EPA investigating spread of Libby asbestos

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON _ Federal health officials told a Senate subcommittee Thursday that they are investigating whether vermiculite ore that was mined in Montana and shipped across the country may have spread potentially fatal asbestos contamination.

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at 240 sites in 40 states where the vermiculite was shipped from the western Montana town of Libby.

One of the sites is the defunct Vermiculite Northwest Inc. factory in north Spokane, where the EPA is testing for deadly tremolite asbestos fibers.

The property, bounded by Maple, Sharp, Maxwell and Cedar, is owned by Spokane County. The EPA took soil samples from the site last September, found low levels of asbestos fibers, and is conducting more tests this year.

The $20,000 sampling project in Spokane is part of the larger EPA effort to track the environmental and human health legacy of vermiculite ore mined in Libby.

Libby, which for decades was the world's largest supplier of vermiculite, is at the center of what lawmakers and federal officials describe as a "public health crisis."

Now they are concerned that the crisis has spread to other places where the vermiculite was taken for processing into soil conditioner or for use in making home insulation.

Lung cancer and fatal asbestos poisoning rates in Libby are 40 to 60 times higher than expected because of the asbestos contamination brought by breathing in the dust from the vermiculite. W.R. Grace & Co. closed the mine in 1991 after 67 years of operation.

At least 22 of those 240 sites have been identified for cleanup, said Marianne Horinko, assistant administrator of the EPA's Solid Waste and Emergency Response Office, in testimony before a hearing of the Senate Superfund subcommittee.

The one site at highest risk is the Western Mineral Products plant in Minneapolis, which processed vermiculite into insulation and fireproofing from 1936 to 1989.

"We are very concerned about the other sites that have received asbestos contaminated vermiculite," said Henry Falk, assistant administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an office with the Health and Human Services Department.

At this preliminary stage, however, Horinko said the 22 sites other than Libby have not experienced the levels of asbestos-related sickness as seen in Montana, where as many as 200 deaths have been linked to the vermiculite and another 750 people suffer from asbestos-related illnesses.

"We have not found a pattern of asbestos contamination that in any way approaches what we've seen at Libby," Horinko said.

The health data being examined at those 22 sites are being supplied by state health departments, Falk said.

The sites are in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Minnesota, Colorado, North Dakota, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., pressed Horinko to explain why the 22 sites aren't already designated for Superfund status, as was Libby. During the hearing, which was called by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Murray displayed a map of the United States sprinkled with orange dots -- each dot marking a town where vermiculite from Libby was shipped.

"This map should tell every single senator that this isn't a problem that somebody else has. It's a problem they have," Murray said.

Asbestos fibers are a byproduct of processing the vermiculite into soil conditioner and insulation, carried into the lungs through the dust that mine workers breathe in.

The fibers wedge into the lining of the lungs like javelins, where they develop into cancer and a condition called asbestosis, an often fatal scarring of the lungs.

The sickness in Libby was abundant in part because of the pervasiveness of the dust from the vermiculite. W.R. Grace, which filed for bankruptcy in January 2001, offered the vermiculite free to homeowners for use as insulation. The company donated piles of vermiculite to the high school, where it was used under the running track.