plant, where workers took the material in its hard, rock-like form, and heated it until it became light and puffy, like popcorn. That popping was part of what made vermiculite so useful as a light, fireproofing or insulating material. It also released more asbestos dust than any other processing method, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Grace’s Zonolite Co. Wilders plant operated for 40 years, from 1952 to 1992. In that time, approximately 220,000 tons of Libby vermiculite was processed. An average of 16 people worked there, handling vermiculite that the federal government now knows was “contaminated with asbestos.”
As a teenager, Sanders went to classes at Covington Holmes High School, less than a mile away from the plant. Later, as a law student, he passed it every day on his way to Salmon P. Chase College of Law.
“I’m 50 years old,” he said. “I grew up in Kentucky and I’ve lived here most of my life. But I never knew until recently that that plant was there.”
Sanders found out about Libby in the early ‘90s while browsing through Environmental Protection Agency documents – part of his job as an attorney with the Kentucky State E.P.A.
He had been prosecuting contractors for improperly removing asbestos from schools, and was reading the documents to learn more about asbestos.
But it wasn’t until 2006 that he stumbled across a link on the federal EPA Web site that would tell him the little-known history of Wilder, Kentucky.
“It was certainly accidental,” Sanders said. “It wasn’t like I was going and looking for it. It was more like ‘Whoa, where’d this come from?’”
Sanders, who is now the managing partner at Jeffrey M. Sanders, PLLC, still lives near Wilder in Fort Thomas, Ky. Finding out about the plant has made him think about the amount of time he, his wife and his two children have spent in Wilder.
“There’s probably asbestos fibers in the local (Wilder) environment, and in the rest of the community,” he said.
When they were younger, Sanders said both of his kids – who are now teenagers – played little league baseball. They traveled multiple times to play at the parks in nearby Wilder.
An ATSDR list of people who could have been exposed to asbestos includes those who lived near the plant while it was operating – a description that could apply to Sanders. While his home was five miles from the processing plant, the proximity of his high school could put him into that category.
Sanders said neither he, nor his family members, have been tested for asbestos-related diseases. The poison he might have inhaled in his youth could settle for years before the symptoms appear. It’s easy to forget, Sanders said, that he could have been exposed.
“But if I were told tomorrow that I have asbestosis, I would want to hold (W.R. Grace) responsible for what they’ve done,” he said.
Another group of people on the ATSDR’s possible exposure list are those who currently live near the former W.R. Grace plant.
But Sanders said most people who live near the plant probably aren’t aware of it.
“I don’t think they really understand the potential risk it could pose for them,” he said. “Would I want to live there? No, absolutely not.”
Members of the Grau family, however, spend much of each working day running their gas station maintenance business from the same buildings that were used to process the Libby ore. They feel that the buildings are fine.
Harry Grau & Sons, Inc., has owned the site of the former W.R. Grace processing plant for 10 years. Ownership has passed from one generation to the next, and now, Harry’s son Jim owns the business with his wife Ann.
“It’s just a small, family-owned business,” Ann said. “We just go day-to-day.”
Harry Grau & Sons bought the property in 1999, after W.R. Grace claimed it had cleaned the buildings. The EPA re-cleaned the buildings in 2003, and stopped in 2004 after they tested the building and didn’t find any evidence of asbestos.
The ATSDR didn’t test the indoor asbestos levels in the old plant buildings for the first five years they were occupied by the Grau business. However, testing done afterward showed that two different types of asbestos were present inside the building. Every time an employee swept or disturbed the surfaces of the facility, the asbestos fibers could have been sent into the air, according to an ATSDR report. Employees or other people in the building at the time could have breathed in the asbestos.
However, the ATSDR report also stated that “exposure to workers at the site from 1999 until 2003 constituted no apparent public health hazard.”
Jim and Ann have never been tested for asbestos-related diseases, and they’re not worried about it.
“(If the buildings were still contaminated) we wouldn’t be here,” Ann said. “We’ve brought our employees and relatives in here. It was declared clean when we bought it.”
Wilder isn’t the only place where Libby’s vermiculite was processed.
In at least 12 other cities throughout the U.S., processing plant workers were exposed to air that was more contaminated with asbestos than the air Libby mine workers breathed.
According to W.R. Grace monitoring compiled by the Environmental Working Group, these places include Los Angeles, Omaha, Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee. Other affected cities are in Maine, South Carolina and Michigan.
But just as Libby’s contaminated vermiculite has spread throughout the states, the outcome of the Feb. 19 case could resound on a national level.
“The biggest impact it will have on the rest of the country is that the management or upper man of a corporation must ensure environmental regulations,” Sanders said. “They can’t simply ignore environmental laws in the future, and if they do so, they do it at their own peril.”