Asbestos Roundup
Published by MAC on 2006-12-22
Asbestos Roundup
22nd December 2006
It's not just in Canada that north American workers and other citizens are confronting a rearguard action by asbestos-reliant industries, attempting to "rehabilitate" the deadly mineral's sullied reputation.
At the centre of the latest "controversy" is a recent judgment by a bankcruptcy court that the notorious WR Grace can't be faulted for using Zonolite in domestic attic insulation.
Judge's Ruling Gives W.R. Grace a Break: Attic Insulation Found Not a Risk to Homeowners
By Andrew Schneider, Baltimore Sun
22 December 22 2006
A federal bankruptcy judge has ruled that attic and wall insulation manufactured by W.R. Grace and Co. and installed in millions of homes and businesses does not pose "unreasonable risk of harm" even though it is contaminated with a highly toxic form of asbestos.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Judith Fitzgerald wrote that the ruling may "prove fatal" to property damage claims against Columbia-based Grace.
The company filed for bankruptcy in April 2001, citing hundreds of thousands of pending claims related to asbestos. Asbestos claimants have been battling the company over the makeup of a trust that would compensate those who have suffered damage and allow Grace to leave bankruptcy.
In her opinion, handed down last week in Delaware, Fitzgerald wrote that "the evidence established that the risk of exposure from [Zonolite Attic Insulation] in the home is less than that of dying in a bicycle accident."
Fitzgerald is expected to meet in February with lawyers representing the company and property owners to discuss the ramifications of the opinion. Government officials have estimated that Zonolite has been installed in 15 million to 35 million homes and businesses.
Greg Euston, a Grace spokesman, said the company "is still reviewing the decision and its implications."
Two lawyers familiar with the separate criminal case pending against Grace and seven current and former executives said they do not believe Fitzgerald's decision will affect that case. Grace and the executives are charged with knowingly endangering residents of Libby, Mont., where Grace mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite that was used to manufacture Zonolite, and concealing information about the health affects of its mining operations.
The trial, which was to begin in September, has been postponed until next year.
The Environmental Protection Agency has already spent more than $180 million cleaning Zonolite from houses, businesses and property in Libby. Grace is responsible for reimbursing the government for that cleanup, EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said.
Allan McGarvey, an attorney representing hundreds of people who have filed personal injury claims against Grace, said yesterday he did not believe the ruling would affect those cases.
"Judge Fitzgerald's opinion merely concludes that there was insufficient evidence that typical homeowners would more likely than not face exposures which would cause disease," he said. "In contrast, the Libby claimants have proven their exposures by the fact that they are all diagnosed with asbestos disease."
Grace and the claimants agreed that the shiny, featherweight insulation contains - and could release - asbestos fibers when disturbed. The key question before Fitzgerald was whether the presence of the contaminated Zonolite in homes and businesses presents an "unreasonable risk."
Lawyers representing property owners argued that the fact that asbestos could be released was enough to support a finding of unreasonable risk. They presented studies by Grace itself, the EPA, the Canadian military and others which showed that high levels of asbestos were released with minor disruption of the insulation in the attic by activities such as moving boxes and sweeping.
Grace countered that harm could not be proved unless the level of fibers released was high. Grace supported its contention that its insulation posed no risk by, in part, using correspondence from government officials including former EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman.
Some physicians who have studied or treated hundreds of patients sickened by the naturally occurring asbestos in vermiculite mined at Libby criticized the judge's opinion.
"What in the world was that judge thinking? Studies by the government and Grace itself show that with the most minor disruption, asbestos fibers fly all over the place," said Dr. Alan Whitehouse, a lung and occupational medicine specialist who has been diagnosing asbestos disease in Libby since the 1980s.
Ed Westbrook, the lead special counsel appointed by the court to represent the property owners, said they are planning to appeal.
But he said he doesn't believe the opinion damages the property claims "because once you show the existence of a toxic dust above background levels you've succeeded in showing the property is contaminated."
The first class action suit filed against Grace contending property damage from Zonolite was filed in Washington state in August 2000. It asked the courts to order Grace to take out advertisements warning property owners of the possible danger of Zonolite, and to force Grace to pay for Zonolite to be removed when homeowners remodel or do anything else to their homes that disturbs the insulation.
"That hasn't changed," Westbrook said.
Tests have shown that even installing a light fixture or ceiling fan through an attic floor insulated with Zonolite can generate dangerous levels of airborne asbestos, EPA investigators have said.
"Even if the door to the attic is never opened, we've found this insulation in the walls and coming through the light fixtures, and that contamination can last for years and years. We know it," said Dr. Aubrey Miller, an EPA senior medical officer and toxicologist.
Study: Asbestos Fears Are Justified - USGS Scientists Debunk Industry Claim, Call Particles Dangerous
By Chris Bowman, Sacramento Bee
20 December 2006
The U.S. Geological Survey on Tuesday confirmed a federal environmental agency's findings of a particularly dangerous kind of asbestos on playgrounds in El Dorado Hills.
USGS experts in mineral identification reached the conclusion after closely examining the playgrounds' study samples of tiny particles that the mining industry asserted were not asbestos.
The investigation found that most of those particles did not conform to the traditional commercial definition of asbestos, as the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association had argued. The microscopic bits of minerals nonetheless were within scientists' widely accepted range of sizes, shapes and chemical compositions counted as "asbestos" for health studies, USGS scientists said.
"We don't equate the commercial definition of asbestos with toxicity," said Gregory Meeker, a mineralogist with the USGS Denver office who led the investigation. "It has not been health based. It's been for the guy who wants to mine a deposit and make a profit at it."
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials who conducted the October 2004 study of El Dorado Hills' Community Park and nearby schoolyards said the Geological Survey's findings affirmed its pioneering exposure studies of naturally occurring asbestos in El Dorado Hills and elsewhere in the country.
"The survey's study refutes assertions made by the R.J. Lee report and supports our findings and conclusions," said Dan Meer, who supervised the playgrounds' sampling by the EPA's San Francisco regional office.
Spokesman for the industry lobby could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. But the consultant who conducted the review of the EPA sampling had maintained that the environmental agency did not follow proper standards for identifying asbestos particles in air samples.
"It is too bad that they chose to ignore a very detailed analysis that we had provided to EPA and USGS," Rich Lee, president of R.J. Lee Group of Pittsburgh, said in July.
The EPA study found that children and adults in El Dorado Hills can significantly raise their exposure to breathable asbestos particles simply from the dust kicked up riding a bicycle or playing basketball on outdoor courts.
The main public health concern related to such exposures is mesothelioma, an inoperable and almost always fatal cancer of the membranes lining the chest and other body cavities, asbestos health experts say.
Short exposure -- months, not years -- can be enough to instigate the disease, though it typically takes 30 or more years to take hold.
The EPA strapped personal air monitors on agency technicians who mimicked children's activities at the park and on sports fields at Silva Valley Elementary, Jackson Elementary and Rolling Hills Middle schools.
About 1,000 of the El Dorado Hills' 31,000 residents packed the Community Park's gymnasium to learn more from federal scientists. Findings prompted the Community Services District to blacktop the New York Creek trail running through the park and increase irrigation on sports fields to cut dust. The schools also adopted dust controls.
At the same, the superintendent of El Dorado County schools was widely circulating copies of the Stone, Sand & Gravel Association's critique discrediting the EPA study.
Superintendent Vicki Barber stopped short of endorsing the industry view. But she said it reinforced doubts that she and other local officials harbored over the reliability of EPA asbestos testing.
Barber declined to comment Tuesday, saying she had not yet read the full USGS report.
County Supervisor Helen Baumann, who represents El Dorado Hills, called the Geological Survey's study a "a fair analysis" and left her confident that the county is "doing everything we need to do to protect public health."
The USGS, the scientific arm of the Interior Department, launched the $100,000 investigation at the request of the EPA, which wanted an independent examination of the industry critique.
Last April, the USGS team collected dozens of samples of rock, soil and settled dust in the areas where the environmental agency had conducted its asbestos exposure assessment.
USGS mineralogists also analyzed samples the EPA had collected using a number of sophisticated tests to determine the chemistry, mineral composition and form of the asbestos structures detected.
The USGS investigators said asbestos health experts, not the mining industry or mineralogists, need to take the lead in redefining asbestos from a health perspective.
"Ultimately, it is the health community that must determine what particle types are significant with respect to asbestos-related diseases," the report said.
Brakes Warning Remains: OSHA Statement on Asbestos Exposure Hazard Survives Challenge
By Andrew Schneider, Baltimore Sun
17 December 2006
WASHINGTON -- A government warning to mechanics that exposure to asbestos in brakes can cause deadly disease will not be removed from a federal Web site, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has decided not to suspend a scientist who had refused to water down the warning, OSHA officials said.
Edwin Foulke Jr., the head of OSHA, made the decision to keep the five-page warning, called a Safety and Health Information Bulletin, on the agency's Web site.
The safety bulletin was posted on an OSHA Web site in July and, like a similar Environmental Protection Agency warning to backyard mechanics and small garage operators, has been called scientifically invalid by industries that used, and use, asbestos. Many of these companies, including makers of cars, trucks, aircraft and friction products, are targets of personal injury suits brought by brake workers or their survivors.
"There is no proof of asbestos in brakes ever harming those working on or around them. Not a single case has ever been documented. Not one," Michael Palese, a spokesman for Daimler-Chrysler Corp.'s legal communications, told The Sun last month.
He added that 18 "comprehensive" studies have been done by "top scientists" that showed the absence of danger from asbestos in brakes.
Worker-safety specialists tell the opposite story.
Richard Lemen, former acting director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and a former assistant U.S. surgeon general, and other public health experts have presented case studies and medical records of scores of brake and friction-material workers who were reportedly sickened or killed by asbestos-related diseases.
Trying to stay above the fray are the three agencies involved with asbestos safety issues -- OSHA, the EPA and NIOSH. Their physicians and scientists say that asbestos exposure can cause asbestosis, cancer and mesothelioma, and have said so for years.
"Nothing has changed. We consider asbestos to be a health hazard regardless of its source," said Joe Burkhart, deputy director of the Division of Respiratory Disease Studies for NIOSH, which does worker health and safety investigations under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"EPA's policy hasn't changed in that we believe exposure to asbestos fiber is still harmful," said Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, deputy director of the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.
OSHA echoed that view.
Foulke called for the warning to stay on the Web site until "a thorough review" had been done of all the information on which the bulletin was based. The review was completed, and no need was found to remove or modify the bulletin, according to a senior Labor Department official, who requested anonymity because agency policy does not permit him to speak on the record.
The Sun reported last month that Ira Wainless, an agency scientist who wrote the bulletin, was told that he would be suspended without pay for 10 days because he refused requests by supervisors to add references to asbestos studies that he and other asbestos experts said lacked credibility.
The Sun also reported that John Henshaw, a former OSHA director who left the agency in December 2004, had e-mailed science director Ruth McCully on Aug. 15, expressing concern about the bulletin and saying that it should be pulled until changes were made.
Henshaw says he is now an occupational safety consultant for industry and has appeared as an expert witness twice for companies that manufacture brakes and are being sued by workers claiming they were harmed by asbestos exposure.
Henshaw told The Sun on Thursday that he had done nothing wrong and that his e-mail suggesting changes in the brake warning was "my own idea" and "was not undertaken on behalf of anyone but myself."
The Labor Department has begun an examination to determine whether Henshaw violated federal ethics policies by weighing in on the brake warning within two years of leaving office, according to the senior department official.
Last week, after several hours of negotiations between a labor union and OSHA officials, the agency signed an agreement to withdraw its proposed suspension of Wainless, who refused to be interviewed.
"It's as it should be. Wainless will not be punished for following the best science and the law," said Eleanor Lauderdale, executive vice president of Local 12 of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, which had challenged the proposed suspension. "He stood up for the safety of workers, as is the job of everyone in OSHA."
This month, three Democratic members of Congress contacted the Labor Department, OSHA or the Government Accountability Office about the safety warnings. The three -- Reps. George Miller of California and Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and Washington Sen. Patty Murray -- are on committees involving work force issues including health and safety.
Miller requested all documents of OSHA communications with Henshaw, the White House Office of Management and Budget and all other policy papers, studies, e-mail, notes and letters involving the brake warning. Kucinich requested a meeting with OSHA to discuss the delay in the warning and the efforts to suspend Wainless. Murray's staff said the senator will be working with House members to "design an investigative study on the larger issue of" the agency's actions.
A chronology of the OSHA brake bulletin obtained by The Sun showed that as recently as Oct. 3, OSHA was communicating with the White House agency on the content of the warning. In the past, the OMB has refused to discuss its recommendations to an agency.
In 2003, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, an international law firm, using a newly instituted OMB policy that eased the challenging of government regulations, petitioned to have the EPA remove and disavow its 20-year-old asbestos warnings for mechanics, called the Gold Book. The lawyers said the EPA warning struck an "alarmist and inflammatory tone."
"The Gold Book has been used to try to sway jurors, who are told that it represents EPA's current position and thinking on the question of whether asbestos-containing friction products are dangerous to users," the petition said.
As of last week, the EPA's mechanics warning is designated as a draft, Cleland-Hamnett, of the agency's toxics program, told The Sun. But she added that the finished warning should be available soon and that the agency was "waiting for OSHA."
However, she said, the 1986 Gold Book and the new draft are available on the agency's Web site.
American Journal of Industrial Medicine Publishes Materials from ADAO's 2006 Asbestos Disease Awareness Day
Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization press release
14 December 2006
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), an organization dedicated to serving as the voice of asbestos victims, today announced that the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (AJIM) will publish selected papers, proceedings and photos from the 2006 Asbestos Awareness Day conference in their January 2007 issue.
"The AJIM has once again shown its leadership in the field of occupational medicine by publishing materials from the second annual ADAO conference," stated Arthur L. Frank, M.D., Ph.D, Co-Chair ADAO Scientific Advisory Committee. "We thank them for their continued support and special attention to the problem of asbestos-related diseases, especially mesothelioma, as we maintain our fight against the use of asbestos in every part of the world."
"It is heartwarming to know that the American Journal of Industrial Medicine maintains the dialog between scientists and victims of preventable industrial disease and death," stated Richard A. Lemen, Ph.D, Assistant Surgeon General (ret) and Co-Chair ADAO Scientific Advisory Committee. "The AJIM, established by the pioneering American researcher on asbestos-related diseases, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, continues to report new scientific findings concerning asbestos-related diseases and their prevention every day."
"ADAO is pleased that a leading health publication such as the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, is contributing to our cause by publishing these important facts about the risks of asbestos," stated ADAO Executive Director Linda Reinstein. "AJIM realizes that the industrial use of dangerous asbestos fibers must be banned worldwide. By working together, we can make a difference by preventing the future use of these hazardous materials."
The published article in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine will be available in print and online at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/34471.
About Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization
Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) was founded by asbestos victims and their families. ADAO seeks to give asbestos victims a united voice to help ensure that their rights are fairly represented and protected, and raise public awareness about the dangers of asbestos exposure and the often deadly asbestos related diseases. ADAO is funded through voluntary contributions and staffed by volunteers.
For more information visit: www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org.
Ban asbestos now! Asbestos major reason for rise in Canadian work-related deaths
18 December 2006
http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?n=47&l=2&c=15279&nb=2
CANADA: A newly-released study clearly links a startling rise in work-related fatalities in Canada to asbestos, reinforcing the call for an international ban of asbestos.
Five Deaths a Day: Workplace Fatalities in Canada, 1993-2005, was released in December by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards in Ottawa, Canada.
Data from the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada shows 1,097 workplace fatalities in Canada in 2005, up from 758 in 1993. This represents nearly five work-related deaths for each day of work and one death for every 15,000 workers.
Significantly, this rise was due almost entirely to an increase in occupational disease, which rose from 1.5 to 3.4 per 100,000 workers between 1996 and 2005. This rise was almost totally driven by the 65 years and over age group.
Moreover, the report reveals that asbestos is responsible for much of the increase in occupational disease, as the fatality rate from asbestos-related disease rose from 0.4 per 100,000 workers in 1996 to 2.1 in 2005.
Asbestos-related deaths alone accounted for about 340 deaths in 2005, or 61 per cent of deaths from occupational diseases and 31 per cent of total workplace fatalities.
Canada is one of a few countries that continues to produce and export asbestos products.