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Asbestos contamination not limited to Libby

Jul 31, 2007 | Associated Press | Montana News

The vermiculite containing asbestos fibers was mined in Libby but has made its way across the Untied States. Federal health officials have released new information about WR Grace's vermiculite plants as part of National Asbestos Exposure Review.

The report focuses on different places across the country where WR Grace workers and their families were exposed to Libby asbestos. It's not just a Libby issue, asbestos was in the dust cloud at Ground Zero in New York on 9/11 and it showed up at hundreds of sites around the country, including 28 where WR Grace turned vermiculite into commercial insulation.

This summer the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry completed its first reports on those 28 processing sites and in a few places what they found will sound startlingly familiar to folks in Libby. For example in Minneapolis it was known to the public that waste rock from the vermiculite processing was available to be used. Meanwhile the material showed up in a playground next to a exfoliation facility in western Pennsylvania where kids play.

Early next year the ATSDR expects to release a larger report on the 28 processing sites including recommendations about what to do next.

Just as in Libby there's also concern for the families of WR Grace workers in these other communities because of what they may have been exposed to the dust that workers brought home with them.

Libby asbestos has been linked to hundreds of deaths from lung disease and just how dangerous the material is remains a question following almost eight years of cleanup.

Last year Montana Senator Max Baucus criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not doing research on the toxicity of the Libby fibers. Now some scientists at the University of Montana are trying to scientists want to make sure research stays on the right track.

In a lab at the UM some of the secrets of Libby amphible asbestos may be unlocked. One of those working on the project is Jean Pfau with the University of Montana's Center for Environmental Health Services.

"My interest lies in environmental factors that impact auto-immunity, which is when the immune system turns on our own bodies and causes damage. So our interest lies in finding out whether inhaling asbestos can drive those changes in the immune system and how it does it."

Perhaps just as important the researchers at UM's Center for Environmental Health Sciences say they want to find out the best way to test Libby asbestos.

So far scientists across the United States have been using a form of Libby asbestos called "six-mix" which is supposed to replicate what workers were exposed to at the WR Grace vermiculite mine. But UM researchers like Andrij Holian are also using a mix with more of the smaller fibers that can imbed themselves into the lung and cause disease. Holian says scientists that the "six-mix" may not contain enough of those fibers.

"If we use the wrong material, we're going to come up with the wrong answers. We need to come up with defining, with providing that information to decision-makers that are going to be able to minimize the uncertainty."

It could take years but the research being done at UM might lead to new standards for studying Libby asbestos as well as new ways to screen for asbestos-related disease.

The Center for Environmental Health Sciences was founded at UM in 2000 in part to study asbestos-related disease in Libby. Earlier this month scientists with the center learned they were receiving a five year grant from the National Institutes of Health that's worth over $10 million.