Spokane

Senator, officials join victim of asbestos in decrying delays

Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer

Ralph Busch abandoned his South Hill Victorian home after learning halfway through a remodel it was contaminated with a product he'd never been warned about -- asbestos-tainted Zonolite attic insulation.

Tuesday, Busch returned to the vacant house in the company of a U.S. senator.

The morning press conference had the flavor of a political rally. Police blocked off a stretch of West 14th Avenue, and security guards accompanied Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to Busch's porch.

Spokane County Commissioner John Roskelley and several union officials joined the crowd. Democratic activists carried signs that read, "Ban Asbestos in America."

"This house -- it used to be our home," Busch said.

With its silence on asbestos hazards, the federal government is failing to protect public health, Murray said.

"No family in America should have to go through what Ralph Busch went through," she said.

After weeks of media coverage of the asbestos controversy, the EPA said this week it will issue a major consumer warning about asbestos within a month.

On Feb. 6, Murray told Busch's story on the floor of the U.S. Senate after reading about it in The Spokesman-Review.

Busch found out -- too late -- that the attic insulation he had crawled through for weeks four years ago was contaminated with tremolite asbestos, whose tiny hooked fibers can cause asbestosis and mesothelioma, a rare and fatal cancer of the lung lining.

The insulation was manufactured by W.R. Grace & Co. from vermiculite ore mined in Libby, Mont.

Another year went by before Busch learned of the hazard from a newspaper story. His insurance company declined to pay any of the $60,000 asbestos removal cost in his $93,000 house. He and his wife, fearing for their health, reluctantly stopped paying their mortgage. Foreclosure wrecked their credit rating.

So far, EPA has begun to scrub Zonolite from attics in Libby, but has been silent on its potential hazards in millions of other American homes.

In her Senate speech, Murray assailed the Bush administration and the EPA for reneging on a planned public warning on Zonolite.

She also criticized the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health for failing to warn workers of the hazards they face from asbestos while installing cable and telephone lines and rewiring homes.

On Busch's porch, Murray continued her push to ban asbestos from consumer products.

Asbestos-tainted insulation may be in 15 to 35 million homes, schools and businesses, according to EPA estimates.

An internal EPA memo from last year says W.R. Grace & Co. told the EPA to "do nothing" to warn Americans that Zonolite contains tremolite asbestos.

At Tuesday's press conference, Murray was joined by Dr. Alan Whitehouse, a Spokane lung specialist who treats people sickened by the ore mined in Libby, and Marv Sather, a teacher and former Libby resident who suffers from asbestosis.

Tremolite is a "particularly vicious" form of asbestos, containing needle-sharp particles that can cause fatal lung cancer, Whitehouse said.

Two of his Libby patients whose only exposure to asbestos came from insulating their homes have died of asbestos disease, he noted.

"We need to ban asbestos. This is a no-brainer for physicians who've seen the amount of disease caused by this (tremolite) fabric," Whitehouse said.

Other Democrats have shown interest in her proposed bill to ban asbestos, but she hasn't yet obtained bipartisan support, Murray said.

That's in part because few members of Congress realize asbestos hasn't already been banned in America, she said.

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